Divine simplicity as symmetric parthood

Abstract Taken at face value, the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) says that God lacks proper parts, but the doctrine is also often formulated as a thesis identifying God with all his parts. The two formulations are not generally equivalent – on some plausible mereological theories, something can lack proper parts by being a part of all its (possibly distinct) parts. Thus, the DDS can be alternatively formulated as a thesis saying that God is part of all his parts – call this the symmetry formulation. The symmetry formulation is viable as a thesis about God’s relation to his attributes, because instantiation can plausibly be modelled as parthood. Moreover, the symmetry formulation retains the usual motivations for divine simplicity coming from the doctrines of aseity, transcendence, immutability, and unity. The symmetry formulation also addresses common objections to divine simplicity regarding distinctness in God’s attributes and those coming from modal collapse arguments.