Jacob Huls

Ryan Mullins and Joseph Schmid have recently advanced what they dub the “aloneness argument” against divine simplicity. Their argument assumes both that God is omniscient and is free not to create, and they deduce from these (and some other allegedly plausible premises) that divine simplicity is false. In this paper, I respond to their argument. I begin by summarizing a recent characterization of divine simplicity proffered by Eleonore Stump, and then I explain Mullins’s and Schmid’s aloneness argument against divine simplicity. In the next section, I argue that one of the premises of the aloneness argument is plausibly false if divine simplicity is true, and so the aloneness argument faces a dire dialectical issue. Finally, I answer some potential criticisms of my response.