Plotinus: On the Unity and Simplicity of God

The questions as regards to the divine nature have traditionally been as much significant as the existence of God and thus, in the philosophical theology, it has been a matter of serious debate whether God has a nature distinct from his bare existence or has properties distinct from his bare self. At the bedrock of the traditional idea that God does not own a nature other than his existence or that he has no properties distinct from his bare self is the intuition of the divine simplicity which can be said to have much indebted to Plotinus’s doctrine of the One. In this article, I give a descriptive as well as a critical account of Plotinus’s view of the One, which has been a major source of inspiration for the doctrine of divine simplicity developed in different theistic traditions. Thus I address some ontological, epistemological and semantic problems generated by the idea of God conceived as ‘simple’. The article also provides a brief assessment of the question as to whether a Plotinian understanding of the One can be defended in conjunction with a theistic idea of God.