A Perfectly Simple God and Our Complicated Lives

One important divine attribute Saint Anselm examines and treats is that of simplicity. His treatment brings out some surprising features of simplicity itself which escape the frameworks of the logic of created being, providing us a fuller, albeit still very partial, understanding of the true nature of that attribute. A deep problem can then arise for the created human being in the course of such speculations and investigations: How can a complex, complicated, composite created being more closely approach a perfectly simple divine being? In both our thought and in our practice, it seems that our attempts to approach God simply introduce even more complexity into things. My paper addresses that problem. The first section of the paper presents five short Anselmian lessons about the divine attribute of simplicity. The second section then frames and explores the problem. The third and final section provides an Anselmian resolution to the problem.