Divine Simplicity

For one reason or another it is this attribute of God that has received the most attention in the recent recovery of classical theology. The main reason is that it is among the easiest to misunderstand: especially in a way that seems to many people to compromise the personal nature of God. Another reason, however, is that for many classical theologians divine simplicity serves as a kind of conceptual anchor for the whole doctrine of God. Notice I did not say that this doctrine is more “foundational” than others, as that may imply that the attribute in question is more basic. And that would, quite simply, contradict the whole point of the doctrine. 

Defining Simplicity  

By “simplicity” here we do not mean the opposite of difficult or mysterious. Rather we mean the opposite of composite. To affirm that God is simple means to affirm that God is not composed of parts, that he is a perfect and indivisible unity. The simplest way to understand this is to grasp that God cannot be divided up. What we refer to as his attributes are not parts, so that we cannot even call them “properties” in the same way as we ascribe shape, texture, color, locality, or chemical composition to a piece of fruit or a book.

This doctrine further implies that “All that is in God is God.” Conversely we must say that there is nothing in God that does not somehow include each of his other attributes. God’s love could never be anything but holy. His knowledge could never be anything but unchanging. And so forth with all the other attributes. 

Some nuance in this definition is in order. The Westminster Confession of Faith refers to God “without parts” [1]. The words just before this state what is even simpler to understand, namely, that God is “without body.” In the minds of most, to be “without parts” means, purely and simply, to be without “body parts.” Actually more than this is meant. To be without parts also must mean to be without composition into anything more diverse than a single entity. Consequently the divine attributes are not distinct entities. They are not separate things. 

There is a difficulty for our thinking. Both human reasoning and human language break things down into parts. Reason does this in order to understand a thing by its essence. Language does this by the subject and predicate. We “map” reality in pluralities. So Feser says, humorously and yet truly, that “God is so difficult to understand because he is so simple.”

The Testimony of Scripture and Tradition

While Deuteronomy 6:4 may be cited to support this doctrine—“the LORD is one”—it may be argued that the Hebrew for “one” (אֶחָֽד) is the oneness of exclusivity, as in “the LORD alone.” On the other hand there is nothing preventing it from having both senses in that context. The giving of the divine name on Mount Sinai has always been seen as a clearer marker: “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you’” (Ex. 3:14). The repetition makes it clear that the specific name is I AM, not that it is simply a regular first person singular verb. Knowing (i) the importance that God attaches to his own revealed names, as well as (ii) the historic moment at Sinai together make it difficult to dismiss the notion that deep theology is signified here. The Hebrew is again instructive. This is indeed a verb in both spots (אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה), from the verb “to be” (הָיָה).

Certainly we may rule out that God has a body by scriptural statements that, “God is spirit” (Jn. 4:24). Many theologians would treat divine spirituality in the same context as simplicity for this reason. But we are really speaking of something logically distinct from divine spirituality, much less omnipresence. 

We do not validate the doctrine of divine simplicity in the Scriptures simply by cataloging the word usage. Remember that theology is done on the concept level and not the word level. James Dolezal is helpful in pointing out that simplicity is a necessary implication of three other truths that are clearly taught in Scripture: (i) divine independence [I]; (ii) divine infinity [F]; and (iii) creation [C]. The argument may be summarized again in a simple modus ponens form. If the Bible teaches the content of the premises, the rest follows by resistless logic:

(I ∧ F ∧ C) ⊃ S

I ∧ F ∧ C

∴ S

Now what passages teach these three things (I, F, and C)? Any passage which makes the point to say that God is in need of nothing (Acts 17:25), indebted to no one (Rom. 11:35), or that he derives his attributes from no other (Jn. 5:26) is teaching that God is independent, or a se. Likewise with infinity, any passage that denies limitation to God’s being (Ps. 145:3), or eliminates any other being from excelling or equalling God’s essence, by setting God as “first” and “last” (Isa. 48:12; Rev. 1:8), or simply by depicting God as excelling all that which there is, as in the heavens (1 Ki. 8:27). And of course the Bible obviously teaches that God is the Creator of all things, without exception (Gen. 1:1; Jn. 1:1-3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16-20). The next question is: How do these three doctrines, which are explicitly taught in Scripture, lead to the conclusion that simplicity is implicitly taught? That is where “good and necessary” consequence comes in. We will return to this.

Irenaeus argued from simplicity to argue against the Gnostics that God could have been affected by the act of creation; and Gregory of Nyssa argued from it to prove that the Son and the Spirit had to be fully divine because the divine essence could not be divided [2]. For Augustine it was the basis of God’s immutability, and Boethius added that it upheld God’s independence [3]. A statement of Anselm roots simplicity in the very idea of God and then in turn with other attributes:

For whatever is composed of parts is not altogether one, but is in some sort plural, and diverse from itself; and either in fact or in concept is capable of dissolution. But these things are alien to thee, than whom nothing better can be conceived of. Hence there are no parts in thee, Lord, nor art thou more than one. But thou art so true a unitary being, and so identical with thyself, that in no respect art thou unlike thyself; rather thou art unity itself, indivisible by any conception. Therefore life, and wisdom, and the rest are not parts of thee, but all are one; and each of these is the whole, which thou art, and which all the rest are [4].

Along with the other Reformed documents, the Belgic Confession begins its theology proper section by affirming, “We all believe … that there is one only simple and spiritual Being, which we call God” [5]. Turretin matter of factly states that, “The orthodox have constantly taught that the essence of God is perfectly simple and free from all composition” [6]; and Bavinck adds, “It is not only taught in Scripture … but also automatically follows from the idea of God and is necessarily implied in the other attributes … the simplicity of God is absolutely not a metaphysical abstraction” [7].

However, as early as 1932, it was observed by Louis Berkhof that, “In recent works on theology the simplicity of God is seldom mentioned. Many theologians positively deny it, either because it is regarded as a purely metaphysical abstraction, or because, in their estimation, it conflicts with the doctrine of the Trinity” [8].

Implications of Simplicity

In his original work on the subject, God Without Parts, James Dolezal explains what is most basically at stake: “if God were composed of parts in any sense he would be dependent upon those parts for his very being and thus the parts would be ontologically prior to him” [9]. The Puritan, Stephen Charnock, elaborates on the same:

God is the most simple being; for that which is first in nature, having nothing beyond it, cannot by any means be thought to be compounded; for whatsoever is so, depends upon the parts whereof it is compounded, and so is not the first being: now God being infinitely simple, hath nothing in himself which is not himself, and therefore cannot will any change in himself, he being his own essence and existence [10].

Note a few premises and as well as further implications. First and most importantly to the whole doctrine of God, it follows that every divine attribute is essentially one, or simple, in God. Any distinction between a divine attribute and the whole divine essence is properly a logical distinction and not a real distinction [11]. It then follows that “all His attributes are really identical with each other” [12], and further goes on to follow that His will of decree is likewise identical to His essence. It also implies that, “God must be identical with His existence and essence, and they must be identical with each other. It is His essence to be. Strictly speaking, His act of existence is not what He has, but what He is” [13]. John Owen put it in exactly this fashion,

The attributes of God, which alone seem to be distinct things in the essence of God, are all of them essentially the same with one another, and every one the same with the essence of God itself [14].

We will recall that natural theology informs theology proper. Now if a particular argument of natural theology both (1) constituted a proof of necessity and (2) concluded in definitive knowledge of divine attributes, then such becomes a premise and may be situated within a subsequent proof, equally necessitated by logic. In fact this is exactly what we find with divine simplicity. In Question 3 of the Summa Theologica, Thomas sets to work on this very line of reasoning. He divides the question of simplicity into eight articles. For our purposes, we will only explore two of these: composition per se and the existence-essence question. In explaining why God cannot be a body, he appeals to the proof in Q.2, Art. 3—“it has already been proved”—namely, that God, as First Mover, cannot be moved. As such, “The first being must of necessity be in act, and in no way in potentiality” [15]. This concludes in what Thomists call actus purus, that God is a being in Pure Act, never actualized by anything prior to himself.

But why must composition, or parts, necessarily imply potentiality and thus a prior cause? There are two basic reasons: First whatever is composed of parts is divisible. Wherever that division has occurred, change has occurred. Therefore whatever is composite is mutable. Second, on the “front side,” whatever is composite has been composed by another. Both the principle by which the many are a conceptual unity and the cause by which the parts are organized into a whole stand above and beyond the composed entity. Therefore whatever is composite is dependent. So divine immutability and aseity would have to be denied if simplicity is denied. 

There is another reason that may seem a bit more abstract. It is more Platonic. Not only does each part of a composite depend causally upon whatever organized the whole (and thus the whole is likewise dependent), but moreover each part is a species within a genus. Its meaning is derived and thus the unity of the whole is derived. Both part and whole have essences which is not simply to be, but rather to be in another. The truths about them are what Plato would call a participatory truth. Such predicates and properties would exist more preeminently in the being of another. Thus to say that both parts and whole require “an extrinsic source of unity” [16] may be either a causal statement (metaphysical) or a meaning statement (epistemological). Organization implies an Organizer; composition argued for a Composer; unification implies a Unifier.

Hopefully we can see, by now, why Dolezal argues that those three divine attributes that are clearly taught in Scripture—independence, infinity, creation—necessarily imply simplicity. As to independence, “If God possesses His existence, essence, or attributes as so many determinations of being—which they would be if they were in Him as distinct parts and constituents—then in fact He is indebted to that which is not God for the fullness of His being” [17]. The same is true of infinity, “whatever is perfectly infinite in being cannot be built up from that which is finite in being. But parts of a thing must necessarily be finite” [18]. Likewise with creation, “Since God is the first being from whom all other being flows, it follows that He must not derive His own being from constituent parts or elements within Himself” [19].

Another of the articles by which Thomas argues for simplicity is whether there are accidents in God. This refers not to “accidents” in our sense of the word (the opposite of things done on purpose), but rather secondary attributes of a thing, in addition to, or perhaps as an extension of, those essential attributes of a thing. Thomas argues that God cannot have any accidents, in general, because God cannot be a subject. A purely simple being does not “have” predicates in the way that composites do. Beyond that, “what is essential is prior to what is accidental” [20]; but in God nothing can be prior to anything else.

Feser summarizes the bridge from natural theology to this doctrine very well: “As arguments for a First Cause, [natural theology arguments] are ipso facto arguments for an absolutely simple or noncomposite cause. In short, classical theism and the doctrine of divine simplicity necessarily go together. To deny the one is implicitly to deny the other” [21]. This is another reminder that natural theology effects theology proper. More than that, when we begin to relate the divine attributes to each other, we just are doing natural theology, whether we like it or not. We may do it either well or else poorly, but we will never succeed in leaving it behind.

Objections Against Simplicity 

In modern theology, a basic objection is that if God is absolutely simple, then contingent truths in relation to God cannot be true. He cannot be Creator, Lord, Savior, or in personal relationship with Abraham, etc. This seems to be the issue for theistic personalists among the New Calvinists. Theistic philosopher Thomas Morris makes a more philosophical objection. The reasoning is that, since a contingent property is not a necessary property, and both have to be his properties, then not all his properties are identical. For example, that God wills the cross or that He knows Abraham, conjoined to the premise that “all His attributes are really identical with each other,” would seem to imply either (i) that the cross and Abraham are necessary to God’s essence or (ii) that part of God’s will and knowledge are not necessary. Either side of the dilemma would seem to undercut classical theism. 

In reply, Feser first distinguishes between (a) real and (b) “Cambridge properties,” the latter of which is a change in relation to another, where the change has happened in the other--e. g. Socrates having become “shorter” than Plato, only because Plato grew taller. Likewise the change is called a “Cambridge change,” so named because Russell and McTaggert developed this concept at Cambridge. In short, the doctrine of divine simplicity does not deny that God has these sorts of “properties” or relations. “Similarly, divine simplicity properly understood does not entail that all of God’s properties are identical … but rather only that all of his real properties are identical” [22].

Alvin Plantinga criticizes the doctrine on the ground that it makes God equal to each of his properties and renders God himself as one of those properties. Consequently the doctrine would be incoherent. Reformed theologian Ronald Nash followed this same reasoning. Feser exposes three false assumptions of Plantinga; and in all of them he presumes a metaphysic of the classical doctrine that simply does not correspond to the object of his attack.

Those false assumptions are: (1) Plantinga’s use of ‘property’ is one-dimensional covering all conceivable predicates; (2) the attributes are conceived as if they existed in Plato’s third realm; and (3) interprets predications of them in God and in us in a univocal way [23].

That third misunderstanding is composed (no pun intended) of two further odd misunderstandings. Plantinga (3a) understands analogical speech as non-literal, but Feser has clearly distinguished between the metaphorical and the ordinary analogy; and (3b) he also understands classical theists to be using this distinction to maintain that God is a property! In contradistinction to point (1) “we need to distinguish the essence of a thing from its properties, its properties from its merely contingent accidents, its intrinsic accidents from mere relations it bears to other things, and so forth” [24].

Frame seems to make a similar mistake on the basis that if all our predicates of God were analogical, this would imply an infinite regress of analogies [25]. Thus he insists that God has revealed his attributes clearly and thus distinct in the ordinary sense. For example, this means to take the verb of being in describing “God is infinite” in the same way as we would take “The universe is infinite.” Whether or not someone who believes the first also believes the second, the point is that the predicate would mean the exact same thing in both. Dolezal discerns such univocal predication of the divine attributes even back in Hodge [26] and Dabney [27], and Bavinck even directly faulted Hodge for this [28]. 

Another motive for denying simplicity comes from more conservative circles. Some have attempted to uphold God’s sovereignty by supposing that he can freely choose to be and to do that which he otherwise would not, or, perhaps we should say, in ways “not bound” by what we know about his nature. This is supposed to be the essence of freedom and to deny that God can take on relations with respect to the creature would be tantamount to denying his sovereignty. But this is only to recapitulate the position known as theological voluntarism. Voluntarism pits God’s will over against his nature. Bruce Ware has especially gone this route. A key assumption is described by Dolezal: “that in God there are some attributes that belong to His essence, while there are other attributes He acquires through relation with His creatures” [29].

We see this with Craig’s understanding of God in time and with Oliphint’s notion of covenantal properties. Ware attempts a more deliberate breakdown between God’s relational essence as opposed to his ontological essence. In this way God’s personal dealings with the creature can be taken at face value.

Most preeminently, at the cross, if the wrath of God is satisfied, then it seems to follow that the divine disposition toward x sinner has changed. Ware concludes that such are real relational changes which, nevertheless, do not affect God’s essential immutability. However, to posit a “non-ontological essence” seems to represent a misunderstanding of what either “ontological” or “essence” means. 

These kinds of objections raise a larger dogmatic question: whether words like “properties” or even “attributes” are the best words to use for all that is true of God. Berkhof considers this very question and settles on the word “perfections”; the alternative “virtues” having the disadvantage of ethical connotations, and a rough synonym “excellencies” having the Scriptural support of 1 Peter 2:9, namely in “the excellencies of him.” The advantage of such alternatives is that it avoids “the suggestion that something is added to the Being of God” [30].

Not only is divine simplicity necessary to the integrity of theology proper, but (given that absolute-objective definition of theology), it is also necessary to the integrity of every other doctrine. The Catholic theologian F. J. Sheed went as far to say that “every current heresy begins by being wrong on [simplicity]” [31]. Now that may be true by a very indirect analysis. But we can at least make a few more direct sketches of the same sort. As to the doctrine of God, Athanasius saw very early that simplicity was a necessary corollary of the eternal generation and fully divine nature of the Son.

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 a man; for men beget passibly, having a transitive nature … 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 [32].

Neither the Persons nor the relations proper to each are “parts” of God’s essence. Shedd concurs, stating, “The whole essence is in each person and in each attribute” [33]. All of that brings one to the most formidable objection against simplicity, which is what it seems to imply about the Trinity. Because the answer to that dilemma involves so much background material concerning proper Trinitarian distinctions, we will have to content ourselves with leaving the resolution for another day.

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1. Westminster Confession of Faith, II.1

2. James Dolezal, God Without Parts (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 4.

3. Dolezal, God Without Parts, 4, 5.

4. Anselm, Proslogion, 12.

5. Belgic Confession, Article I

6. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I.3.6.1.

7. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:176.

8. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1932), 39.

9. Dolezal, God Without Parts, 1-2.

10. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, I.333

11. Ed Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Books, 2014), 36-37.

12. Dolezal, All That is In God (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017), 42.

13. Dolezal, All That is In God, 41.

14. John Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae, in Works, 12:72.

15. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I. Q.3, Art. 1

16. Dolezal, All That is In God, 40.

17. Dolezal, All That is In God, 47.

18. Dolezal, All That is In God, 48.

19. Dolezal, All That is In God, 49.

20. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I. Q.3, Art. 6

21. Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2017), 195.

22. Feser, Five Proofs, 196

23. Feser, Five Proofs, 191.

24. Feser, Five Proofs, 193.

25. John Frame, Doctrine of God (Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2002), 208-09.

26. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, I.371-72.

27. R. L. Dabney, Discussions, I.1.290.

28. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:119

29. Dolezal, All That is In God, 65.

30. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 52.

31. Sheed, quoted in Dolezal, All That is In God, 40.

32. Athanasius, quoted in Dolezal, All That is In God, 51.

33. W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 276.