Note: The following is taken from chapter 20 of the upcoming book The Absurdity of Unbelief, which may be pre-ordered here.
It is true
that God is a simple being that
is not composed of non-divine
parts. For instance, if the attribute of power was not essential to
God’s nature, then power would
cease to be divine, which would cause God to be dependent on something outside
of Himself for Him to be omnipotent. Because God
cannot be dependent on anything other than Himself, He cannot be composed of
any non-divine parts.
God’s simplicity implies that His nature consists of His
attributes, and His attributes do not exist independently or outside of God.
This also implies that each attribute is inseparably necessary and essential to
the other attributes of God. That is, it is logically impossible to separate or
remove any of the attributes of God without destroying God in the process. Each
of God’s attributes properly describe each of the other attributes of God in
the same way that they each describe God. Because God is love, God’s love is
sovereign, eternal, and omniscient in the same way that God is sovereign,
eternal, and omniscient. Finally, this implies that each and every attribute of
God (in-and-of-itself) consists of the fullness of God. In this way, God is a simple
being without non-divine parts. He is what He is.
God being simple,
however, does not mean that He is without any formal differentiations within Himself. [1] Saying
that God cannot be a collection of non-divine
parts (i.e., parts that are not in-and-of-themselves fully God) is not the same
as saying that God cannot subsists in different divine persons that are
(in-and-of-themselves) fully God (i.e., autotheos).
For
instance, because each of the three persons of the Godhead are
(in-and-of-themselves) fully God, formal differentiations and
relations are inherent and necessary in God. According to Oliphint, “These
personal distinctions and relations are all identical with him; they are not ‘added’
to him from the ‘outside.’”[2] In
other words, the differentiations within God are essential to who God is.
Formal
differentiations within the
Trinity imply that God is not only able to distinguish between things outside
Himself but that He is able to distinguish between different things inside
Himself. For example, God the Father knows that He is neither the Son nor the
Spirit, the Son knows that He is neither the Father nor the Spirit, and the
Spirit knows that He is neither the Father nor the Son.[3]
Moreover, the formal differentiations
between the three persons of the Trinity are not merely conceptual distinctions
within the mind of God; rather, they are an essential part of His ontology. Jay
Wesley Richards, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, reminds us that “the Father and
the Son could not change places.”[4]
Richards went on to elucidate:
There
is some fact about the Father that makes him the Father and not the Son, and
some fact about the Son that makes him the Son and not the Father, even if we
can refer to these separate facts by means of single asymmetrical relation. Moreover,
the relation of the Father to the Son is not the same as the relation of the
Father to the Spirit. Therefore, if one wishes to retain the trinitarian
distinction, one must deny that every essential divine property or relation is
strongly equivalent.[5]
Consequently, there can be and there are essential and eternal
distinctions within the very being of God.[6] This
implies that God’s simplicity must be understood in light of the diversity
found in the Trinity.[7] Specifically,
God’s simplicity does not cancel out His multiplicity. “To avoid the blank
identity of pantheism,” Van Til claimed, “we must insist on an identity that is
exhaustively correlative to the differentiations within the Godhead.”[8]
If there were no formal
differentiations within God, as with Allah, the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover,
and the god behind pantheism, then God would become pure unity without any
diversity at all. In fact, as pointed out in the last chapter, non-trinitarian
theism, in all of its forms, is reducible to monistic pantheism.
The
Solution for Divine Revelation
Furthermore, if there are no differentiations within God, then
there cannot be any differentiations within the mind of God. Consequently,
without God being able to distinguish between His various thoughts and attributes,
then, as in monistic pantheism, God would be utterly unknowable even to
Himself.
And
if God cannot know Himself, what hope do we have of knowing God? If God
cannot distinguish His knowledge from any of His acts of power, it would be
impossible for Him to reveal Himself to man. For instance, what does it mean to
say that God is love if God’s love is identical to God’s omniscience? What
would God’s omniscience mean if it was one and the same with God’s hatred?
Terms describing God would cease to mean anything if they can mean everything.
Thus, if God’s knowledge of Himself was restricted to a single attribute, then
our knowledge of Him would be no knowledge at all.[9]
Without distinctions within God, says Calvin, “only the bare and empty name of
God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God.”[10]
Commenting on this, the Princeton theologian
B. B. Warfield (1851-1921) remarked: “According to Calvin, then, it would seem,
there can be no such thing as a monadistic God; the idea of multiformity enters
into the very notion of God.”[11]
In this, Calvin understood that for God to reveal Himself to man, He must be
tripersonal. Only a God whose diversity is equally
ultimate with His
simplicity is a God that can be known.
Jonathan Edwards also rooted divine revelation in the doctrine of
the Trinity. According to Edwards, God is a communicative
being. Expounding upon Edwards’ view, William Schweitzer writes: “In asserting
that God is a communicative being, Edwards is referring to a logically and
temporally prior theology whereby God is inherently communicative ad intra (i.e., internally) among the
persons of the Godhead.”[12] That
is, although the economic Trinity communicates to man and angles ad extra (i.e., externally), God’s
essential communicativeness is not dependent upon man or angels or anything
else outside of Himself. This is because, ontologically speaking, the Father
communicates to the Son, and the Son and the Father communicate to the Spirit. In
this, communication is essential to the very nature of God.
Therefore,
the economic Trinity is able to communicate ad extra (i.e., externally)
to man, only because the ontological Trinity communicates ad intra (i.e..,
internally) with Himself. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love,
enjoy, and glorify each other by revealing themselves to one another,
communicating to one another, and sharing themselves with one another. And it
is only because they are inherently able to communicate and share themselves
with each other like this that they are intrinsically able to communicate and
share themselves with us, who are made in the image of God.
In other
words, divine communication is possible because God is triune. As all three
persons of the Godhead are involved in the process of communication: The Father
reveals the Son (Matt. 16:17), the Son reveals the Father (John 14:6), and the
Spirit reveals the Father and the Son (1 Cor. 1:30). Each person finds pleasure
in revealing the glory of the other persons. Hence, we can know God because God
is triune – something that could not be said about a monistic deity.
The Solution
for Thoughts & Emotions
Also, a multi-personal God is required for a God who can
differentiate between His different attributes, thoughts, emotions, and acts.
Only a multi-personal God can have a will of decree and a will of
command that allows Him to be both impassibly at peace in regard to the
grand scheme of things and emotionally grieved in regard to particular sinful
acts as they transpire in history. Like a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle that can
either be fully constructed into a single picture or broken apart into its
individual pieces, God is able to see all of history at one glance and also
examine each singular event separately.
When He considers the complete
historical picture, He is eternally happy. He is impassibly satisfied with the
outworking of His will of decree because all things are working together
for His glory as planned. And God is able to examine single pieces of the
puzzle, independently from the whole, and be grieved accordingly. He can be
angry with those who transgress His will of command because in those
temporal moments He ceases to be glorified.
God’s essence does not change, but
this does not mean that He does not have particular opinions/judgments about
things that do change. The English puritan Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)
understood that a display of changing emotions is not only consistent with the
immutability of God but is required:
God is not changed, when of
loving to any creatures he becomes angry with them, or of angry he becomes
appeased…God always acts according to the immutable nature of his holiness, and
can no more change in his affections to good and evil, than he can in his
essence… Though the same angels were not always loved, yet the same reason that
moved him to love them, moved him to hate them. It had argued a change in God
if he had loved them always, in whatsoever posture they were towards him.[13]
Consequently, God can be grieved
after the fall of man and be appeased by the atoning work of Christ on the cross
because He, who controls time, can differentiate between time related events.
The Solution
for Relationships
The differentiation within the Trinity is also what allows God
to be personal and relational in His nature. God did not have to take on relational
properties when He created man; rather, He is eternally and inherently
relational. Hence, without any change taking place in His nature, He is capable
of personally interacting with those whom He created in His own likeness.
The
Solution for a Separate Universe
The ontological differentiation between the Father, Son, and
Spirit is as vital as God’s oneness. The ontological differentiation within God
is vital in keeping the essence of God from becoming conflated with the
universe. This is because the equal ultimacy of God not only allows for
diversity-in-unity, but it also explains why an immutable God was able to
create a distinct universe out of nothing (ex nihilo) at a particular
point in time.
Aristotle believed that motion (e.g.,
the pure motion of the stars) was eternal, for every act of motion within the
universe must be caused by a previous act of motion, which must be indefinite.
Though motion is infinite, there must be a prime mover to prevent the logical
inconsistency of an eternal regression. The solution, according to Aristotle,
is that motion is the eternal effect of the eternal Unmoved Mover – making the
unmovable God and the forever moving universe coeternal and coessential.
Aristotle was right – motionlessness
and motion must both be eternal. There is no way around this. For instance, if motionlessness
(i.e., an Unmoved Mover) was not eternal, then we would be left with an eternal
regression of causes with no explanation of what or Who set off the first
cause. On the other hand, if motion was not eternal, then motion would
not be essential to God’s nature. And if motion was not essential to God’s
nature, then God would depend upon something outside of Himself to move and
act. And if God was immobile and unable to exert acts of volitional power, then
He could not have created a temporal universe out of nothing. So,
motionlessness and motion must both be eternal.
But how can both realities be eternal
without God and creation being coeternal and coessential? How can an unmovable
God create something temporal if creating the universe requires an act of
movement within God? How can God be unmovable, yet capable of moving Himself to
create? How do we have a God who is above time and space, but is not locked out
of time and space? How do we have a God that is immutable to time-bound events,
but is also able to carryout time-bound events, such as creating and governing
the universe?
The
only solution is found in the triune God of the Bible. God is immutable without
being restricted to a static and motionless state. This is because God is one
in His essence and three in His persons. He is unchanging in His essence (which
safeguards us from open theism).[14]
However, in this immutable and eternal state of perfection, the Father, as a
distinct person, is intrinsically and internally (ad intra) moved to love and glorify the Son, and likewise the Son
and the Spirit are moved to love and glorify the Father. They each are incited
to share, communicate, give, love, and glorify the other by the infinite worth
that they consistently see in the other. They
are in an eternal state of interacting and sharing their glory with each
other. That is, within the Godhead there is an eternal state of movement (i.e.,
interaction) between the three persons without any change taking place in the
unity of God’s immutable essence.
The word automobile originated
from the compound of two French words auto, which means self,
and mobile, which means movable. Thus, an automobile is
something that moves itself. But truly this cannot be said of man-made vehicles
that require a driver and fuel. Vehicles don’t move themselves. Strictly
speaking, the word automobile applies only to God. Only the
triune God is autonomously self-moving. Unlike Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, the
God of the Bible does not need the universe as a vehicle of movement. God is
not dependent on anything outside of Himself. God is not cemented in an
immovable state, for He can act, move, create, and do as He pleases.
To think, to love, to share, to communicate, and to act are all
intrinsic abilities within a triune God. Because the triune God is not
restricted from having acts of motion within Himself, creating and governing a
universe that is separate and bound to time is not an impossibility. Creation
does not have to be eternal. Although God is not bound by time and space, He is
not locked out of time or space either. The God of the Bible is Lord of time
and space as He is personally ever-present in all the particular affairs of
this world.[15]
In short, because the three persons
of the Trinity interact internally (ad intra) with one another, the
Godhead was able to create externally (ad extra) a temporal universe out
of nothing at a particular moment in time.
The Solution
for God and Time
This brings us to one of the most difficult questions of
theology: What is God’s relationship to time? If time is the measurement of
movement, then God’s relationship with time is unlike our relationship with
time.
We are restricted by time because movement
exists independent of our own existence. We can’t slow down the rotation of the
earth or speed it up. Time ticks at the same rate regardless of how we feel
about it. Moreover, movement changes us. We grow from young to old, with
our bodies changing along the way. The older we become, the more we realize
that our lives are slipping away from us. And there is nothing we can do about
it. In short, we are bound to time because our existence is bound to causation
or movement outside of our control.
God, on the other hand, is not moved
or changed by any external causation or movement. This is because there is no
causation or movement outside of God’s control. The causation within a solar
system or the falling sand within a hourglass do not move (or even exist)
independently from God’s will and power. Because God’s ontological existence
stands independent of any external movement, His nature cannot be changed by
movement or time. With this in mind, God’s nature is timelessly changeless.
The timeless and immutable nature of
God, however, does not mean that God is restricted from moving Himself. Even
though God cannot be moved or changed by external causes, He can internally
move Himself in accordance with His immutable nature. This is because motion
– all motion – occurs directly or indirectly by the power of God who does all
things according to His predetermined counsel. As we have seen, God is capable
of temporal acts of power (i.e., creating and governing the universe) because movement
is inherent within His multi-personal existence.
So then, God’s relationship with time
must be understood in light of His triune nature. While God is changeless in
the singularity of His immutable nature, the interaction between the plurality
of the divine persons is not static. In other words, God can be both timelessly
changeless within His unified essence and capable of moving Himself due
to the inherent interaction between the three divine persons.
Thus, time, as with movement, is
neither something that exists independently of God nor is it something that restricts
God. Rather, both time and movement are ultimately controlled by the
interaction between the diversity of divine persons as they think and
act in accordance with the oneness of their immutable nature.
The Solution for God’s
Transcendence and Immanence
A monistic deity, on the other hand, would be completely locked
out of time. An atemporal god, such a Allah, has its consequences. The
consequence in this case would be that, since a monistic deity cannot display
intentional and temporal acts of power, the universe would have to be eternal.
That is, seeing that there is a universe, there could not have been a time when
there was nothing but God if God was atemporal.
If God is bound by timelessness,
where did the universe come from? The only possible answer that retains God as
Creator is the notion that the universe has always existed as an eternal
emanation flowing from the undifferentiated essence of this Unmoved Mover. As
light flows from the sun, the universe has to be timelessly flowing out of God.
Ultimately, without the Trinity, God and the universe would be one and the
same, as light is made of the same stuff as the sun. Consequently, even though
an atemporal god would be wholly other in His unknowable transcendence, He
would be one with the universe in His ontological immanence. While this is a
blatant contradiction, it is the result of a god who is barred from any
temporal movement.
This obvious inconstancy, however, is
safely resolved with the God of the Bible. With the Trinity there is a clear Creator/
creature distinction, since God created the universe out of nothing at a
particular point in time. God alone existed before the foundation of the world.
There was nothing else but God until God (at a particular point in time) freely
and intentionally spoke the universe into existence out of nothing.
And because the universe and God do
not consist of the same ontological substance, God remains transcendent.
But He is also immanent because He is not barred from time as He personally
interacts with those whom He has made after His own likeness. This unity
and diversity between God and creation is possibly only because there is
unity-in-diversity within the Godhead.
[1] By formal
differentiation I mean something more than a conceptual distinction (distinctione rationis, a distinction in
thinking) that exists only within our finite minds to help us make sense of an
ineffable God that transcends human language.
[2] K. Scott
Oliphint, “Simplicity, Trinity, and Incomprehensibility of God” in One God in Three Persons, Ed. Bruce Ware
and John Starke (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 230.
[3][3] The Eunomians (i.e., neo-Arians) denied the
orthodox doctrine of the Trinity by applying Aristotelian logic to the doctrine
of divine simplicity. In gist, they argued that if there are no distinctions
within God, then only the Father exists a
se (dependent on nothing outside of Himself). Ultimate oneness is reducible to the Father – He alone possesses the simple
essence of Divinity. The essence of the Son is generated from the Father and the
essence of the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son as they are
ontologically and eternally subordinate to the Father, who alone is Almighty
God. See Thomas H. McCall “Trinity Doctrine, Plain and Simple” in Advancing Trinitarian Theology (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 46.
[4] Richards, Jay Wesley, The Untamed God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2003), 230.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Scott Oliphint seeks to maintain balance
when he reminds us: “An important aspect of this doctrine of God’s simplicity
is that these distinctions in God are not thought to exist as real ‘things’ in
God. That is, they should not be thought as things at all, so that the Godhead
is a composition of ‘things upon thing’” (God
with Us, 65).
[7] For an excellent article on the relationship
between divine simplicity and the Trinity see Thomas H. McCall “Trinity
Doctrine, Plain and Simple” in Advancing
Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014).
[8] Cornelius
Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic
Theology, 2nd ed., William Edgar (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R,
2007), 273.
[9] B. A. Bosserman explained: “Unitarian
theologies
. . . succumb
to a stultifying sort of mystery where god is identical with, or subject to, an
ineffable void, that renders him incapable of speaking altogether, or of
speaking with authority. For, nothing can be accurately predicated of a
strictly unitary deity, since the multiplicity involved in predication is at
odds with his nature. If such a being were to enjoy negative definition as he
exists in contrast to the created sphere, it would only demonstrate his
dependence on the temporal universe in order to enjoy the sort of
differentiation, purpose, and relationship that he lacks in himself” (The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian
Paradox, 101).
[10] Calvin, Institutes,
1.13.2.
[11] B. B. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” Works of Benjamin B. Warfield
(Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 5.191.
[12] William M.
Schweitzer, God is a Communicative Being:
Divine Communicativeness and Harmony in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (London:
T&T Clark, 2012), 17.
[13] Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker,
1996), 1:345.
[14] The proponents for open theism, such as
Richard Rice, Clark Pinnock, and John Sanders, may say that God is unchanging in
His essence, but they undermine their claim by making the diversity of the tripersonal relationship of the Godhead ultimate
over the oneness of His unchanging
essence. That is, the oneness of
God’s essence ends up being at least partially absorbed into the diversity of God’s tripersonal
interaction within creation. By elevating the diversity of God over the oneness
of God, God’s sovereignty, omnipotence, and omniscience no longer remain
immutable. God’s knowledge, emotions, and power become limited to the multiplicity of things taking
place outside His being. Rather than being immutably closed, God is open to
change. Rather than the Almighty controlling all things, He is more of a
powerful demigod. He is able to properly adjust His plans as needed, but remains
restricted to the diverse whims and decisions of man. His knowledge is
dependent on creation.
The trinitarian God, however, is able to
interact with creation in a personal and imminent way because He is inherently
able to differentiate between things within Himself and things outside of
Himself. Because diversity is
essential to His nature, God is able to distinguish between His thoughts,
emotions, acts, and time related events. Yet, He remains transcendent and
separate from creation because His unity
is also equally essential to His nature. Because He is able to differentiate
between His will of decree and His will of command, He is able to providently
and emotionally interact with creation in a personal way. But, He also knows
and sees all things at once. And, ultimately, nothing can cause God to suffer
because He knows and controls all things without there being any change within
Himself.
In sum, without the diversity of the three persons, God’s simplicity would lead to
pantheism. Conversely, without the oneness
of God’s essence, the relational properties inherent within the Trinity would
lead to open theism. Though from different directions, both pantheism and open
theism make God dependent on creation. The equal ultimacy of the oneness and
diversity of the Trinity is the only safeguard to keep us from falling on
either side of the ditch.
[15] And according to Michael Reeves, love was
“the motive behind creation” (Delighting
in the Trinity, 47). For His own glory, God chose to share His love with
His people. Or as Jonathan Edwards worded it: “God’s end in the creation of the
world consists in these two things, viz. to communicate himself and to glorify
himself. God created the world to communicate himself, not to receive anything”
(Jonathan Edwards, Approaching the End of
God’s Grand Design, 1743-1758, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach. vol. 25 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2006., 116 ).
