Refuting the Modal Collapse Objection against Divine Simplicity

"The traditional categories used to distinguish the necessity of God’s existence from the necessity of creation and salvation are absolute and hypothetical necessity....scholastics commonly understood a thing as absolutely necessary when its contrary involves a contradiction, considered in itself. For example, all geometrical truths are absolutely necessary...Not so with things that are hypothetically necessary. In contrast, for many scholastics, a thing is merely hypothetically necessary when its contrary involves no contradiction, considered in itself, but the contrary of which becomes contradictory with the addition of a hypothesis or condition that is not essential or intrinsic....In light of this distinction, we can see why the absolute necessity of God’s act entailed by God’s simplicity does not make the hypothetical necessity of creation (or salvation, and so forth) absolutely necessary. For although God wills to create, and God’s will is identical with God’s essence, and God’s essence is absolutely necessary, creation is not, and indeed could not, be absolutely necessary unless it were self-existent since, despite its absolutely necessary conditions, the contrary of its existence involves no contradiction, considered in itself. Precisely because creation is necessary in virtue of some extrinsic condition, precisely because the essence of creation does not involve existence, can no strength or number of necessitating conditions make creation absolutely necessary." (Daniel J. Pedersen and Christopher Lilley, "Divine Simplicity, God’s Freedom, and the Supposed Problem of Modal Collapse", Journal of Reformed Theology, Vol. 16 [2022], pgs. 131-133)