What About Avicenna's Defense of Divine Simplicity?

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

QUESTION: Here's a question from The Champ: Any thoughts on Avicenna's defense of divine simplicity?

DR. CRAIG: I've worked on that a little bit because I wanted to trace the history of the evolution of this doctrine, and I have a real interest in medieval Muslim philosophy. What you discover is that the roots of the doctrine of divine simplicity do not lie in the Bible. They lie in Plotinus who was a neo-Platonic Alexandrian philosopher who then exerted enormous influence on the history of Western philosophy; probably only after Aristotle and Plato would Plotinus come in terms of his influence. When the writings of Aristotle were lost in the Western World, they were preserved in the Arabic Muslim world. But they thought that the works of Plotinus were written by Aristotle. They didn't make a differentiation. So in medieval Arabic philosophy you have this strange amalgam of Aristotle with Plotinian neo-Platonism. What was characteristic of this doctrine was a very strong commitment to divine simplicity. And Aquinas read and profited from his reading of Avicenna, and Avicenna exerted a great influence on him. He even quotes him by name. So the roots of this go back through medieval Islamic philosophy. I'm proud to say that the great champion of the Kalam cosmological argument, al-Ghazali, was adamantly opposed to this doctrine and to Avicenna’s formulation and defense of the doctrine of divine simplicity.