Simplicity of God

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921)

Now, Christian theologians have always been more or less conscious of this calling. On the whole their teaching has been that God is simple, exalted above all composition, and that there is no real distinction between his being and his attributes. Every attribute is identical with God’s being. He is what he has. When we speak about creatures, we distinguish variously between what they are and what they have; e.g., a human being remains a human being even though he has lost the image of God and become a sinner. But when we speak about God, we must maintain that each of his attributes is identical with his being. God is all light, all mind, all wisdom, all logos, all spirit, etc. In God “essence is the same as wisdom, the same as goodness, the same as power. One and the same thing is said whether it be stated that God is eternal or that he is immortal or good or just.” Whatever God is he is completely and simultaneously. “God has no properties but merely is essence, God’s properties are really the same as his essence: they neither differ from his essence, nor do they differ materially from one another.”

(From: “The Doctrine of God”)

Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)

God knows by his own essence. He doth not know, as we do, by habits, qualities, species, whereby we may be mistaken at one time and rectified at another. He hath not an understanding distinct from his essence as we have, but being the most simple Being, his understanding is his essence; and as from the infiniteness of his essence we conclude the infiniteness of his understanding, so from the unchangeableness of his essence, we may justly conclude the unchangeableness of his knowledge. Since, therefore, God is without all composition, and his understanding is not distinct from his essence, what he knows, he knows by his essence, and there can then be no more mutability in his knowledge than there can be in his essence; and if there were any in that, he could not be God, because he would have the property of a creature. If his understanding then be his essence, his knowledge is as necessary, as unchangeable as his essence. As his essence eminently contains all perfections in itself, so his understanding comprehends all things past, present, and future, in itself. If his understanding and his essence were not one and the same, he were not simple, but compounded: if compounded, he would consist of parts; if he consisted of parts, he would not be an independent Being and so would not be God.

(From: “The Existence and Attributes of God”)

William G.T. Shedd (1820-1894)

The Simplicity of God denotes that his being is uncompounded, incomplex, and indivisible: “a most pure spirit, without parts.” Simplicity does not belong to angels and men. They are complex, being composed of soul and body: two substances, not one. They are not unembodied and mere spirit. The angels, like the redeemed after the resurrection, have a spiritual body, which does not mean a body made of spirit, but one adapted to a spiritual world. A spiritual body belongs to the world of extended form, not of unextended mind. The simplicity of the Divine being is not contradictory to the trinity of his essence, because trinity does not denote three different essences, but one essence subsisting in three modes. The trinitarian distinctions no more conflict with the simplicity of the essence, than do the attributes. The essence is not divided into either hypostases, or attributes. The whole essence is in each person, and in each attribute. The theory of external emanation is incompatible with the simplicity of the Divine essence. A substance which by efflux of particles can flow out into new forms, like rays from the sun, is compounded and complex. When it is said, in Rom. 11:36, that “all things are of him (ex autou), it is not meant that the universe is an effluent portion of the Divine essence, but that it originates from him as its creator. When it is said, in Acts 17:28, that man is the offspring (genos) of God, it is not meant that man participates in the Divine essence, but possesses a nature similar to that of God.

(From: “Dogmatic Theology”)

George Swinnock (1627-1673)

God is a simple being. In this I take simplicity, not as opposed to wisdom, for in him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, Col. ii. 9, but as simplicity is opposed to mixture and composition. Thus there is a simplicity in the gospel, 2 Cor. xii. 3. So anything, the more simple it is, the more excellent it is. God is a most pure, simple, unmixed, indivisible essence; he is incapable of the least composition, and therefore of the least division. He is one most pure, one without all parts, members, accidents, and qualities. Whatsoever is in him is himself, his very being; therefore, that which is a quality in a man or angel, is attributed to God in the abstract. Men and angels are wise, but God is wisdom, Prov. ix. 1. Men and angels are holy, but God is holiness, Isa. lxiii. 15. God is all essence, all being, and nothing else.

But how unlike are men or angels to God in this! Man is a grossly compounded being; he is compounded of a body and a soul, Gen. ii. 7. His body is compounded of members and parts; his members and parts are compounded of bones, and blood, and flesh, and skin, and sinews, Job x. 11. His soul is compounded, and so are the highest angels, of substance and accidents, of essence and faculties; the substance of man’s soul, and of angels and their qualities, are distinct things. Their wisdom is one thing, their power another thing, their holiness a third thing, and all distinct from their essence. An angel may be an angel, and a man may be a true man, and yet be foolish, weak, and wicked. Their understanding differeth from their wills, their wills differ from their affections, their affections differ from both, and all from their beings. But in God all these are one indivisible essence, to will and to understand, and to love and to hate, and to be, are all the same and one in God.

(From: “Works”)

Jerome Zanchius (1516-1590)

Although the great and ever-blessed God is a being absolutely simple and infinitely remote from all shadow of composition, He is, nevertheless, in condescension to our weak and contracted faculties, represented in Scripture as possessed of divers Properties, or Attributes, which, though seemingly different from His Essence, are in reality essential to Him, and constitutive of His very Nature.

(From: “The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination”)