A guest post from a friend, NoblemanPH, a student of IRBS. The reader may read this article in Academia.

DIVINE SIMPLICITY AND THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

Having established the definition, biblical basis, and metaphysical architecture of divine simplicity, we now turn to its essential role in shaping a coherent and orthodox doctrine of God. The neglect of divine simplicity in modern theology has led to significant theological errors, suggesting a diminished view of God in which the divine mystery is reduced to fit within finite human categories. To remedy this, the doctrine of divine simplicity must be recovered not only as an isolated theological speculation but as the foundational grammar governing all accurate predication about God.

The doctrine of divine simplicity guides our theological discourse on the Trinity. To be more specific, it's only by affirming that God is simple that we can maintain the absolute unity and singularity of the Godhead while also confessing the real distinctions of the three Persons. While the doctrine is in no way trying to solve the perplexing mystery of the triunity of God, divine simplicity nevertheless fends us "not to fancy him to be what he is not". Since God is simple in being, the unity of God's essence is preserved. Contra tri-theism, the three persons of the Godhead are not 'three Gods,' but the three persons consubstantially and undividedly share the one divine essence of divinity. Against any form of modalism, divine simplicity asserts the real distinctions of the three persons, insisting that the distinctions lie not in God's absolute essence, but in their relations of origin: The Father in paternity, the Son in filiation, and the Spirit in procession.1 The rise of today's social trinitarianism makes the doctrine of divine simplicity even more significant. Modern theologians in broad evangelicals and even in the broad Reformed faith who would assert that the persons in the Godhead have different consciousness, that they have distinct centers of willing2, that to properly distinguished the persons there must be a hierarchy of authorities in the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit3, and that eternal subordination especially of the Son to the Father must exist to account for the real distinctions of the persons4 are all erroneous and heading in the wrong direction. This language is clearly a reconstruction of classical Trinitarianism and an indication of their departure from the doctrine of divine simplicity. By grounding the doctrine of the Trinity on the simplicity of God, it must be asserted that God in His most simple being has one single divine essence, one nature, one center of consciousness, one will, one authority, and power that is shared undividedly by the three persons. "As each person has the complete divine essence, we confessed that each is God unqualifiedly. The essence is not divided among them."5 On the other hand, the three Persons are really distinct or 'opposed' to each other only in so far as "several peculiar relative properties" or a distinction from relative to relative is concerned.6

Divine simplicity also provides the Christian with a proper foundation for how to understand and talk about the plurality of God's attributes. If God is simple, how do we give an account of the seemingly diverse and distinct attributes of God found in Scripture? Grounding themselves in the doctrine of divine simplicity, Classical theists would assert that God's attributes are identical to His essence. As Dolezal articulates, "God is the most absolute reason and explanation for himself. He is most absolute in every one of his intrinsic attributes because every one of those attributes is identical with the divine nature, which is ipsum esse subsistens."7 Since God is the most simple, uncompounded, and undivided being, His attributes do not simply inhere in Him (as accidents inhere in the substance), nor does God possess His attributes as a bundle of distinct properties. In Him, there is no real distinction between His essence and his attributes. God is goodness itself, wisdom itself, power itself, etc., because all of these attributes are identical in virtue of His divinity. The creatures, because they are finite and limited, will perceive a conceptual distinction of God's attributes in their mind. Still, it does not mean that there are metaphysical distinctions in the infinite God. In other words, in God's divine showing, in the modes of manifestation and in the effects of His work in reality, we perceived distinctions. But those distinctions are a reflection not of composition in God, but of the infinite perfection of His simple essence overflowing into the created realm. Just as the simple white light is refracted into different spectral colors in the human eyes, the perceived diversity of attributes testifies to the richness of the one, undivided source.8

Finally, the doctrine of divine simplicity serves as a crucial guardrail for properly articulating the Creator-creature distinction. In the attempt to render God more 'personal' and 'relatable', some modern theologies have compromised His transcendence, depicting a deity engaged in a genuine give-and-take relationship with His creatures. This approach of theistic mutualism9 clearly diminishes the absoluteness and perfection of God. As one of its results, the incommunicable attributes of God, such as divine aseity, eternality, impassibility, immutability10, and others, which should serve as the bedrock of our predication and contemplation of the infinite and incomprehensible God, have currently succumbed to novel and erroneous revision. Recovering the doctrine of divine simplicity not only rectifies these current errors but also leads us back to contemplate the God who "alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see." (1 Timothy 6:16 NASB95) To seal it with the words of Herman Bavinck:

God's simplicity is the end result of ascribing to God all the perfections of creatures to the ultimate divine degree. By describing God as "utterly simple essence," we state that he is the perfect and infinite fullness of being, an "unbounded ocean of being…In describing God as 'utterly simple essence,'…Christian theology above all maintains that God has a distinct and infinite life of his own within himself…the being ascribed to God in theology is a unique, particular being distinct from that of the world. It describes God not as a being with which we cannot make any association other than that it is, but as someone who is all being, the absolute fullness of being.11

CONCLUSION

Divine simplicity is a biblically grounded, metaphysically coherent, and theologically indispensable doctrine. As professed historically by the Church, affirming that God is a simple being provides the foundational grammar that safeguards the Christian from the novel revision that modern theology purports. To confess that God is without parts or composition is to maintain that He is the source of all things, dependent on nothing, and glorious beyond all creaturely language. Therefore, the call to recover and confess this doctrine is a call to return to a vision of God that is as majestically simple as it is profoundly biblical—a vision essential for faithful worship, sound doctrine, and all careful, reverent God-talk.

Footnotes

  1. For a good introduction on the doctrine of the Trinity see Gilles Emery, The Trinity: An Introduction To Catholic Doctrine On The Triune God, Thomistic Ressourcement Series (Washington, D.C: Catholic University of America Press, 2012). ↩

  2. "The central commitment of social trinitarianism is that in God there are three distinct centers of self-consciousness, each with its proper intellect and will. The central commitment of anti social trinitarianism is that there is only one God, whose unicity of intellect and will is not compromised by the diversity of persons. Social trinitarianism threatens to veer into tritheism; anti social trinitarianism is in danger of lapsing into unitarianism." James Porter Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations For A Christian Worldview, 2nd edition. (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2017), kindle edition, loc 16254. ↩

  3. "An authority-submission structure marks the very nature of the eternal Being of the one who is three. In this authority-submission structure, the three Persons understand the rightful place each has. The Father possesses the place of supreme authority, and the Son is the eternal Son of the eternal Father. As such, the Son submits to the Father just as the Father, as eternal Father of the eternal Son, exercises authority over the Son. And the Spirit submits to both the Father and the Son. This hierarchical structure of authority exists in the eternal Godhead even though it is also eternally true that each Person is fully equal to each other in their commonly possessed essence." Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2009), kindle edition loc 202. ↩

  4. "But if we do not have economic subordination, then there is no inherent difference in the way the three persons relate to one another, and consequently we do not have the three distinct persons existing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for all eternity. For example, if the Son is not eternally subordinate to the Father in role, then the Father is not eternally 'Father' and the Son is not eternally 'Son.' This would mean that the Trinity has not eternally existed." Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction To Biblical Doctrine (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), kindle edition loc 6578. ↩

  5. Dolezal, All That Is In God, 117 emphasis added. ↩

  6. For the articulation of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, this massive work on classical trinitarianism is certainly helpful: Matthew Barrett, ed., On Classical Trinitarianism: Retrieving The Nicene Doctrine Of The Triune God (Downers Grove, Il: IVP Academic, 2024). ↩

  7. James E. Dolezal, God Without Parts: Divine Simplicity And The Metaphysics of God's Absoluteness (Eugene, Or: Pickwick Publications, 2011), kindle edition loc 4847 first emphasis mine. ↩

  8. See also Bavinck under Divine Simplicity; Essence and Attributes: Herman Bavinck, "Reformed Dogmatics God and Creation," trans. John Vriend, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 2:kindle edition loc 2917. ↩

  9. Dolezal, All That Is In God, 1–8. ↩

  10. John Frame, a Reformed theologian, by either neglecting or rejecting the doctrine of divine simplicity, has departed from the classical understanding of divine eternality and immutability: "… as an agent in history, God himself changes. On Monday, he wants something to happen, and on Tuesday, something else. He is grieved one day, pleased the next. In my view, anthropomorphic is too weak a description of these narratives. In these accounts, God is not merely like an agent in time. He really is in time, changing as others change." John M. Frame, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2013), kindle edition loc 10482. ↩

  11. Bavinck, "Reformed Dogmatics," 2:kindle edition loc 4690–4704. ↩