The aseity of God is the doctrine of God’s simplicity. Plainly stated, it teaches that God is not made of parts. When we say things such as “God is good” we do not mean that “good” exists outside of God, but that he actually is good (commutatively, good is God). It is at this point that Alvin Plantinga raises a concern which eventually leads him to deny God’s aseity. If God’s properties do not exist outside of him meaning that God is identical with his properties, God is therefore a property and cannot be a person. In order to maintain God’s personality, Plantinga sacrifices God’s aseity. Scott Oliphint summarizes the issue:

According to Plantinga, the notion of God’s simplicity is “a dark saying indeed.” It goes back, he thinks, to Parmenides, according to whom reality was “an undifferentiated plenum in which no distinctions can be made.” Plantinga has good reason to see the doctrine as “dark.” He is convinced that if God were identical with his properties, then, ipso facto, God would be a property. If Plantinga is right, then simplicity is indeed a dark saying in that its implications wind up denying the Christian God.¹

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1. Oliphint, K. Scott. Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the Service of Theology (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2006), 94-95.↩

Rick Grush, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, is offering a free podcast of a lecture course entitled Basic Sentential Logic and Informal Fallacies. The course is a good introduction for those without basic philosophical training.