Further Reflections on Theism 243event has a cause’ is necessarily true (and in that sense is ‘self-evident in itself ’,
if not to an ordinary speaker). In the past philosophers simply aligned the
categories of the a priori, the analytic, and the necessary, and from that stand-
point it is impossible to make sense of Aquinas’s distinction. But after Kripke
it will not do to assume that if a truth is necessary then it must be analytic.^22
In consequence we are not debarred from saying that the proposition ‘God
exists’ is necessarily true, and rationally determinable, even though it is not
analytic. From the fact that God’s essence and existence are one, it does
not follow that there is any (analytic) contradiction in denying this; but
equally the coherence (to us) of that denial does not imply that God’s exist-
ence is not necessary, or that this necessary fact is not determinable by reason.
What we know of God is derived from his effects. The existence of cats,
and of thoughts of cats, calls for explanation. Proceeding from their existence
we ascend to the idea of beingitself and to the recognition that the being of
created entities consists in their derivative participation in this. Likewise,
starting from their nature we rise to the idea of essenceitself and to the parallel
recognition that the natures of created beings are also participations in the
nature of God. There is a multiplicity of kinds and instances of creatures, and
within them a multiplicity of metaphysical aspects: substance and attribute;
form and matter; potentiality and actuality; essence and existence. The move-
ment of reason towards the explanation of things may proceed from each of
these, but as it does it converges on a single, simple, transcendent reality.
Molly is an instance of cat, cat of mammal, mammal of animal, animal of
living thing, this of substance more generally, it a mode of natured being –
whose formal cause is Being. Molly’s chewing is for the sake of eating, this is
for nourishment, which is for the sake of well-being, this for the sake of life,
it a mode of active being – whose final cause is Being.
Wherever we start, we are led to Being conceived under different aspects.
At one point I said that the divine attributes were co-extensive and had an
extension of one (pp. 000 – 000); but as was observed, this way of putting
things leaves a plurality of attributes and hence a complex subject. God is not
a substance possessed of features. What can be truly predicated of God per se
has but one referent: the existence that is one and the same as God’s essence.
It is a single undifferentiated reality, but one that can be arrived at in differ-
ent ways, just as one and the same number can be the answer to different
calculations. But how can this be both the source of all and yet be simple?
The answer comes in three parts. First, the kind of simplicity that is at issue
is metaphysical and not that measured in terms of degrees of natural com-
plexity. Second, God has to be simple, ex hypothesi, for if the purported first
cause were composed of any elements, natural or metaphysical, it would itself
call for explanation. Third, divine simplicity is compatible with the scale and
variety of its created effects because their pre-existence in it is virtual not