The Simplicity of God

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“The Lord your God, the Lord is one. ”

Deut. 6:4

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The Simplicity of God
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The Lesser Known Attributes of God

God is love.  He is the truth.  God is light.  He is also a consuming fire.

Notice that that first line did not say:  God is not mostly love, and some truth, a little bit of light, and a dash of consuming fire.  

God is all of the above…and more.  As we have seen in this series alone, God is blessed, all knowing, independent, and impassable.  

This is, of course, only scratching the surface of what God is.  But it brings us to the doctrine of God’s simplicity.  

To say that God is simple does not mean that God is dim-witted or slow.  Neither does it mean that God is easy to understand.  Rather,

“Simple, as a divine attribute, is the opposite of compound. The simplicity of God means God is not made up of his attributes. He does not consist of goodness, mercy, justice, and power. He is goodness, mercy, justice, and power. Every attribute of God is identical with his essence.”*

It could be easy to think of God as a cake.  A cake is one thing, but it is made up of different ingredients.  You combine eggs, flour, milk, sugar, into a bowl, mix them together, and bake it.  Out comes a cake.

Some might be tempted to think that if you take all the attributes of God and combine them together, you have one God.  But that is not the Christian God.  He is not composed of parts.  He is not the sum of various attributes.  His attributes are His essence.

One way to think of God’s simplicity is like this:  Wherever God is, there you will find all of God’s attributes.  Being that God is everywhere (omnipresent), every attribute of God is in all places in all its fullness.

This is the opposite of your bike.  Your bike is composed of parts.  There are wheels, a seat, handlebars, a chain, and crank system.  You put them together and you get a bike.

God is not like that.  While we can distinguish God’s attributes, we cannot say that God is made up of different attributes.  That would give the impression that the Lord is like something you would purchase from Ikea.

It helps when you remember that God is pure spirit.  Bodies have parts.  Material things, like flowers, are compound things because they have petals, a stem, and roots.  

As a spirit, God doesn’t have parts.  He is an indivisible unity because He is a pure essence.

Understanding the simplicity of God will keep us from falling into various errors.  For instance, many people in our day would like to say that God is love, and they would make His love the dominating aspect of His being.  

Others may posit that God’s holiness is the primary attribute from which all other attributes stem.

Such views would make God’s nature lopsided.  In truth, there is no one attribute or part of His being that dominates or stands out above the others.  Neither is there an attribute that is less significant.  

Put simply, God’s attributes are essential to His essence.   Who He is is what He is.

That may not seem simple to grasp, but it is expressive of the simplicity of God.  The Lord our God does not have parts.  He is an indivisible being, a unitary whole.  

Maybe the best way to sum up the simplicity of God is with the words of Moses,

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Deut. 6:4)


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*DeYoung, Kevin, “Theological Primer: The Simplicity of God.”

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