Does Divine Simplicity Contradict the Trinity?

Dr. Craig discusses Divine Simplicity with Ryan Mullins and Cameron Bertuzzi.

QUESTIONER: Here’s a question from Psuedo Nym (a very clever name). Isn't the elephant in the room is the “Mystery of the Trinity?” [Maybe English isn't their first language] Hows possible to have this Mystery (assuming biblical) explaining they're not part of God?

DR. CRAIG: What I think is the important point to make here, and this is really, really striking, is that it has been in the name of divine simplicity that Arians (like Eunomius), Muslims (like Ibn Sina), and Jews (like Maimonides) all rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of simplicity has been a weapon in the hands of anti-trinitarians against orthodox trinitarian theology because if God is tripersonal then nothing could be more obvious than the fact that he's not simple – that he is a complex being.

QUESTIONER 2: What if Nicholas Cusa walked in the room and he's like, “Dr. Craig, I disagree. Because God is simple, we know that the Trinity . . . the difference between Muslims who deny the Trinity and Christians who affirm the Trinity just completely disappears.” What would you respond to Nicholas Cusa?

DR. CRAIG: I don't understand how you can have three persons in one being without there being some element of complexity in it. They don't need to be thought of as parts, as you said, but there clearly has to be differentiation. Thomas's doctrine of the Trinity to try to reconcile it with divine simplicity is just a hopeless muddle, I think. He fails to get really robust persons in his view of the Trinity, and his positing real relations within God is explicitly contradictory to his doctrine of simplicity which would say there are no real relations in God. So even given Thomistic metaphysics and Thomistic presuppositions, I don't think anybody's been able to reconcile Thomas's doctrine of divine simplicity with his own doctrine of the Trinity, much less a more robust doctrine.