Why God’s Simplicity Explains a Complex Universe: A Tribute to Fr. Dewan

Introduction

This paper examines the doctrine of divine simplicity[1] as articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas, situating it within the context of contemporary critiques and renewed philosophical interest. While briefly surveying the three central contentions underpinning the doctrine, I focus primarily on the cogency of Aquinas’s first contention. By developing a case for the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA), I aim to demonstrate how its implications substantiate Aquinas’s first contention. This will be contrasted with Richard Dawkins’s reductive materialist assertion that God must, by necessity, be complex. I will demonstrate the acute problems with this line of thinking. Finally, I argue that divine simplicity offers a more coherent ontological foundation for the emergence of complexity in the universe than reductive materialist explanations.

            Throughout the paper, I engage both points of agreement and respectful disagreement with the metaphysical insights of Fr. Lawrence Dewan (1932-2015). While deeply indebted to his Thomistic contributions, my analysis moves beyond his framework in key respects.[2] To this end, I engage several of Dewan’s works: his reflections on Aquinas’s account of divine simplicity,[3] his commentary on Big Bang cosmology,[4] his treatment of the relationship between metaphysics and creation, and his reflections on the existence of God.[5] I also incorporate material from his Form and Being. [6] Fr. Dewan throughout the course of his illustrious career laboured to make a significant contribution to developing Thomistic thought.

The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity

Although Augustine and Anselm each offered early formulations of divine simplicity,[7] it was Aquinas who first articulated a rigorous and systematic defense. In the Summa Theologiae,[8] he places the doctrine at the forefront of divine attributes,[9] as it delineates the ontological structure of God from which all subsequent theological and philosophical predicates derive. As Eleonore Stump observes, divine simplicity is “fundamental to the Thomistic worldview” and “foundational for everything in Aquinas’s thought from his metaphysics to his ethics.”[10]  

According to Stump, Aquinas’s doctrine of simplicity can be distilled into three core claims:[11] (i) God has no spatial or temporal parts; (ii) God possesses no intrinsic accidental properties; and (iii) whatever is attributed to God is identical with His essence.[12]

This first contention, which is the central focus of this paper, affirms a fundamental distinction between God and material reality.

It is impossible that matter should exist in God.  First, because matter is in potentiality. Hence it is impossible that God should be composed of matter and form.  Secondly, because everything composed of matter and form owes its perfection and goodness to its form; therefore its goodness is participated inasmuch as matter participates in form… Thirdly, because every agents acts by its form; hence the manner in which it has its form is the manner in which it is an agent.  Therefore whatever is primarily and essentially form.  Now God is the first agent, since He is the first efficient cause.  He is therefore of His essence of a form; and not composed of matter and form.” (ST Ia. 3.2).^[13]

Building on this, Aquinas affirms God’s eternality, His existence outside of time,[14]  deriving it from divine immutability, which itself is grounded in simplicity.[15]  As such, God lacks temporal parts.

The second contention is exemplified when Aquinas states:

There can be no accident in God. First, because a subject is related to an accident as potentiality not actuality, for with regard to an accident a subject is in actuality in a certain respect. But being in potentiality is entirely removed from God (ST Ia.3.6.).

Aquinas’s view is clarified by distinguishing intrinsic from extrinsic properties: extrinsic changes do not alter a thing’s essential nature, whereas intrinsic changes do. As Stump notes “no entity, not even a mathematical or divine entity, can be exempted from having extrinsic accidental properties” though intrinsic accidental properties remain incompatible with divine simplicity.[16] 

            The third contention holds that God is identical with His essence or nature;[17] there is no real distinction between His attributes.  All created things possess a difference between their essence and existence but not so for God. According to the doctrine of divine simplicity God is equivalent to His existence. In summary, the doctrine affirms that God lacks spatial, temporal, and metaphysical parts. We now turn our discussion to the contemporary context which comprises both criticisms and defenses of the doctrine.

Criticism and Defense of the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity

Most criticisms of divine simplicity have centered on Aquinas’s second and third contentions, though his denial of temporality in the first contention has also attracted scrutiny.[18] Stump highlights several conceptual difficulties stemming from the second and third contentions. According to Stump, these contentions lead to the following paradoxes:

From those claims it seems to follow, for instance, that God’s knowledge is identical with God’s power and also with anything that can be considered an intrinsic property of his, such as one of God’s actions – his talking to Cain, for instance.  Moreover, God’s talking to Cain must, it seems, be identical with God’s talking to Abraham and, for that matter, with any other divine action, such as God plaguing Pharaoh’s Egypt with a hailstorm. And it is not only the drawing of distinctions among god’s attributes or actions that is apparently misleading. God’s talking to Cain is evidently not really an action of God’s, as Cain’s talking is an action of his; rather, it is part of God’s essence. Even that formulation is apparently too broad: God’s talking to Cain is not part of his essence; it his essence, and God himself is that essence.[19]

Prominent critics include Richard Gale, Christopher Hughes, Thomas Morris, and especially Alvin Plantinga, whose objections have become central to contemporary discussions. Perhaps the most influential critique of divine simplicity is Alvin Plantinga’s 1980 Aquinas Lecture, Does God Have a Nature? In this lecture, Plantinga argues that Aquinas’s understanding of divine simplicity is ultimately philosophically incoherent and possesses some thorny theological issues.[20]  In response, Lawrence Dewan’s 1989 article, “Saint Thomas, Alvin Plantinga and the Divine Simplicity” (Modern Schoolman), contends that Plantinga “completely” fails “to enter into serious philosophical discussion with the historical Thomas Aquinas on the issue of divine simplicity”[21] 

Dewan defends Aquinas’s view by clarifying that God is a person, not a property,[22]—a key point Plantinga misreads, particularly in his interpretation of S.T. Ia.3.8.

Dewan explains why applying the term “property”[23] to God leads to serious conceptual errors:

A word like “property,” insofar as it includes inherence in its signification, and not merely in its mode of signifying, could never be properly said of God.  The doctrine of analogy depends on our ability to isolate for consideration a perfection, and to relegate to the zone of “mode of signifying” the imperfect mode of being which the observed perfection has in things we primarily know…in the analogy between creatures and God they represent precisely what is left aside when the word is said of God.  For example, “goodness,” in our experience, names what is in fact inhering perfection.  We attribute to God the perfection but not the inherence.  To attempt, as Plantinga does, to apply “property” (which to Platinga himself clearly conveys inherence: otherwise it would cause no difficulty) to creatures and to God suggests he has failed to grasp the doctrine of analogy between creatures and God.[24] 

Furthermore, Dewan notes that Plantinga’s treatment of analogy overlooks its essential role in clarifying how perfections in creatures can be predicated of God without implying ontological parity or inherence. Therefore, as Dewan notes: ““God is good” means that “what we call ‘good’ in creatures is to be found existing by priority in God, though in a more eminent degree.”” Dewan also suggests that Plantinga fails to appreciate the philosophical labor required to establish the existence of God, [25]  a task central to the Thomistic tradition.  

Dewan, demonstrates the defensibility of the difficult doctrine of divine simplicity even against one of its more prominent detractors. In addition to Dewan’s erudite response, several contemporary scholars have mounted robust defenses of divine simplicity. These include Eleonore Stump’s chapter in her book titled Aquinas where she attempts to resolve several other difficult issues, Peter Weigel’s Aquinas on Simplicity,[26] a book long treatment on the subject and finally most recently James Dolezal’s God without Parts another full-length treatment of the subject. Dolezal offers a concise formulation of the doctrine: “(1) God is identical with his existence and his essence and (2) that each of his attributes is ontologically identical with his existence and with every other one of his attributes.” [27]  This is all to say that despite the many criticisms and detractions, the doctrine is alive and well in contemporary philosophical and theological discussions.    

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) belongs to a broader family of cosmological arguments, rather than constituting a singular formulation. In contrast to Aquinas and many Thomists, including Dewan, I adopt an approach grounded in the principle of determination rather than the principle of causality. A brief word on the cosmological argument would be of great use at this juncture. William Lane Craig, in The Cosmological Argument: From Plato to Leibniz (1980), identifies three main types of cosmological arguments: (i) those based on the principle of determination, (ii) those based on causality, and (iii) those grounded in the principle of sufficient reason.^[28]  This threefold typology is helpful in advancing our understanding of the debates surrounding the cosmological arguments. 

While I acknowledge the cogency of Thomistic causal arguments, I contend that the KCA is more compelling in light of contemporary philosophical and scientific developments. In this area, I favour Bonaventure’s approach who disagreed with Aquinas on arguing for the finitude of the past. Aquinas as I understand him believed by Scriptural faith (which must be emphasized is not a form of fideism) that the world was created by God via ex nihilo with a finite beginning because of his interpretation of Genesis 1. He held that reason alone could not definitively settle the question, since arguments for both an infinite and finite past appeared equally inconclusive.  Nonetheless, despite this, he was more persuaded by the science of his time which affirmed the eternality of the past.  Given contemporary discoveries in modern physics and cosmology, I find such a position increasingly difficult to maintain. I will go over why when I briefly examine the premises concerning the KCA below.  Dewan expresses reservations about the KCA, though he offers few detailed objections beyond a general preference for Thomistic metaphysics. Dewan states that:

My interest is, first of all, in the doctrine of creation as a doctrine of religion based on a revelation. Secondly, I am interested in what this doctrine has meant in the history of metaphysics. Taking these areas seriously, I wish to indicate how alien to these matters the field of contemporary cosmology is (existing though it does in the context of their cultural influences). [29]

While I agree that distinctions must be made between religious, metaphysical, and scientific domains, a strict separation such as that proposed by Stephen Jay Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), is unwarranted.[30] 

            A strict separation between scientific and metaphysical questions is untenable. As history shows, metaphysical and religious presuppositions are often embedded within scientific theorizing. For example, Charles Darwin’s reflections on the apparent cruelty and purposelessness of natural selection raise deeply theological questions about God’s nature, pain, and providence.[31]  Likewise, Fred Hoyle’s development of the steady-state model was influenced by his atheism and discomfort with the theological implications of a finite universe.[32] 

            In a 1990 letter to The New York Times, titled ‘Big Bang, If There Was One, Was No Big Deal,’ Fr. Dewan reflects on the metaphysical incoherence of a “first event” from a purely physical perspective::

Aristotle, in the fourth century B.C., pointed out that there could be no such thing as a ”first event,” looking at things from a strictly physical perspective. If things had to begin to become rare (a big bang), the question is: ”Why only then, why not earlier?” The answer has to be: ”Conditions were not yet right.” What was it for ”conditions to become right”? Something had to happen first (i.e., before the big bang). Thus, there is always an event presupposed by any posited ”first event.” The big bang, even if it is science and not mere ”literary conception,” is only an interesting event.[33]

Dewan’s reservations are understandable from an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework. However, his skepticism underplays the growing empirical evidence in support of a temporal beginning. Since 1990, Big Bang cosmology has been increasingly supported by observation. Notably, Alex Vilenkin and colleagues formulated the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem, which asserts that any universe expanding on average must have a finite past.[34]

Aristotle’s assumption of an eternal, static universe has been overturned by modern cosmology, which now supports a dynamic universe with a temporal beginning. Moreover, the initial singularity represents the bringing into existence of space-time. To speak of events occurring “before” time began is incoherent, since the origin of time marks the beginning of all temporal succession. This is something that Augustine recognized in the fourth century.[35]

The sixth-century Christian philosopher John Philoponus would likely have embraced such findings with enthusiasm. In opposition to Aristotelian cosmology, Philoponus argued for a temporal beginning and critiqued the idea of an actual infinite regress. If anything, such a thinker would marvel and be astonished at the findings of twentieth century physics and cosmology.  I do not think it would necessarily be alien to thinkers who throughout history have supported the KCA.  It would be something that they would expect, namely that the philosophical arguments are at the very least consonant with modern scientific discovery regarding physics and cosmology.

Fr. Dewan[36] in a disapproving way mentions William Lane Craig as an adherent of big bang cosmology supporting the doctrine creation ex nihilo.[37]  Craig is the most notable contemporary defender of the KCA. To understand why contemporary cosmology would not be so alien to the doctrine of creation, it would be worthwhile to examine some of Philoponus’s reactions and observations which will serve as a nice segue into the KCA.  

Philoponus’s belief that God created the universe out of nothing played a significant role in questioning the reigning philosophy of his time.^[38] It is worth pointing out that many Christians and Jews were embarrassed by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and were divided over whether God created from pre-existing matter through reorganizing it as opposed to creating matter itself from nothing.^[39] The reason for this embarrassment was precisely because of the natural philosophical consensus that pointed towards an eternal past.  As philosopher, Richard Sorabji notes: “Up to AD 529, Christians were on the defensive.  They argued that a beginning of the universe was not impossible.  In 529, Philoponus swung round into the attack. He argued that a beginning of the universe was actually mandatory, and mandatory of the pagans’s own principles.”^[40] Philoponus’s central move was to emphasize a metaphysical distinction between Creator and creation. This allowed him to affirm a universe with a beginning, grounded in divine causality rather than eternal motion. This belief not only allowed him to argue for the finitude of the past but also that the sun is made of fire, which he acknowledged as a terrestrial substance, as opposed to a celestial substance.^[41]  Thus establishing that heavenly bodies are not divine and are subject to decomposition, thereby collapsing a central Aristotelian doctrine before a Christian doctrine.

Philoponus’s Christian worldview permitted him to also create a coherent system of thought where he could provide argumentation and evidence to support his belief system. One that was fruitful to scientific discovery. Philoponus’s integrative approach of what he observed in reality with his Christian faith allowed him to develop a cosmological argument adhering to the principle of determination, in other words the impossibility of an infinite temporal regress into the past.  It will be important to first briefly outline Aristotle’s conception of infinity in order to understand Philoponus’s arguments.^[42]

Aristotle argued for a particular conception of the infinite which can be called an “extendible finitude.”^[43]  Two consequences follow from this. First, the infinite is only potential and not actual.^[44] Second, that an actual infinite, can never be traversed, that is to say it can never be crossed.^[45] The qualification that is necessary here is that actual infinity would be more than a finitude (a determinate totality), so an extendible finitude is to be understood as a potential infinity and not an actual one.^[46] The fact that infinity can never be traversed elicits another qualification from Aristotle in response to Zeno’s paradox of half distances^[47], namely that we can traverse a potential infinity of divisions but not an actual one, otherwise we would never be able to leave this room after my presentation.

Philoponus advanced several arguments against the notion of an actual infinite. He emphasized that if the universe had no beginning, it would have already traversed an infinite series of past events, which is an impossibility.^[48]  Moreover, this infinity would have to be an actual infinite not merely an extendible finitude.^[49]  He further suggests that infinity would have been crossed when Socrates died in the fourth century B.C. and since then it would have crossed again more than an actual infinity. The second argument, indicates that infinity would also have to be increased^[50] which of course would lead to various absurdities. It is vital to understand that here Philoponus is not necessarily assuming that an actual infinite cannot exist but that time or the temporal series of events cannot exist as one since that would entail successively adding one unit after another as a standard view of time seems to necessitate.^[51]  For instance, if there had been an actual infinite number of years by 2024, how many more years will there have been by 2025? An infinite number of them plus one. What about the days? Well, infinity multiplied by 365.^[52] Anything conceived to be larger than infinity leads to these obvious absurdities and contradictory ideas. 

Variations of Philoponus’s argument have been advanced throughout the centuries up until the present with Islamic, Jewish and Christian theologians and philosophers.

The modern Kalam argument can be concisely stated as follows:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.^[53]

In defense of the second premise two lines of scientific evidence have been offered. The first, the expansion of the universe which is intimately connected with big bang cosmology.[54]  The second, the second law of thermodynamics. This second argument suggests that given a sufficient amount of time the universe and all its processes will run-down and reach a state of equilibrium or maximum entropy. For instance, the sun cannot burn and produce light ad infinitum, in lieu of this fact, the question arises as to why it hasn’t burned out already if it has existed from eternity past. In addition to these scientific evidences, two philosophical arguments with intriguing examples have been provided. First, on the impossibility of an actual infinite existing, so, that the finitude of the past is predicated on the impossibility of an infinite temporal regress of events.  “Hilbert’s Hotel”^[55] is used as a “thought experiment” to illustrate the various absurdities that arise in envisioning the existence of an actual infinite.^[56] The second philosophical argument in support of the second premise entails, that it is impossible to form an actual infinite by “successive addition”.  The thought experiment of Tristram Shandy^[57] who takes a year to write a day of his life, is offered as an example to illustrate the various absurdities that arise with the formation of an actual infinite via successive addition.   Bertrand Russell suggested that if Tristram Shandy were immortal the book could be completed since one year and one day would both be infinite.   However, such a notion is impossible since the future represents a potential infinity or as we have already discussed, an extendible finitude. So, although Shandy would write for eternity he would get more behind as time passes never catching up to his chronological age. Russell’s proposed one-to-one correspondence between days and years collapses under the recognition that the future represents only a potential infinity. The two scientific lines of evidences coupled with the two philosophical arguments has indeed given the KCA a very empirical robustness in favour of the contemporary development of the KCA over previous historical periods.

            Moving onto the first premise.  The first premise of the KCA is often defended on metaphysical grounds: namely, that nothing can come from nothing. Philosopher Mark Nowacki deepens this argument through a substance-based metaphysics that seeks to connect logical possibilities with empirical mechanisms.[58]  These considerations lay the groundwork for exploring how the KCA’s conclusion: an immaterial, uncaused, timeless cause—aligns with Aquinas’s first contention in the doctrine of divine simplicity.

Implications of the KCA for the first contention of Divine Simplicity[59]

Having outlined the KCA, we now turn to its metaphysical implications. The argument points to a transcendent cause that, by logical necessity, possesses several distinct attributes. As the cause of space and time, the entity in question must itself transcend both. This implies that it exists timelessly and non-spatially. Timelessness entails immutability, and immutability in turn entails immateriality. Additionally, such a cause must itself be uncaused and without beginning. This conception of a transcendent cause aligns precisely with Aquinas’s first contention in his doctrine of divine simplicity. As Stump explains: “It is impossible that God have any spatial or temporal parts that can be distinguished from one another as here rather than there or as now rather than then, and so God cannot be a physical entity.”[60]

Thus, the attributes derived from the KCA echo Aquinas’s first contention: that God lacks spatial, temporal, or material composition. The KCA thereby provides philosophical and evidential support for divine simplicity As Peter Weigel, in his comprehensive treatment of Aquinas on simplicity, observes:

[T]he claims of simplicity function as a kind of shorthand for the basic ontology of a first cause, then it is natural to place simplicity right after the arguments for the existence of a first cause. Aquinas, moreover, realized that the claims of simplicity articulate an ontological situation that the other major predicates presuppose in the state of affairs that they each describe as true of the first cause.[61]

The KCA, while a natural theology argument, yields apophatic insight: it defines God primarily by what He is not: spatial, temporal, mutable, or material, thus aligning with classical Christian metaphysical tradition. While causality-based arguments remain effective for demonstrating God as the sustaining cause of the universe, the KCA’s implications uniquely address challenges posed by contemporary atheism. This leads us to consider Richard Dawkins’s mischaracterization of God as complex, a view that the doctrine of divine simplicity decisively refutes.

Dawkins on God and Complexity

The Kalam Cosmological Argument, in conjunction with Big Bang cosmology, points not only to the beginning of space and time but also to the emergence of increasing complexity within the universe. This complexity, from large-scale cosmic structures to biochemical life, prompts deeper metaphysical questions. The fact that the laws of physics and the universe’s initial conditions are finely tuned for such development invites a serious consideration of whether this complexity arises from chance, necessity, or design. This would refer to certain material structures like amino acids and proteins which are building blocks to life.  In this context, the more accurate concept is specified complexity rather than mere complexity. Specified complexity refers to a pattern that is both highly improbable and independently meaningful. For example, a random arrangement of letters may be complex in a statistical sense but lacks significance. By contrast, a sequence that forms meaningful language or a digital code exhibits specificity and function. This principle applies equally to the molecular structure of DNA and the arrangement of neurons in the human brain. Such structures display organized information that is not merely complex but directed toward function and purpose. The same is true in life whether within a cell or in the arrangement of over 100 billion neurons all interconnected via trillions of synapses like in the structure of the human brain.  It is worth noting that all of species we can observe around us are modern versions of their ancestors; this would include everything from bacteria to apes to fish although prototypically or even anatomically (with respect to animals and plants) quite similar. It is an astonishing thing to witness “low life” (micro-organisms) and its specified complexity only because of our advancement in technology – without such a thing it would be impossible to observe such entities.  Most remarkably is that we can unravel a world far more complicated than any computer or device we have been able to design – this is especially true with the informational content embedded on the spine of the double helical DNA molecule.  What’s more to add another level of complexity the epigenome functions much like the software component whereas the DNA functions as the hardware. Interestingly, we are in an era of utter awe and discovery with the rapid advancement of our understanding of the natural sciences and with our exponential development of technology which serves as an indispensable aid to scientific inquiry.  Our technology has allowed us to discover a technology that is far more sophisticated than our own but also in a sense much more primitive (for example bacteria). I believe that any reflective thinker including Fr. Dewan (as we shall see) and reductive materialists like Dawkins have been astonished by twentieth century scientific discoveries regarding the cell.  I would argue that this astonishment carries over into discoveries in physics and cosmology despite the unimpressed reaction we witnessed from Fr. Dewan’s brief observations in such domains.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins argues that the existence of God is improbable.[62]  He bases this assertion on the idea that any being capable of designing complex life must itself be at least as complex. Dawkins compares this to Fred Hoyle’s probability calculations about the origin of life, claiming that invoking a divine creator does not resolve the problem of complexity but instead intensifies it. Dawkins writes, “However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.”[63] This analogy, borrowed from Fred Hoyle, compares the origin of life to the chance assembly of a Boeing 747 from a whirlwind in a junkyard. Dawkins applies it to God, arguing that such a being must be even more improbable than the universe he is invoked to explain.

Dawkins’s argument conflates two distinct categories: compositional complexity and functional intelligence. He assumes that if something creates complexity, it must itself be composed of even greater complexity. But this presupposes that creators must be material entities with parts, processes, and internal structures. Classical theism, however, maintains that God is immaterial, without parts, and therefore simple. God’s capacity to create is not the result of complexity but of immaterial, unified agency.

What is interesting is that by Dawkins’s own admission throughout many of his writings which deal with explaining how organized or specified complexity arises by an incremental and gradual process through natural selection, complexity is defined by the accumulation of parts in an intricate fashion that is highly unlikely to arise by chance alone.  Therefore, by Dawkins’s own understanding of complexity, God is not complex.[64] As we have already seen, God is simple in the strongest sense since God lacks any parts at all whether physical, temporal, spatial, or metaphysical. Moreover, no distinctions between property, essence and existence, actuality and potentiality, exist in God.  

In The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (1986) considers the possibility of God designing or creating the first replicating system before natural selection can take over, this is his response:

[A]ny God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as the DNA/protein machine must have been at least as complex and organized as that machine itself…To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.[65]

Dawkins’s objection assumes that the designer must be more complex than the effect being explained. However, this argument collapses once we consider that explanations do not require an explanation of the explanation. Demanding that we explain the designer before invoking a design inference leads to an infinite regress and undermines the possibility of any causal account.[66] Moreover, classical theism holds that God is not composed of parts or material components but is instead a metaphysically simple, necessary being. Unlike physical entities, God is not a composite and thus not “complex” in the sense Dawkins assumes. Ironically, while Dawkins rejects a supernatural designer as too complex, he admits that naturalistic origins must come from something simpler.[67]  This inconsistency reveals the flaw in his reasoning.

God is ontologically simpler than all contingent beings, even the most abstract. His objection is confused about demanding the origin of the designer to explain the design of a particular thing.  It is perfectly natural to want the explication of how something came about without having recourse to an explanation of an explanation. This would also lead to an infinite regress, if this reasoning would be applied to the scientific method we would never be able to have a reasonable explanation of anything.  The second problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that God necessitates an origin. Theism affirms God’s aseity. The doctrine of divine simplicity corroborates this affirmation alongside the implications that are derived from the KCA’s transcendent cause which support the first contention of divine simplicity. Dawkins is envisioning the possibility of created Gods as believed by Mormonism.  The KCA has also been offered as a refutation of such views including all temporal regresses of causes.[68]

Stephen Meyer, a philosopher of science, offers a robust response to Dawkins by employing abductive reasoning—a method used in the historical sciences to infer the best explanation from available evidence. He argues that intelligent agency is the only known cause of the kind of specified, information-rich structures found in living systems. In contrast, undirected material causes have repeatedly failed to generate such complexity. Meyer concludes that intelligence, or what philosophers call agent causation, stands as the only adequate explanation for the origin of life from non-living matter. Meyer writes:

The inability of genetic algorithms, ribozyme engineering, and prebiotic simulations to generate information without intelligence reinforced what I had discovered in my study of other origin-of-life theories.  Undirected materialistic causes have not demonstrated the capacity to generate significant amounts of specified information.  At the same time, conscious intelligence has repeatedly shown itself capable of producing such information. It follows that mind – conscious, rational intelligent agency – what philosophers call “agent causation,” now stands as the only cause known to be capable of generating large amounts of specified information starting from a nonliving state…If there are no other known causes- if there is only one known cause – of a given effect, then the presence of the effect points unambiguously back to the (uniquely adequate) cause.[69]

Since intelligence is the only known cause of specified information (at least starting from a non-biological source), the presence of specified information-rich sequences in even the simplest living systems points definitely to the past existence and activity of a designing intelligence. This provides an adequate response to Dawkins’s complaint and provides a more compelling explanation for the origin of life than some unknown naturalistic possibility which has not even demonstrated the capacity to produce the effect in question. 

Along these lines, it is worth noting Fr. Lawrence Dewan’s nuanced sympathy toward the design hypothesis as presented by Michael Behe, particularly in relation to the concept of “irreducible complexity” in his book Darwin’s Black Box.[70] In a chapter titled “The Importance of Substance” in Form and Being, Dewan discusses Behe’s argument across several pages. He appears to speak favorably of Behe’s inference to mind as an explanatory principle for such irreducibly complex structures. Dewan writes:

Behe shows that intelligent design need not be the only explanation for the way things are. It may be one of the explanations, together with evolution over centuries, etc.  He is also very careful to say that it can only be invoked when the evidence is right.[71]

Dewan continues by framing Behe’s proposal as a legitimate scientific development:

He then makes a very interesting move. He presents intelligent design as a new scientific response to certain definite givens. Behe sees the introduction into science of intelligent design as a theory as [now he quotes Behe:] ‘a useful tool for the advancement of science in an area that has been moribund for decades.’[72]

Dewan then contrasts Behe with the materialist physicist Steven Weinberg, whom he likens to a contemporary Pre-Socratic—a figure emblematic of philosophical materialism that, in Dewan’s view, is as enduring as poverty itself. Dewan clearly finds greater value in Behe’s work than in that of materialists like Weinberg.[73] In a separate article on the existence of God, Dewan references the well-known conversion of the late atheist philosopher Antony Flew, who became a deist in 2004.[74] Flew attributed his shift in belief to arguments such as Behe’s case for irreducible complexity and Stephen Meyer’s argument from the origin of biological information, along with the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the fine-tuning argument in physics. Given Dewan’s sympathy for Behe’s approach, it seems plausible that he would have also appreciated Meyer’s line of reasoning, which arguably provides a more robust account of intelligent, efficient causation.

It is striking that Dewan spoke appreciatively of the design hypothesis, a view often met with ridicule in academic and scientific circles since the publication of Darwin’s Black Box. Many critiques of Intelligent Design rely on ad hominem fallacies, a point Dewan himself rightly recognizes,[75] though he also acknowledges that some criticisms are substantive.

This raises an intriguing question: might Dewan’s receptivity to Behe’s argument reflect a kind of confirmatory bias grounded in Thomistic thought? Behe’s claims could be said to align closely with Aquinas’s Fifth Way—the argument from final causality. Dewan appears to make this connection when he writes: “I will say something about the current interest in the Fifth Way, the source of finality, intelligibility, in nature…There is much argument about the validity of the Fifth Way type of proof [as opposed to the others].”[76] While some Thomists have resisted Intelligent Design, dismissing it as mechanistic and overly similar to Darwinism, Dewan recognizes that it contains a deeply teleological dimension. This teleology distinguishes it from the standard mechanistic framework of Neo-Darwinism.

            Nonetheless, Dewan approaches Big Bang cosmology with notable skepticism, despite its widespread acceptance among physicists and the increasing evidence supporting it. His reservation likely stems from its association with philosophical views contrary to Aquinas’s. Aquinas believed that reason alone could not definitively establish a beginning in time, whereas Bonaventure defended the finitude of the past. Dewan may have hesitated to endorse a cosmological theory that seemed to support Bonaventure’s position. Whatever the case may be, it is something worth pondering.

Conclusion: Divine Simplicity as the Ground of Complexity

We are left with a fundamental question: why is God a more coherent and adequate guarantor of complexity than purely physicalist or naturalistic explanations? The answer lies in the doctrine of divine simplicity. It is from God’s simplicity that all complexity and existence ultimately derive their origin and grounding. God, as pure act and mind without parts or composition, stands as the transcendent cause of the universe, who is responsible not only for its coming into being but also for its continued intelligibility.

            This ultimate simplicity is not bound by time, space, or matter; rather, these realities exist because of God, not within Him. The Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) points convincingly in this direction, supported by both philosophical reflection and contemporary scientific evidence. What was once a medieval argument has gained renewed force through developments in cosmology and information theory. The conclusion it leads us to is not a blind force or impersonal mechanism, but a personal, rational mind, one that, though simple in essence, is capable of producing extraordinary layers of specified complexity. Nature on its own, by contrast, lacks the causal ability to account for such specified information.

            Through God’s simplicity, the universe, governed by finely tuned physical laws, was brought into being ex nihilo. These laws provide the necessary conditions for the emergence of life and evolutionary development, but they themselves depend on the existence of intelligibility and order. Without the grounding reality of divine simplicity, neither the laws of nature, the constants of physics, nor the origin of biological information would be possible. The very possibility of evolution presupposes a prior intelligibility and ordering principle.

            God’s simplicity, then, is not an abstract theological postulate but the primary ontological reality from which all else flows. As Keith Ward puts it: “[God] is the conceiver of all possible states and the actualizer of some.”[77]  

[1] The doctrine of divine simplicity is also known as God’s simplicity. I will use these two terms interchangeably.

[2] This inquiry aligns with the intent of the symposium in honor of Fr. Lawrence Dewan (1932-2015), The Philosophy of Lawrence Dewan: Metaphysics and Ethics (November 5-7, 2015). As Professor Eduardo Andújar Ventura (died February 18, 2019), the symposium’s organizer, explained: “The specific theme of the Metaphysics and Ethics symposium is intended in part to elicit thinking on the personal contribution of Father Lawrence Dewan to both areas of philosophical research. This forum invites researchers to present papers related to the focus of the Symposium or subjects with a link to the main theme.” I dedicate this paper to both Fr. Dewan and Professor Andújar.

[3] See Lawrence Dewan, “Saint Thomas, Alvin Plantinga and the Divine Simplicity,” Modern Schoolman 66, 2 (1989): 141-151.

[4] See Lawrence Dewan, “Big Bang, If There Was One, Was No Big Deal,” The New York Times, May 7th, 1990. The article can be found here online: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/27/weekinreview/l-big-bang-if-there-was-one-was-no-big-deal-707190.html.

[5] Lawrence Dewan, “The Existence of God: Can It Be Demonstrated?”  Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2012): 731-756. 

[6] See Lawrence Dewan, Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006).

[7] Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2003), 92. See Augustine, De trinitate VI, 7-8; Anselm, Monologion XVII.

[8] Jay Richards, The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Simplicity and Immutability (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 213.

[9] Richards refers to divine simplicity as the first-of-all the divine attributes treated by St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologiae.

[10] Stump, Aquinas, 92.

[11] Stump suggests that Aquinas’s understanding of the doctrine of simplicity can be explained through three specific theses.  See Stump, Aquinas, 96.

[12] Eleonore Stump Divine Simplicity in Aquinas Ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 135.

[13] Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, in Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera Omnia Iussu Leonis XIII. Vols.

4-12 of 50 vols. edited by the Leonine Commission. Rome: 1882-, translated by the English Dominican Fathers as Summa Theologica. 3 vols, New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1947.

[14] Stump, Aquinas, 96.

[15] Stump, Aquinas, 96.

[16] Stump, Aquinas, 97.

[17] Stump, Aquinas, 97.

[18] Stump, Aquinas, 494n20.

[19] Stump, Aquinas, 98.

[20] See, Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 1980). Ironically, although quite appropriately, Plantinga uses divine simplicity as understood by the first contention as a defense against Dawkins’s argumentation against God’s existence, arguing for a complex God. See section 6.

[21] Dewan, “Aquinas, Plantinga on Divine Simplicity,” 141.

[22] Dewan, “Aquinas, Plantinga on Divine Simplicity,” 143.

[23] Dewan, “Aquinas, Plantinga on Divine Simplicity,” 144.

[24] Dewan, “Aquinas, Plantinga on Divine Simplicity,” 144-145.

[25] Dewan, “Aquinas, Plantinga on Divine Simplicity,” 145.

[26] See Peter Weigel, Aquinas on Simplicity: An Investigation into the Foundations of his Philosophical Theology (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang Publishers, 2008).

[27] James Dolezal, God Without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 2.

[28] William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argument: From Plato to Leibniz (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 1980), 283.

[29] Lawrence Dewan “Creation, Metaphysics and Cosmology” in Religion and the Challenge of Science, eds. William Sweet and Richard Feist (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), 91

[30] See Stephen J. Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1999).

[31] See for instance, Richard Dawkins, A River Out of Eden (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 95. Taken from a letter by Darwin to the Botanist Asa Gray, May 22, 1860.

[32] Robert John Russell, Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), 21, 40.

[33] Lawrence Dewan, “Big Bang, If There Was One, Was No Big Deal,” New York Times, May 7^th, 1990. See also the response by Richard H. Tourin, “On Big Bang, Einstein Outranks Aristotle,” New York Times, May 27^th, 1990.

[34] Alexander Vilenkin “The Beginning of the Universe” Volume 1, Issue 4 Inference: International Review of Science, 2015. Alexander Vilenkin does not affirm that the finitude of the past entails the existence of God. Moreover, based on his writings, he appears not to have engaged deeply with the Kalam Cosmological Argument. While he acknowledges the finitude of the universe, he rejects the first premise of the KCA—namely, that everything that begins to exist has a cause—on what he considers scientific grounds.

[35] See Augustine, Confessions, XI, 14, 17.  Augustine poses in this section, the question of time: “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; but if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not.”

[36] In his article “Creation, Metaphysics and Cosmology,” Fr. Lawrence Dewan references Gerhard May’s critique of using certain biblical texts—such as Genesis 2:4 and 2 Maccabees 7:28—to support the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. May argues that this concept is a post-biblical development. Philosopher Paul Copan responds to this claim by offering a cumulative case for the biblical foundation of creatio ex nihilo. He highlights, for instance, the distinctive use of the Hebrew verb bara (“to create”) in Genesis 1:1, which, in context, points toward creation from nothing. Copan also emphasizes the consistent Creator-creature distinction throughout the Old Testament, a theme carried into the New Testament. This distinction supports the notion of God’s eternal and immutable nature, in contrast to the contingent and finite nature of the created order—a position notably affirmed by John Philoponus.

[37] Copan, Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics, 2004), 30.

[38] The prevailing philosophic (pre-scientific) view from the time of the pre-Socratic materialists up until as recent as the early 20^th Century modern science was that the universe was without a beginning (infinite in the past).

[39] Richard Sorabji, “Infinity and Creation” in Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science, Second Edition ed. Richard Sorabji (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2010), 208.

[40] Richard Sorabji, “Infinity and Creation”, 210.

[41] David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science. Los Angeles: UCLA, 1986, 38-39.

[42] Richard Sorabji, “John Philoponus” in Philoponus, 55; in Physica 582, 19-583, 12. It is worth pointing out here that the concept of eternity applies strictly to time while infinity can be applied to both space and time.  Both are important to our discussion.  The concept of time is inevitably correlated to spatiality. Just as Philoponus denied the possibility of an eternal or infinite past, he also denied that space was infinite.

[43] Richard Sorabji, “Infinity and Creation” in Philoponus, 211.

[44] Richard Sorabji, “Infinity and Creation” in Philoponus, 213; Philoponus in Physica 3.6, 206a 14-23; 206b13.

[45] Richard Sorabji, “Infinity and Creation” in Philoponus, 213; Philoponus in Physica 3.5, 204b9; 6.2, 233a22; 6.7, 238a33; 8.8, 263a6; b4; b9; 265a20; Philoponus in De Caelo 1.5, 272a3;29; 3.2, 300b5; Philoponus in Metaphysica 2.2, 994b30; Philoponus in Analytica posteriora 1.3, 7.2b11; 1.22, 82b39; 83b6. 

[46] Richard Sorabji, “Infinity and Creation” in Philoponus, 213.

[47] Richard Sorabji, “Infinity and Creation” in Philoponus, 213.

[48] Richard Sorabji, “Infinity and Creation” in Philoponus, 213.

[49] This early argument against an actual infinite serves as a prototype for later formulations and remains relevant today as a philosophical foundation for the second premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, as will be explored below.

[50] A second philosophical argument against an actual infinite affirms that while infinite sets may be conceptually coherent, they cannot be formed by successive addition. This argument against a temporally infinite past has been refined in contemporary philosophy and is frequently employed in defense of the second premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

[51] See for further details William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, 102-110. Here Craig explains why you cannot form an actual infinite by successive addition which mirrors this second argument of Philoponus. 

[52] Richard Sorabji, “Infinity and Creation” in Philoponus, 213.

[53] William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, 63. The warrant I offer for the first two premises of the argument is necessarily brief compared to the more extensive treatments found in the work of William Lane Craig and other proponents of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. My aim here is to provide a concise outline of the strongest reasons supporting these premises, drawing on the foundational insights of John Philoponus in the sixth century. A comprehensive engagement with all objections and counterarguments lies beyond the scope and purpose of this paper.

[54] See Frank H. Shu, “Friedmann-Lemaitre Models,” Encyclopaedia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/139301/cosmology/27595/Friedmann-Lemaitre-models Last Updated: March 20, 2013; and Helge, Kragh, Robert, W. Smith Who Discovered the Expanding Universe? History of Science, vol. 41, pp.145-148, 2003; Edwin Hubble, “A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 15 (1929): 168-73; Arvind, Borde, Alan, Guth, and Alexander, Vilenkin, “Inflationary spacetimes are not past-complete,” Physical Review Letters, vol. 90, no. 15 (2003): 151301-1—151301-4.

[55] A compelling illustration of the incoherence of an actual infinite in reality is provided by David Hilbert’s thought experiment known as Hilbert’s Hotel. It begins with a hotel of finitely many rooms, all occupied. In this case, a new guest must be turned away due to lack of vacancy. However, if the hotel is reimagined as having an infinite number of rooms—all of which are also occupied—a new guest can still be accommodated by moving the occupant of room 1 to room 2, room 2 to room 3, and so on, ad infinitum. The first room then becomes available. Stranger still, if an infinite number of new guests arrive, the manager can shift each current guest from room n to room 2n, thereby vacating all the odd-numbered rooms for the new arrivals. Thus, the hotel, despite being full, can accommodate an infinite number of new guests and still remain full—seemingly violating common sense. The absurdity becomes even more pronounced when all guests in odd-numbered rooms check out. Although an infinite number of guests have departed, an infinite number still remain—revealing an apparent contradiction in the arithmetic of actual infinites applied to the real world. It is important to distinguish these paradoxes from the legitimate use of infinity in mathematical contexts, such as Georg Cantor’s set theory, where infinity operates as a well-defined and internally consistent concept. Craig indicates in The Kalam Cosmological Argument: “[m]odern set theory, as a legacy of Cantor, is thus exclusively concerned with the actual as opposed to the potential infinite.”  William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2000), 67.

Recall our earlier distinction: a potential infinite is an “extendible finitude,” lacking a fixed totality, whereas an actual infinite involves a completed, determinate whole. Nevertheless, Hilbert’s Hotel and similar examples are meant to demonstrate the incoherence that arises when the actual infinite is applied to space and time—that is, to the physical world. Hilbert himself underscores this point in his essay On the Infinite, where he writes: “We have already seen that the infinite is nowhere to be found in reality, no matter what experiences, observations, and knowledge are appealed to.  Can thought about things be so much different from things? Can thought be so far removed from reality? Rather it is not clear that, when we think that we have encountered the infinite in some real sense, we have merely been seduced into thinking so by the fact that we often encounter extremely large and extremely small dimensions in reality? It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought…The role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea.”  David Hilbert, “On the Infinite,” in Philosophy of Mathematics, ed. Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 91. 

[56] For a representative critique of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, see Richard Swinburne’s objection concerning the coherence of an actual infinite existing in time. William Lane Craig offers a detailed response, which can be accessed online: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/swinburne-on-the-kalam-cosmological-argument.

[57] A central argument against the possibility of an infinite temporal regress is the impossibility of forming an actual infinite by successive addition. That is, one cannot begin at a point and reach infinity simply by adding members, nor can one count down from an infinite past to reach the present. This dilemma is often described as the problem of traversing the infinite. A useful illustration of this is the Tristram Shandy Paradox, developed by William Lane Craig. In this thought experiment, Tristram Shandy writes his autobiography so slowly that it takes him one year to record a single day of his life. As Paul Copan and William Lane Craig explain in Creation out of Nothing, the absurdity becomes clear when we realize: “If Tristram Shandy would have finished his book by today, then he would have finished it yesterday.”1 Applied to cosmology, this paradox suggests that if the universe had no beginning, then the present moment should never have arrived—but plainly, it has. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that the temporal series of past events is not infinite. Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 216.

[58] See Nowacki, The Kalam Cosmological Argument for God (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), 198-231.

[59] So, given that the KCA is a valid argument and sound argument given the assumption that the two premises are more plausible than their denial we have an argument which points to a transcendent cause.

[60] Stump, Aquinas, 96.

[61] Peter Weigel, Aquinas on Simplicity: An Investigation into the Foundations of his Philosophical Theology (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang Publishers, 2008), 38.

[62] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York, NY: Haughton, 2006), 113-159.

[63] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 114.

[64] See Alvin Plantinga, “The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad Absurdism” Books & Culture: A Christian Review, March/April 2007.  For his refutation of God being complex and other arguments. Plantinga offers a defense of divine simplicity, stating:

Not much. First, is God complex? According to much classical theology (Thomas Aquinas, for example) God is simple, and simple in a very strong sense, so that in him there is no distinction of thing and property, actuality and potentiality, essence and existence, and the like. Some of the discussions of divine simplicity get pretty complicated, not to say arcane.3 (It isn’t only Catholic theology that declares God simple; according to the Belgic Confession, a splendid expression of Reformed Christianity, God is “a single and simple spiritual being.”) So first, according to classical theology, God is simple, not complex.4 More remarkable, perhaps, is that according to Dawkins’s own definition of complexity, God is not complex. According to his definition (set out in The Blind Watchmaker), something is complex if it has parts that are “arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone.” But of course God is a spirit, not a material object at all, and hence has no parts.5 A fortiori (as philosophers like to say) God doesn’t have parts arranged in ways unlikely to have arisen by chance. Therefore, given the definition of complexity Dawkins himself proposes, God is not complex.

See also Richard Swinburne’s response to Dawkins found here: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/pdf_files/Responses%20to%20Controversies/Response%20to%20Dawkins%27%20The%20God%20Delusion%20(revised)_copy(1).pdf 

[65] Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (W. W. Norton & Co: New York NY, 1986), 141.

[66] For a portrayal of the challenges faced by proponents of Intelligent Design within academic and scientific institutions, see the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. In the film, Richard Dawkins is interviewed by Ben Stein and concedes that intelligent design might, in principle, be the result of extraterrestrial life—specifically, aliens who left a signature in the cell. However, Dawkins later clarified that these aliens would themselves have arisen through a process akin to Darwinian evolution, involving natural selection acting on random mutations. The problem with this response is that it merely postpones the origin of life question without offering a positive explanation. It shifts the mystery elsewhere, failing to account for the ultimate source of the design or complexity observed.

[67] This reiterates the familiar objection that God, as a designer, must be at least as complex as the first replicating system. As previously discussed, this objection collapses when considered in light of divine simplicity and the philosophical implications of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Even so, it is not necessarily problematic if a designer were more complex. Consider the example of a computer programmer writing sophisticated code, an engineer designing functionally integrated systems, or an author composing a complex novel—each case involves a more complex agent bringing about a structured and purposeful result.

[68] See Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, “Craftsman or Creator? An Examination of the Mormon Doctrine of Creation and a Defense of Creation ex nihilo” in The New Mormon Challenge, ed. Francis J. Beckwith et al. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), 95-152.

[69] Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 341. Since intelligence is the only known cause of specified information (at least starting from a non-biological source), the presence of specified information-rich sequences in even the simplest living systems points definitely to the past existence and activity of a designing intelligence.

[70] See Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York, NY: Free Press, 1996).

[71] Dewan, Form and Being, 107.

[72] Dewan, Form and Being, 107.

[73] Dewan, Form and Being, 105-108.

[74] Lawrence Dewan, “The Existence of God: Can It Be Demonstrated?,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2012): 753-754.  For an account of Antony Flew’s shift from atheism to deism, as well as a rebuttal to ad hominem claims that his change of mind was due to senility, see Antony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2008).

[75] Dewan, Form and Being, 108n30.

[76] Lawrence Dewan, “The Existence of God: Can It Be Demonstrated?,” 754

[77] Keith Ward, “God as the ultimate informational principle” in Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics edited by Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 292.  I take the “consciousness” referred to by Ward to be identical with God, whose existence is identical with His essence in accordance with the doctrine of divine simplicity.