Divine simplicity requires that God's essence just is God's existence, but Scotus argued this obliterates the formal distinction between divine attributes, rendering God's nature unintelligible.

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Scotus(The philosopher whose reasoning is being analyzed): A medieval philosopher (John Duns Scotus, 1266-1308) known for his detailed logical arguments about God, free will, and how things exist.
divine attributes(as used in philosophy of religion): Qualities or characteristics traditionally said to belong to God, such as being all-knowing, all-powerful, or loving.
divine simplicity(Central to both Malebranche's theodicy and his epistemology): A divine attribute functioning as a side constraint on God's actions, requiring God to act through simple means.
essence(Medieval realist metaphysics): The defining nature of a species, held by some to be distinct from and capable of surviving the destruction of all individual members of that species
existence(Kant's analysis in the Critique of Pure Reason as applied to the ontological argument): Not a real predicate or positive determination; it does not add to or enlarge the concept of a subject.
formal distinction(Scotus's account of the relationship between nature and haecceity in a particular): A distinction between inseparable features that are nonetheless not identical — neither really distinct nor merely conceptually distinct
unintelligible(as describing what would happen to Baumgarten's theory without this distinction): Impossible to understand or make sense of; completely unclear or contradictory.

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