Is God's Essence His Existence?

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

INTERVIEWER: Here's what Augustus Strong says. He says, “The nominalistic notion that God is a being of absolute simplicity, and that in his nature there is no internal distinction of qualities or powers, tends directly to pantheism; denies all reality to the divine perfections; or, if these in any sense still exist, precludes all knowledge of them on the part of finite beings. To say that knowledge and power, eternity and holiness, are identical with the essence of God and with each other, is to deny that we can know God at all.” Bill, do you think that is right?

DR. CRAIG: I think the conclusion is right, though I think the formulation is not quite so good. One of the aspects of the Thomistic doctrine of divine simplicity that Ryan didn't mention is the claim that God's essence just is his existence – that God's essence is the very act of being. But the act of being, since it has no properties, is not something that is conceivable. It cannot be grasped by the human intellect. So if God has no essential properties (as Ryan explained), if his essence just is the pure act of being which is inconceivable, then it means, as Strong says, we literally have no knowledge of God. We have no idea what we're talking about. This leads to a concept of God, I think, that is more akin to the Absolute of Hinduism or certain forms of Buddhism which is beyond all conception, beyond all distinctions, and can be grasped only in mystical experience. And that, of course, as I say, is positively anti-biblical because the teaching of the Bible is that God has revealed to us a good deal of information of what he's like and what some of his essential properties are.