Études maritainiennes / Maritain Studies, Vol. XXXII, 2016, pp. 137-154 Scott Ventureyra 137 God’s Simplicity, Evolution and the Origin of Embodied Human Consciousness Scott Ventureyra 1. Introduction In this paper, I will argue that the best explanation for the origin of embodied human consciousness is grounded in God as understood through the doctrine of divine simplicity. First, I will present a modern expression of Aquinas’ understanding of divine simplicity. I will focus on one of Aquinas’ main contentions, namely, the impossibility that God possesses any spatial or temporal parts. Second, I will offer a modern version of a cosmological argument that will fortify the doctrine of divine simplicity with respect to the implied transcendent cause. Third, for embodied consciousness to arise, given modern science, it must arise through an evolutionary process of some sort. I will take a theistic evolutionary approach. Such an understanding will be explored while providing a connection to Jacques Maritain’s view of human evolution as expressed in his sixth chapter of Untrammeled Approaches titled “Toward a Thomist Idea of Evolution.” 1 From there I will tie the main three threads of this paper together. 2. The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity According to Aquinas Although both Augustine and Anselm provided their own formulations, 2 Thomas Aquinas was the first to expound a rigorous defense of the doctrine of divine 1 See Jacques Maritain, “Toward a Thomist Idea of Evolution,” in Untrammeled Approaches, tr. by Bernard Doering (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), pp. 85-131. 2 See Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 92.