1. Divine Simplicity Recap

Simple: Not made of parts; depends on nothing else to be what it is.

Complex: made of parts; depends on their combination and unity of those parts to exist.

Part: anything in a subject less than the whole. Can be physical or metaphysical.

Doctrine of Divine Simplicity:

(1) God is not composed of parts

(2) All that is in God is God

(3) God depends on nothing outside Himself to be who He is.

And therefore: (4) God’s essence and existence are identical

(5) God’s attributes are not additions to his being but are identical with His essence - and thus identical with each other

2. Is Divine Simplicity Just Greek Philosophy?

Objection: It seems the doctrine of divine simplicity is built of Greek philosophy (rather than Scripture)

• Real Parallels:
  • Plato: Allegory of the cave, forms
  • Aristotle: potential, actuality, parts
• Apostolic Pattern: Correction, not rejection
  • “Plundering the Egyptians”

3. Biblical Motivations

• We do not need a proof text: Necessary consequences from scripture are no less scripture than its express words.
• Direct Support: Exegesis of biblical texts that teach divine simplicity
• Indirect Support: other biblical doctrines that support or necessitate divine simplicity (e.g. God’s oneness, aseity, infinity, immutability, perfection).

Key point: **Proof texts are unnecessary. Alongside the careful exegetical work that supports divine simplicity directly, other biblical doctrines indirectly require belief in divine simplicity.

4. The Historical Witness

Key point: Divine simplicity is not a quirky medieval idea, but a settled catholic position affirmed throughout church history.

Irenaeus: “God is a simple, uncompounded Being, without diverse members, and altogether like, and equal, to Himself”.

Athanasius: “For God is a whole and not a number of parts, and does not consist of diverse elements… for if He consists of parts, certainly it will follow that He is unlike Himself, and made up of unlike parts.

Athanasius, on why divine simplicity is key to understanding the Trinity**:** “The divine generation must not be compared to the nature of men, nor the Son considered to be part of God, nor the generation to imply any passion whatever; God is not as man; for men beget passibly, having a transitive nature, which waits for periods by reason of its weakness. But with God this cannot be; for He is not composed of parts, but being impassible and simple, He is impassibly and indivisibly Father of the Son.”

Augustine: “The Trinity is called simple because it has not anything which it can lose, and because it is not one thing and its contents another, as a cup and the liquor… for none of these is what it has.

Augustine: “But it is impious to say that God subsists to and underlies his goodness, and that goodness is not his substance, or rather his being, nor is God his goodness, but it is in him as an underlying subject”

Anselm (praying to God): “Whatever is composed of parts is not completely one. It is in some sense a plurality and not identical with itself… but such characteristics are foreign to you… there are no parts in you Lord and you are not a plurality… life and wisdom and rest are not parts of you; they are all one. Each of them is all of what you are, and each is what the rest are.”

Aquinas: “The first mover [God] must be simple. For any composite being must contain two factors that are related to each other as potency to act. But in the first mover, which is altogether immobile, all combination of potency and act is impossible, because what ever is in potency is, by that very fact, movable. Accordingly, the first mover cannot be composite… [He] must be absolutely simple.

John Owen: “Now if God were of any causes… he could not be so absolutely first and independent. Were he composed of parts, accidents, manner of being, he could not be first, all of these are before that which is of them, and therefore his essence is absolutely simple.”

Baptist and Westminster Confessions: The Lord our God is…a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, who only has immortality…

Turretin: The orthodox have constantly taught that the essence of God is perfectly simple and free from all composition.

Bavinck: “This simplicity is of great importance…for our understanding of God. It is not only taught in Scripture (where God is called “light,” “life,” and “love”) but also automatically follows from the idea of God and is necessarily implied in the other attributes. Simplicity here is the antonym of “compounded.” If God is composed of parts… then his perfection, oneness, independence, and immutability, cannot be maintained. On that basis he is not the highest love, for then there is in him a subject who loves—which is one thing—as well as a love by which he loves—which is another. The same dualism would apply to all the other attributes. In that case God is not the One “than whom nothing better can be thought.” Instead, God is uniquely his own, having nothing above him. Accordingly, he is completely identical with the attributes of wisdom, grace, and love, and so on. He is absolutely perfect, the One “than whom nothing higher can be thought.”

5. Importance and Implications of Divine Simplicity

• Guards the Creator-Creature Distinction
• Protects God’s Other Attributes
• Protects the Trinity & Prevents Tritheism
• Ensures God is Never Conflicted, Divided, or Internally Unstable
• Grounds the Unity of God’s Actions
• Secures the Certainty of God’s Promises
• Explains Why God is the Ultimate Standard of Truth and Goodness

6. Common Objections

Objection: Divine simplicity makes God impersonal or abstract.

• Response: No. Simplicity does not deny that God is personal; it denies that God is composed.

Objection: Divine simplicity means God can’t have many attributes.

• Response: God has many attributes according to our way of understanding, not because God is internally divided.

Objection: Divine simplicity means that God can’t act differently in different situations.

• Response: We must distinguish between God ad intra and God’s ad extra acts. God’s actions differ in their effects, not in God Himself.

Objection: Divine simplicity makes God unrelatable and untrustworthy.

• Response: On the contrary, simplicity makes God utterly trustworthy. A God who is internally conflicted or developing would be unreliable.

Objection: Divine simplicity is philosophical and speculative rather than biblical.

• Response: Scripture teaches truths that necessitate divine simplicity. Divine simplicity is not imposed on Scripture; it is what Scripture teaches us about God.