The Simplicity Of God
07 Aug 2021
I was asked by Lake Road Congregational Church in Keswick to lead one of their sessions introducing aspects of theology. I did a short talk on "The Simplicity Of God". This is what I said in the 20 minute presentation. There was a discussion afterwards.
When I was asked by James to do this I didn’t quite know what to focus on, but my mind went back to the start of last year when I did a series at the church where I pastor on the attributes of God, and as part of that series I did a session on something which isn’t an attribute of God - but is really important to get in our head so that we don’t misunderstand the attributes of God. A bit like the word “trinity” it’s not a word you find in the Bible to describe God, but is, and has been throughout the centuries a word, a concept which holds together what the whole Bible reveals to us about our God. The topic is “The Simplicity of God”.
Now by the ‘Simplicity of God” I need to be clear what I don’t mean. I don’t mean that God is easy to understand. That would be blasphemy! Our trinitarian God is in an important sense incomprehensible to us - he has revealed himself truly to us and we have a responsibility to hear and believe and worship him, but we’ll never plumb the depths and fully explore the vastness of all he is - even through all eternity.
By saying “God is Simple” I (and theologians) are actually not saying anything positively about God. That’s why I said it’s not an attribute of God in itself. What it is is an expression which puts in place one of those distinctions, one of those guardrails you always need when thinking about God, and to make sure you don’t think about him wrongly.
By “Simple” what’s meant is the opposite of “complex”. So, think of pretty much anything you can think of. Just look about wherever you are sitting and you’ll be in reach of a complex piece of equipment. So I’ve got a remote control here for my stereo. You could take it apart - there’d be the batteries. and the casing, and the buttons. Different buttons do different things. There’s the UV laser at the end (I don’t know how they work, just glad they do!). Technically you could remove some bit and it would still work (not the battery obviously, but some buttons). It’s complex. When I press the STOP button, I’m not pressing the PLAY button, so when it does things it does them in a distinct way, because it’s complex (made up of parts). That’s true for almost everything.
BUT that’s not true for God. When we say God is simple, we are saying he is not made up of parts or bits of his character. He is fully God all the time. Everything he is, he is all time. “He is not made up of his attributes. He does not consist of goodness, mercy, justice and power.” He is goodness, mercy, justice, power. Every attribute of God is identical to his essence”. (Kevin De Young).
Where’s the Biblical evidence for this? The clearest are those verses which will be so familiar to us. What does everyone know about God? “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Have you ever thought about what that verse means?
It’s a bit complicated by the fact we sometime say that kind of thing about human beings. She is kind. He is miserable. By which we mean “generally, most of the time, whenever we tend to see them they act in a kind way, or they are bit grumpy.”
But when the Bible uses those stark IS expressions about God something more important is being said. It’s not just that God IS sometime loving. But that all the time and in every way God IS love. He is the definition of love. Love is not something that he turns on and turns off at will. Everything thing that God does and says is an expression of his love.
But - and this is important, although “God is love” is the most familiar of those expressions it’s far from being the only one. So we are told about his holiness. “God is a consuming fire”. “God is light”.
It’s an important guard rail I felt I needed to put in place when I did that series on the attributes of God because it prevents how we can sometimes fall into danger of thinking. We can prioritise one attribute of God over another. Often we do this withhis love. But God IS his all his attributes.
Now this doesn’t mean that there’s always a kind of compromise going on in the heart of God whenever he speaks or acts. As if when he is loving he stops and thinks - I can’t be TOO loving I also need to be just. Or that his holiness is somehow tempered by his power. No, it’s to say He is all those things all the time. So his love is a holy, just love. In fact - there’s no such thing as any other kind of love! He is always exhaustively good and righteous and holy and just etc.
So much for what I think - but does this concept have a historical agreement/heritage in theology? Yes.
Thomas Aquinas is the theologian best known for exploring this concept in a profound way. “Deus Omnino simplex est” - God is not composed in any way. Later on he says it is not possible for God to be composed in any way (of parts).
“There is a single and spiritual being whom we call God” Belgic Confession 1561
Many of the important systematic theologies stress this (in fact it’s a mark of a good one). So Bavinck says “If God is in any sense composite, then it is impossible to maintain the perfection of his oneness, independence, and immutability”.
More recently Robert Letham puts it this way -
“How can God be simple and yet have a range of attributes? The answer lies in that the attributes are identical with who he is. From our angle, it appears that they are mutually defining: his justice is loving justice, his goodness is omnipotent, righteous and just; and so on. From this it follows that his love is almighty, righteous, good, and holy love.”
Now, it’s important to see that this emphasises just how alive and active and powerful our God is. When we say “God is Simple” we are actually saying the opposite of what we usually think when we think about this kind of simplicity. So there are living creatures in our world which are simple. Single cell bacteria (I think). But they don’t do very much (by definition). Or we can use “Simple” in this way as an insult - he’s very simple (meaning he’s not got anything going on in his head). We use “complex” almost as a compliment - if someone complex they are deep, mysterious, perhaps very intelligent.
But for God to be Simple means he is SIMPLE in his fullness. He is always wise and just and powerful and loving and ruling etc all the time. He is not Simple because he is lacking or empty - he is simple because he is so full. He is as it has been put “pure act”.
While this is a guardrail, and a negative statement - He is NOT complex, it has really important pastoral implications. And like all guard rails, if they are not there, we get into real danger and you frequently see people and churches who don’t have that guard rail in place falling off the road of truth and what God has revealed about himself.
First it means he is a God worth worshipping. God is the God who has revealed himself to us. When someone says to me “I don’t believe in God” I always think that chances are the God they don’t believe in I don’t either. The only God there is is the God who has revealed himself - the God who is glorious and is perfect in all his attributes. And importantly there is nothing and no one greater than him.
So “love” is not something that God does, or a concept he lives up to. He is perfectly love all the time, in a perfect way which is also all his other attributes at the same time. He reveals and shows us what love really is. (I’m picking up on love because it’s the attribute people most talk about). Often people will say things like “Give peace a chance” or “we just need more love” but those slogans fail on contact with real life - because there’s no such thing as “Love” or “peace” outside of the God who defines them.
Second, it should guard our humility. We often go wrong because we think “Yes I know God word says that but to put that into practice is a bit unloving, or unjust or unmerciful.” That’s especially true with sexual ethics today. But if God commands things it is always out of love, and justice, and mercy etc. We don’t define those things (especially not by looking around at ourselves), we must let God define them in who he is. And we know who he is by what he has said and what he has revealed about what he has done.
Third it teaches us what our response to God should look like. “The Lord our God is one, worship him with heart, soul and mind”. God is simple, so our response to him should also be simple. Worship holding nothing back. Obedience that is pure and unquestioning.
Forth, very practically and personally, it means you can depend on and trust him. It is another way of saying “he is the same today, yesterday, forever.” We will never meet a God who is different to the God who has revealed himself in the Bible. There’s no different God behind the God revealed in Christ (for example). If we are in a hard season and we feel that God seems to be against us - we can know he is always acting in love. When we feel like things are going well and that going a way is God’s will even though it may be wrong - we need to remember he is still holy.
And finally, and importantly, just see how important this is for appreciating all that the Lord has done for us at the cross. This is where you see most clearly all that God is revealed to us. But we can so easily get it wrong by viewing the cross just from one angle, or through the lens of just one attribute of God. Is the cross the greatest expression of God’s love? Yes. Is it an expression of his holiness and anger against sin? Yes. Does it show God’s rule and power over everything and everyone who would stand against him? Yes. Is it where the Lord executes the justice that needs to be meted out for sin? Yes. Does it reveal the mercy and grace at the heart of God? Yes. We know that because he has told us all those things in his word.
And so when we understand and preach the cross we need to recognise all those things - which all come from the fact that God is simple. His love is a just, holy, powerful, merciful etc love and vice versa!
(NOTE : None of this is original to me! Do read "Simply God by Peter Sanlon to explore this further, and there are helpful blog posts here and here which introduce the topic).