Can It Be All So Simple?

Jonathan Williams

When we begin to speak on theology proper (the doctrine of God) it is often hard to know where to start. There are a lot of good places to begin your study. You could begin with God’s self-existence, that He is eternal and many other places. But I believe that the best place to start is God’s simplicity. That is a key point in classical theology but more importantly it is a key point in Scripture. It is what we mean whenever we say that God is one God. We find that in Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear O Israel the LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Most of the time we see this as a statement of Israel’s monotheism. Their belief that there is only one God. That is not wrong. It is not less than that, but it’s more than that. Yes, Moses is saying that the LORD is the only true God. There are no other divine beings, God is the creator of the universe and as such, He stands above all things as utterly different from them. God is vastly different in His nature from the angels, humans, animals, planets, stars and so on. But there is something else that is being expressed by Moses. The Hebrew word is dx'a, which means one in the sense of unity as well as one in numerical value.[1] The point of this is that there is one and only one that is like the LORD. He is the only divine being, He is the only one with the divine essence. This is what we mean when we say that God is simple. We mean that God is undivided, that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit do not make up parts of God or have different essences but that God has one singular and undivided essence and that the three persons of the Godhead share the same, identical one essence.[2]

In other words, unlike human and other creatures, God is not a compound of parts. For example, we as humans are made by God body and soul. We see this in Genesis 2:7, when God forms Adam from the dust of the ground and breathes into him the breath of life. He forms Adam’s body and He breathes the soul into him, so we’re made up of two parts: body and soul. God is not like that. We know from John 4:24 that Christ says that God is a spirit. That He is not made up of anything else and He cannot be made up of different parts. The reason is that if He was then that would need an explanation. Things that are complex have to have a creator. Watches, planets and people aren’t just always here because they are complex. They have to be formed together of the many parts that make them up to be what they are. This isn’t so with God. We learn from Exodus 3 and the burning bush that God has always existed. Paul tells us in Acts 17 that it is in God that we have being, this is because He has life in Himself as Christ says in John 5:26. God is not complex, in the sense that He is not made up of parts. He is one singular essence, which is not divided.

This also means that God’s attributes like love, holiness, goodness, truth, wisdom, wrath, mercy, compassion, immutability and others, do not make up what it means to be God. All of the divine attributes don’t come together to form the essence of God. Sometimes we are tempted to consider it that way. That attributes + attributes = God’s essence. However, simplicity tells us that God’s attributes are His essence and His essence is His attributes. Matthew Barrett explains it well, “God does not merely possess love, He is love. God does not merely possess holiness, God is holy. And so on. His substance or essence is characterized by intrinsic oneness.”[3] Other examples of this are that Jesus says that He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), that God is light (1 John 1:5), He is love (1 John 4:8), and He is wisdom (1 Cor 1:30). In other places, Scripture identifies God with His attributes.[4] Examples of this are seen where God swears by Himself (Heb 6:13) and He swears by His holiness (Amos 4:3). He creates by Himself (Isa 44:24) yet He creates by His power (Rom 1:20).[5] The point again is that God is God. He is not able to be divided. His attributes cannot be pitted against each other because that are His essence. He isn’t wrathful at one moment and gracious the next. He is all of His attributes all the time. The same God is wrath is just and is mercy and is grace.

This also means that God has one will. Since He has one essence He has one will. The three persons share the one will of God. As John Owen puts it, “The Father, Son and Spirit, have not distinct wills. They are one God, and God’s will is one, as being an essential property of His nature; and therefore are two wills in the one person of Christ, whereas there is but one will in the three persons of the Trinity.”[6] In other words, the Trinity has one will as a part of their one nature and it is completely unified. Christ as the incarnate God and man has two wills because He is two natures united in one person, so one human will and one divine will. The point however, is that it was the will of God, the Father, Son and Spirit, to create, love, redeem and sanctify His people. There is no rank in the Trinity. The Father, Son and Spirit are equal in power, glory and authority. But it is also not as if the Father didn’t love us, the Son did and the Spirit was indifferent. No, the entire Godhead loves us and willed to redeem us.

A good question should come from that, how do you know that there is only one simple, shared essence? We know this because the Scripture tells us this. Jesus says in John 10:30 and 38 that He and the Father are one and that they are in one another. In John 14:20, He reiterates that same truth that He is in the Father. 1 Corinthians 2:10-12, tell us that the Holy Spirit is able to know the mind of God because He searches the deep things of God, in other words, the Holy Spirit knows the deep things of God because He shares in the same essence as the Father and the Son. Again, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:17 says that the Lord is the Spirit. Within the context of 2 Corinthians 3, Paul is discussing the difference between the Old and New Covenant, it is clear here that Lord is the understanding of LORD, as in the divine name of God. Paul is clearly saying that the Spirit is the LORD the God of the Old Testament. It is the same force as when Christ says in John 8:58, before Abraham was I AM and the Jews are ready to stone Him. It is clear that Christ is saying He is the LORD. Adding to this, Jesus tells Philip in John 14:9, that if they have seen Jesus they have seen the Father. How can this be? We know that the Son is the Second Person of the Trinity, He is not the Father. The reason Christ can say this is because there is one Godhead or essence and it is not divisible and so the Son and the Father, as well as the Spirit, share it, so we can actually know the Father through Christ.[7]

So, who cares? That is a lot of technical information with some practicalities thrown in but let’s make it practical to end. Since God is one simple essence shared by the persons of the Father, the Son and the Spirit, we don’t believe in multiple gods but One. That One God has existed forever without need of us. But that God completely unified in will between the Three Persons created us and when we fell, Christ stepped into Creation and while keeping that one full divine nature took on human flesh (Phil 2:5-11) to redeem us by His life, death and resurrection. So that through Him, the Father would be made known to us (John 1:18) and we would see the Father through Christ (John 14:9) and we would be united Him through the Spirit (John 14:16) to keep us forever until we behold His face (Rev 22:4). The point is that our God is great and greatly to be praised and though He did not have to in His goodness He has come so that we can be with Him. Not to be with a lesser god, a false idea of god, or mask that He puts on but with the One Triune God now and forever.

The LORD be with you all!

Rev. Jonathan Williams

[1] William L. Holladay ed., A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988), 9.

[2] Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians, 3.3-4.

[3] Matthew Barrett, Simply Trinity The Unmanipulated Father, Son and Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2021), 137.

[4] D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), 94.

[5] Butner, Trinitarian Dogmatics, 94.

[6] John Owen, Exposition of Hebrews 1-3:6, in Works, 19:87.

[7] Athanasius, On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleuca, 52.