Abstract
Contemporary accounts frequently describe divine simplicity as a multivalent doctrine encompassing substantially different metaphysical positions. This study investigates whether the Christian tradition nevertheless preserves a stable minimum meaning of simplicity. It distinguishes between two claims: the anti-assembly thesis, according to which God was never produced by combining prior elements, and the stronger partlessness thesis, according to which God possesses no intrinsic constituents at all. Through a survey of representative Christian theologians from the second through the fourteenth centuries, including both orthodox and heterodox participants in major theological controversies and across distinct traditions (such as seen in Duns Scotus and Gregory Palamas), the study examines how simplicity functioned in discussions of divine attributes, Trinitarian distinctions, generation, Christology, formal distinctions, and the divine energies. The sources consistently treat simplicity as excluding both assembly and intrinsic parthood. Their disagreements concern which distinctions constitute parts and how real distinctions can be affirmed without introducing composition into God. Divine simplicity is therefore not multivalent at the level of its minimum metaphysical commitment. Across otherwise divergent accounts, it remains governed by a stable prohibition: God is not constituted by parts. This finding clarifies both the historical meaning of simplicity and the requirements facing contemporary theologians who claim continuity with the Christian tradition.
Recommended Citation:
Anderson, L. J. “Unassembled or Partless? The Meaning of Divine Simplicity in the Christian Tradition.” Lamad Theological Review, September 2026.
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