William Lane Craig is a Christian philosopher and apologist who denies the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity—and this, as I will argue, makes him an atheist [1].
First, a little background. The doctrine of divine simplicity denies that God is a composite—that is, that God is built up from any parts (components, constituents, etc.) more basic than himself. For Catholics, the doctrine of divine simplicity is a matter of dogma; there is no wiggle room in affirming that God is simple, though there is space for how best to understand this commitment—a topic for another time.
Whereas divine simplicity was historically the dominant theological perspective, in more recent decades, it has become controversial. Many Christian philosophers actively deny and attack it, arguing that it leads to various absurd results.
But divine simplicity should not be controversial at all. Rather, it follows straightforwardly from conceptual truths—that is, truths that hold by virtue of the meanings of the terms or concepts involved, with no empirical investigation required. Put differently, once we are clear on what we mean by composite, on the one hand, and God, on the other, there really is no way around the idea that God—if God is to be God—must be absolutely simple.
Here’s a little argument that will help us see why:
- Whatever is composite depends on prior components.
- Whatever depends on something prior is not ultimate.
- God is ultimate.
So God is not composite.
The first step in the argument is just one of these conceptual truths. After all, a composite just means something that depends on (or derives from) more basic components. Everyday, obvious examples would be LEGO towers and cars, where the entire entity is metaphysically downstream, as it were, from the bits and pieces that constitute it. No LEGO blocks, no LEGO tower—fairly obvious.
The second step is also, obviously, a basic conceptual truth—if something is ultimate, that means that’s where the buck stops. There can be nothing deeper down, nothing further back, and so forth. To say something is, at once, ultimate and yet dependent upon something else is just a straightforward contradiction in terms.
Next, we say that God is ultimate. It is a tricky matter to pin down exactly what must be affirmed about God to ensure that we’re actually talking about . . . well, God. But once we omit the notion of ultimacy or fundamentality and begin to talk about something dependent, derivative, or caused, we have lost successful reference to God. At that point, we are talking about something else entirely—something definitely not God.
If everything is right so far, then we have an argument that seems totally decisive. For it logically follows that God is not, and could not be, composite. This is just to say that God is simple: not made up of any parts, components, or constituents more basic than himself.
The final step to atheism here is simple. If we cannot affirm God without affirming that God is simple (or minimally, at least not denying that God is simple), then the moment we deny divine simplicity—deny that whatever is fundamental is absolutely and ontologically simple—we are, in fact, denying God altogether. And the denial of God altogether is atheism!
So, as annoying as it may be for non-classical theists (sometimes called theistic personalists, neo-classical theists, or—my preference—complex theists) to hear this, the logic is straightforward. Because William Lane Craig denies divine simplicity, Craig is—sad to say—an atheist, even if he is unable to see it or simply unwilling to admit it. (To pull the polemics back a bit, we might say he is functionally—metaphysically—an atheist, even if not sociologically one.)
Let us now consider a way we might try to evade this argument. As with any argument, there are possible escape hatches, but here I will say the cost of attempted escape is enormous.
This approach is to attenuate the traditional notion of ultimacy—or, as the case may be, aseity. Someone might say that by calling God ultimate or a se, he simply means that God does not depend upon anything outside himself, even if he still depends on or derives from internal components.
This is a mess of a position, however, for several reasons. First, it’s contrived: a way to weasel out of the obvious. Second, it leaves God entirely brute—that is, with no further explanation of why or how God exists. (Note that simply saying God is necessary doesn’t actually explain why God exists or why God exists necessarily—especially if God is conceived as a composite entity whose existence is downstream of prior parts existing and being organized just so.) In particular, it fails to explain—because it cannot without circularity—why God has the components he does, or why and how they are organized and bound together in just the way they are.
Second, making this move hands the atheist an identical card to play: the atheist can now claim that his fundamental entity—nature, or evolution, or the Big Bang—is equally ultimate and a se. Yes, it may be composite and brute as well, but if the theist can posit brute, composite entities as the ultimate (pseudo-)explanatory stopper, then so can the atheist. From there, the atheist can even claim that his theory is overall simpler, since it avoids positing one further, highly complex entity. (Just think about it: if an atheist can so easily co-opt the notion of ultimacy or aseity being used by the theist, surely something has gone terribly wrong.)
Notice that the classical theist doesn’t face these problems. God is not brute, but has the reason for his existence in the fact that, given simplicity, God is identical to his existence (hence why God exists necessarily: God is not a composite, where an essence must be conjoined to an act of existence; God simply is his “to be”). Moreover, this reality can ultimately ground all composite entities and thus provide a more tightly unified and satisfying theory overall; all compositeness traces back to absolute simplicity—and complex theism cannot, for obvious reasons, offer such an account. It leaves compositeness as a bare brute fact. Finally, given simplicity, God requires no further explanation for why or how his “parts” exist or are organized in just the way they are—because God has no parts at all.
At the end of the day, I believe that the doctrine of divine simplicity is one of the most obvious truths about God. If one is committed to the notion of God at all, the very least he should be committed to is the idea that God is absolutely simple—just as so many great philosophers have held for so many centuries, from Plato to Plotinus, Aristotle to Aquinas.
What these intellectual titans well understood is that if God is really and truly God, there can be no markers—no indicators—of contingency, dependency, or derivation. Why? Because whatever else God is, he has always been taken to be the ultimate—the sole, the ultimate—reality. That, in turn, tells us that whatever else is true of God, he cannot be made up of, or built up from, anything more basic than himself. It tells us that God is simple—and, in being simple, supreme.
[1] Craig attacks the doctrine in various places. A recent example can be found in Systematic Philosophical Theology, Volume 1: Prolegomena, On Scripture, On Faith, where he writes, “Contemporary efforts to defend divine simplicity have become increasingly desperate and far-fetched. . . . the resultant concept of God is light years away from the living God of the Bible.”