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Shoring up divine simplicity against modal collapse: a powers account

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2019

JOSEPH E. LENOW Open the ORCID record for JOSEPH E. LENOW [Opens in a new window]
JOSEPH E. LENOW*
Affiliation:
Department of Theology, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68102, USA
*
e-mail: josephlenow@creighton.edu
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Abstract

This article defends a broadly Thomist understanding of the doctrine of divine simplicity from the objection that such a position inevitably leads to a modal collapse. To do so, it draws upon Barbara Vetter's recent dispositionalist account of modality, in which irreducibly modal multi-track powers are the truthmakers of modal claims. Conceiving of God's power on the analogy of these dispositional properties enables us to hold that the divine life is itself the truthmaker of modal truths, without requiring a real distinction between what is necessary and contingent in God that would compromise divine simplicity.

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Original Article
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Religious Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 10 - 29
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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