‘Behold, the Lamb of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
36th teaching
5.6.2013
“God’s Simplicity”
My wife and I listened to a sermon this morning and
the preacher said these very appropriate words: “We live in a
time when truth has been devalued and tolerance has been enthroned. Young men
and women are growing up in our churches with a kind of ‘how-to Christianity’
devoid of a solid understanding of biblical theology are trembling on the brink
of capitulation” (that is agreeing with and yielding to the statements of the
world).
I think
that’s an immensely insightful statement of the state of our generation in
Christianity. Young Christians know a great deal about being nice and friendly,
but not about why they should love their neighbor or be holy as God is holy or
in fact who this God-Person is.
And that quote also describes the gist of what we’re trying
to accomplish here. This is not a wistful series of Monday night studies
without aim. Neither is this a purely academic series intending to make you
feel smarter. I don’t feel that I arbitrarily chose this subject at random and
that we’re just meandering through rubbish.
No, we are attempting to establish a set of doctrines,
teachings descended to us from the King of Glory, which provide a system of
biblical teachings about God Almighty. That’s what we’re doing. We’re
establishing solid understanding of biblical theology, the knowledge of what we
believe and why we believe it, something which in many places among young
Christians is sorely lacking. You and I have to have this. We’ve got to have
this.
Now in reflecting over the past week upon our topic
tonight, I came across a realization. God is so great, so complex and so
incredible that an entire realm of scholastic study, which we call Theology,
has been devoted to Him. As complex as Biology is, as Mathematics is, as
Physics, Astronomy, Geology are… God is much more complex and so deserving of
His own field of study.
That being said, it’s ironic that we come to our topic
tonight. Our study is entitled: “God’s Simplicity”.
To even say that dredges up all kinds of ideas in our
minds. Is God really simple? Wouldn’t
having His own field of study, Theology, point to precisely the opposite?
It seems to me that as we get deeper into God in our
studies, that the learning becomes increasingly complex. With each study
systematically building upon the last, we have a clearer and clearer picture of
what God is, while at the same time being unable to look at it all at once.
It’s like looking at a colossal painting: your mind can’t take it all in at one
go, you have to look at parts and pieces.
It was Thomas Aquinas, the 13th priest, who said
something like this: “Because God is infinitely simple, God can only appear to
the finite mind as infinitely complex.”
So while we have studied and labored over these doctrines
about God’s metaphysical nature, we have by no means mastered them. We have
only served to summarize them. But these are all topics that can consume
lifetimes. Aquinas himself wrote a book he called Summa Theologica, a
compendium of all the main teachings of theology which he never finished. It is
simply too much.
With that said, we embark upon our topic of God’s
Simplicity knowing that nothing is as it seems: God’s infinite simplicity will
appear to our finite minds as infinitely complex. Our attempt, then, is to
summarize in teaching and to glean what we can.
We shall be aided by five points:
1.
What is Simplicity?
2.
A Lens of Interpretation
3.
The Origin of Simplicity
4.
The Biblical Basis for
Simplicity
5.
Simplicity in the Body of
Christ
And though Simplicity is a lesser known doctrine, it is not
without proof. We shall find that Simplicity has a solid biblical, historical
and theological basis. And while Simplicity is a doctrine that’s far from
simple, we shall take it one point at a time.
1.
What is Simplicity?
We begin with the definition. Before we start talking, we
must know what we’re talking about.
We use the word simple or simplicity in a modern way very
differently from what the word used to mean. When we say something is simple,
we mean that it is easy to understand.
A perfect example comes to me from memory. When I was
really young, my parents took me to the doctor. Doctor Pen, if I remember her
name, had one of these kiddie toys in her lobby. When I was really little, I
remember thinking that this was the crazy-coolest thing in the world, and that
it was so complex with its colored tracks and blocks. But when I went back
there a little older, I saw the same toy and at once understood it. It was no
longer complex, but it had become simple and easy to understand.
That’s how we use the word simple today.
Another example is if you call a person simple-minded or a
simpleton, you mean they are stupid. Remembering my childhood doctor’s visit
reminded me of this nursery rhyme: “Simple Simon met a pieman, going to the
fair; says Simply Simon to the pieman, let me taste your ware. Says the pieman
to Simple Simon, show me first your penny; says Simple Simon to the pieman,
indeed I have not any. Simple Simon went a-fishing, for to catch a whale; all
the water he had got, was in his mother’s pail.” Obviously, Simple Simon was
not too bright, trying to buy pies without any money, trying to catch a whale
by fishing in a bucket. Simple Simon was indeed a lowly and ignorant boy.
Now of course, we are saying none of these things about
God. We’re not saying He is easy to understand. Nor are we saying He is stupid!
Turn to our first passage in Mark 12:28-30. The First Commandment takes us back to the great
Shema in Deuteronomy 6. A central concept of this God Being
is the concept of Oneness, not just solitarily (meaning ‘there is only one’)
but in unity (meaning ‘He is totally one in Himself).
Simplicity, in theology-context, means without parts. He is the opposite of complex, which means composed of many parts. We’re saying
then that God has no parts. And though parts can come apart, something that has
no parts cannot. God cannot come apart. He cannot be divided. By this
definition, a good synonym for Simplicity is Indivisibility. We can use these
interchangeably.
That’s in contrast to our beings: human beings. Human
beings are made up of parts. And we can definitely come apart. The head bone’s
connected to the neck bone and so on and on. We are materially complex, but God
is not made up of parts.
Another way to think of it is like this: God is not like a
machine. A machine is made up of parts. Each part functions so that the machine
works. If a part is missing or breaks or is destroyed, then the machine comes
apart and stops working. Whereas in God, there are no parts. God is not
dependent upon any part or piece to keep Him going, since He is dependent upon
nothing but has Life in Himself. And since He has no parts or pieces, no parts
or pieces of God can go missing or be destroyed. He is totally and absolutely
whole.
Divine Simplicity states that the One God is absolutely One.
He is a single Being, but He is also a Being of singularity. There is One God
and this God is One. He not only has
unity but He also is united. He is
indivisible. We cannot think of God as having compartments or sections or
pieces.
Simplicity, it sounds like, is very closely related to
Unity. Simplicity and Unity, in fact, are kindred doctrines. Unity says in the
positive that God is One. Simplicity is more detailed and says in the negative
that God has no parts. They are simply two different ways to view the divine
truth. God is absolutely the One and Only God and His essence is absolutely One
and without composition of parts.
You know what, go back to the toy. The toy, like I said,
fascinated my baby-mind, but when I grew older, I solved its riddles and grew
bored of it. Perhaps the greatest crime in Christianity is growing bored of
God. You realize that God is unlike anything and everyone else? Only He is
absolutely simple and indivisible. This is not a communicable attribute. And
though men and women have devoted their lives to studying the parts of objects,
its composition of atoms and particles and chemicals, eventually there comes an
end of study. There is no end of study in God. We shall devote not our
lifetimes, but all of eternity to knowing Him! And we shall never grow bored
with the infinitely simple that appears as the infinitely complex.
*So we know that Simplicity means without parts. Divine Simplicity then means that the One God is
Absolutely One and Indivisible. And it is a kindred-doctrine to God’s Unity.
2. A Lens of
Interpretation
Simplicity is a great doctrine for many reasons, one of
which because it provides a healthy lens of interpreting Scripture. Without
Simplicity, you might read the Bible, run with it, and get into all kinds of
speculative heresy. And as we all know, heresy bad.
Here’s a few examples of how Simplicity helps us interpret
the Bible correctly:
First example, the Trinity. Some have taken the biblical
teaching of the Holy Trinity to mean that Christianity has multiple gods. Not
so. The One God is One. And the One God has three Persons, but One united and
indivisible essence.
To ask the question “what part of God of God is Jesus
Christ, or what percentage of God is the Father?” is to ask the wrong question.
One and the same triangle has three corners, and that doesn’t destroy the
oneness of the triangle nor does it destroy the existence of the three corners.
Rather, the three corners define the triangle.
Jesus said that He and the Father are One (John 10:30), not meaning that they are
identical in relationship (no, the Son is the Son and the Father is the
Father), nor meaning that they are identical in the Incarnation (no, the Son
became flesh and the Father did not). He means rather that He and the Father are
One in essence. They are the same Being (divine essence) although there are
differences in relationship and differences of action.
Simplicity does not destroy the Holy Trinity. It clarifies
it.
Another example, look at Luke 18:18-19. The ruler addresses Christ as ‘Good Teacher’ and
Jesus points out that no one is good but One, that is, God; signifying that
either Jesus is not good or He is not God. But hang on a minute!
Elsewhere in the Bible, men are called good. A few times in
psalms and proverbs, the writings address the “good man” in contrast to the
wicked. In Acts 11:24 it even says
that Barnabas was a good man. Does that mean that Barnabas, according to the
words of Christ, was God if he was good?
The answer is: of course not. So then, there must be a
difference in which a man is called a good man and in which God Himself is
good. And let us consider that the difference is revealed through this doctrine
of Divine Simplicity.
See, if Simplicity is true, then God has no parts. And if
He has no parts, then His attributes and qualities are not parts. God does not
have a “holy part” or an “omnipotent part” or a “justice part”. But if these
attributes are not parts, then what are they.
The attributes describe by analogy what God actually is, so
that we can say that God does not have goodness, rather He is goodness. His attributes are totally and absolutely indivisible
from Himself. So when Jesus says “No one
is good but God”, He means it. Nobody is
good as God is goodness.
Human beings have love and can exhibit love, but of God
alone the Scripture says He “IS love”
(I John 4:8). Furthermore, God does
not just have holiness, but He is holy. God does not just have justice, but He is justice. God does not just have light, but He is light.
Do not fall into the danger, though, of assuming that God
is identical to light in such a way that God is merely an impersonal form of
radiation. God is not goodness in a way that means He is an abstract moral
concept. No, God is definitely a personality. He is a single Being with
multiple descriptions. Each of the attributes of God describes something
different about His One Being.
Norman Geisler writes: “There is no contradiction in
holding that God has many attributes and only one essence, for many things can
be true of one and the same object. To cite an example we have already seen, a
stone can be hard, round, and gray. None of these are the same attribute, but
each of them refers to one and the same stone. In the same way, God’s many
attributes are not the same, but the same God has all these attributes. Since
no single attribution reveals everything about His infinite nature, it is
necessary to say many things of God in order to understand Him better. That is
to say, the reason we have to attribute many different things to God is that no
finite concept can exhaust what can be known about His infinite nature.”
The multiple attributes do not disprove Simplicity because
they do not point to multiplicity or complexity in God. Rather, they are
multiple descriptions of the God of Divine Simplicity and Indivisibility.
You see then how Simplicity helps to define and clarify
biblical statements about God. It shows that His goodness is something
dissimilar to human goodness. He have
goodness but God is goodness. That
brings a whole new take on the phrase “God is good, all the time”. He is good
because He is the attribute of goodness, He embodies it, while at the same time
remaining a distinct personality and not an abstract concept.
3.
The Origin of Simplicity
If you searched for your Project Scriptura verses, you
might have noticed that the Bible does not use the word Simplicity to describe this doctrine of God’s being without parts.
So where then did this doctrine come from?
Simplicity has its roots in Greek philosophy. That is not
to say that the Greeks invented it, nor does it discredit the truth of
Simplicity. The Greeks were responsible for a lot of ideas that we still use
today without even thinking about it. The biblical concept of the Logos, the Word
in John 1, was a Greek concept. But
the Bible identifies the truth that the Greeks had just reached and discards
the falsity with which they held that truth.
But for example, Aristotle suggested the idea of a supreme
being he called the First Mover, a simple and unchanging form that governs all
motion and change in the universe.
Now beyond the Greeks, into the realm of Christianity, the
doctrine of Simplicity was held by the Early Church. A few examples:
Irenaeus, a 2nd century Bishop, wrote: “For the
Father of all… is a simple, uncompounded Being, without diverse members.”
Apollinarius, Bishop of Laodicea in 360AD, wrote: “The
divine spirit is one, of single form, single character, single substance,
indivisible.”
Origen Adamantius, early Christian scholar, wrote: “But
God, who is the beginning of all things, is not to be regarded as a composite
being…”
Beyond the men of the early church and into the Medieval
period, the doctrine of Simplicity was refined and defended by three men who
would become the main voices of Christianity for centuries. These men raised
high the banner of Simplicity in their writings. They are the triple-A’s:
Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas. These men helped to shape Western thought,
literature and theology for generations to come, and in their perennial
writings each of them taught Divine Simplicity.
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius in Africa, wrote that
nothing “can have existence apart from Him whose existence is simple and
indivisible… This Trinitiy is one God. And, although it is a Trinity, it is
nonetheless simple”.
Anselm of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk and
philosopher, who wrote on the connection between Immutability and Simplicity.
He said “The supreme Nature is in no wise composite, but is supremely simple,
supremely immutable… It is evident that this supreme Substance is without
beginning and without end… immutable and without parts.”
And Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas, was an Italian theologian. We’ve
referenced him multiple times. He writes probably the most on the subject of
Simplicity and provides several defenses for the doctrine in his writings.
Beyond these, the triple-A’s, Simplicity enjoyed near
widespread adherence through the Reformation until the modern day when it has
been challenged by modern philosophers. As you can see, however, Simplicity has
had major historic belief that measures major historical proof.
4.
The Biblical Basis for
Simplicity
We’ve heard a lot from the wisdom of men, but what does the
Word of God say to us? This is where you come in. What did you discover in the
Bible in relation to God’s Simplicity?
As you may have found, this is a somewhat difficult
doctrine to find. It is a doctrine which is very interrelated with the other
attributes. In fact, you can logically arrive at Simplicity from the teaching
of some of the other attributes.
For example, as we saw earlier, the attribute of God’s
Unity is one which implies Simplicity. If God is absolutely One, then He has no
parts. If He is absolutely One, then He cannot be divided.
Can you think of any other attributes of God which imply
God’s Simplicity?
Example: Immateriality – material things are made up of
parts, but if something is immaterial it does not necessarily have parts. And
God is invisible, immaterial and spiritual: He does not have parts made up of
materials that can be separated or destroyed.
Example: Immutability – division is a kind of change, but
if God cannot and does not change, then God cannot be divided, or He is in
other words simple and indivisible.
Example: Infinity – if God is infinite then He cannot have
parts. You cannot have an infinite number of parts since no matter how big the
number is, you can always add one more, and one more than infinity is not
infinity. Therefore, an infinite Being cannot have parts since infinite by
definition is absolutely simple and not made up of parts or numbers.
Each of these are biblically sound teachings about God and
each of these show strong proof for the doctrine of God’s Simplicity.
Another extremely fascinating note in relation to
Simplicity: consider the fact that if God were complex, then He too would need
a creator. It’s because He is simple that He can be the First Uncaused Causer.
How so? Well, remember one of the classic arguments for the
existence of God? The teleological argument argues from design to a Designer.
It posits that the universe has design, or complexity, therefore there must be
a Designer.
Now if we take this same logic, then God Himself cannot be
complex or possessing design, otherwise He too would require a Designer by the
same teleological principle. So our own arguments for God’s Existence prove
that His Existence must be Simple.
5.
Simplicity in the Body of Christ
We’ve talked a great deal about the Simplicity and
Indivisibility of God’s essence. It may not be totally comprehensible to us,
but it is not unintelligible. This is a part of the revelation of God. God is
absolutely One and without parts. There are no schisms or separations within
the essence of God. Though God is multiple Persons, no disagreement ruins His
unity.
If this is the case in God, then why does the Body of
Christ suffer so many schisms, so many separations and disagreements? We are
multiple persons that each form One Body, and yet any survey of modern
Christendom will show you that the Body of Christ is anything but unified. God
may be absolutely One, but His church is anything but.
We often spend more time arguing and debating the finer
parts of theology and splitting churches over disagreements than reaching out
to the lost and equipping the saints.
Think about it: if the Church were an actual and physical
body, what do you suppose it would look like? Healthy? Reliable? Fit? Strong? Or
would there be a lot of corrective or life-saving surgery going on to rescue it
from fatal sicknesses and wounds?
I think that this subject of God’s Simplicity as it relates
to His Oneness is a topic which needs proclaiming in our day, and one which should
teach us to be united as He is united.
It’s not about whether such and such a church dresses up
too much or is too casual. It’s not about whether such and such a church meets
in this or that building. It’s not about whether such and such a church plays
this kind of music or that kind of music, or too much music or too little
music, or how much technology or not enough technology, or too much guitar or
not enough cowbell. The basis of the Church remains the basis of the Church:
the Deity of Christ, the Gospel, the teaching of the Word, Fellowship,
Missions, Evangelism, etc… but anything other than the basis is peripheral.
Do you remember the Pledge of Allegiance? I remember saying
it in school. As a young boy, it was a profound and reverent moment, saying
those words and feeling like I belonged to something greater than myself, to a
great nation of indivisible individuals.
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of
America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.”
Now that seems like an old man’s fancy. Now that sounds
like some golden dream unattainable. Now America seems like a splintered
country. But what about the Church? What about the Church, the primary
institution of this nation? Does the Church stand under God and indivisible?
Now that’s a question on a church to church level, but what
about on a Christian to Christian level? That’s closer to home. That’s a little
harder to address. But it’s all the more important of a question. You are a
part of the Church. What are you doing to keep the unity? How unified are you
with that one Christian brother or sister you just can’t stand? You don’t have
to like them. You have to love them.
It all depends on what you’ve made the center of your
relationship. If you relate to someone on the basis of what movies, books,
celebrities, music you like and they don’t, you’ll disagree. But if you center
your Christian relationships on God as revealed in His Word, if we focus on the
Oneness of God, if we make God the center of our Christian relationships, then
there’s no room for disagreement except for things that don’t matter anyway,
and you can both see that.
And then the Church shall function as a body, as a machine,
with each of its parts acting like parts and not personal parades. Then it
shall be like the spokes of a wheel. We, like the spokes, grow closer to the
center, God, and similarly grow closer in unity to each other.
Ephesians 4:1-6 says
“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord,
beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all
lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,
endeavoring the keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one
body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one
Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all...’”
Does that sound like the current state of Christian unity
in the church today? No? Well, what are you going to do about it? How will you
as a part of the non-unified church endeavor to keep the unity?
There are bigger things to fuss about than the wee matters
we get so caught up with that end up splintering the very body of our Lord.
It’s all an over-complexification. We need a simplification of our focus, a
focus upon Christ alone.
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