No Divine Simplicity Without Multiplicity

Divine Simplicity, as a locus that comes when theologians from the 21^st century retrieve the classical theologians from yesteryear, has come to be an essential aspect of the theological task; at least for orthodoxy, when it comes to thinking (and worshipping) God. I have written elsewhere on the dangers of retrieving this doctrine without do attention to the Christian retranslation of this sort of philosophical concept; but I want to reiterate that, and emphasize an aspect that I think must be emphasized when attempting to think of God’s simplicity (in se) when we do so as Christian people. As an alternative, or better, a qualification to emphasizing Divine simplicity, I think the Christian must emphasize the multiplicity of God. I think there is a serious lacuna, when it comes to most discussions on the simplicity of God, in the sense that folks are so dire on making sure that we protect God’s unicity, that there is a failure to emphasize what in fact the character of that unity is for the Christian God.

For the Christian, God is not simply simple, if we mean by that, in regard to an emphasis, that God is a singularity; as if He is a philosophical monad, or pure being. Clearly, Christian theologians who constantly harp on God’s simplicity as a must (and I think it is if qualified correctly), must also be just as vigilant, when discussing this issue, to emphasize that God is simple as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; or to use the conciliar language: He is one in three / three in one (De Deo uno De Deo trino / De Deo trino De Deo uno). We should never speak of God as merely simple, or non-composite, without emphasizing what God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ does: i.e. that God is Son of the Father / Father of the Son / by the bond and fellowshipping of the Holy Spirit. This is the character of God’s simplicity that is given shape by this eternally or ‘onto’ relational reality; a reality of multiplicity in simplicity and simplicity in multiplicity.

As Athanasius was wont to emphasize, contrary to his Arian counterpart[s]: God is a unity of being not simply a unity of will.[1] TF Torrance captures these things well in his Reformed dialogue with the Orthodox Church. He recounts a statement he and they all agreed upon, in regard to a doctrine of God, as they discussed the Monarxia of God. The reader will see how important it is, for these interlocutors, to emphasize God’s unity of being, and how that is given shape by the triune reality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in perichoretic inter and intra relation.

Of far-reaching importance is the stress laid upon the Monarchy of the Godhead in which all three divine Persons share, for the whole indivisible Being of God belongs to each of them as it belongs to all of them together. This is reinforced by the unique conception of coinherent or perichoretic relations between the different Persons in which they completely contain and interpenetrate one another while remaining what they distinctively are in their otherness as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is intrinsically Triune, Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity. There are no degrees of Deity in the Holy Trinity, as is implied in a distinction between the underived Deity of the Father and the derived Deity of the Son and the Spirit. Any notion of subordination is completely ruled out. The perfect simplicity and indivisibility of God in his Triune Being mean that the Arche (ἀρχή) or Monarchia (μοναρχία) cannot be limited to one Person, as Gregory the Theologian pointed out. While there are inviolable distinctions within the Holy Trinity, this does not detract from the truth that the whole Being of God belongs to all of them as it belongs to each of them, and thus does not detract from the truth that the Monarchy is One and indivisible, the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity.[2]

There is a reason, in the history of theological method, as to why God’s singularity is typically tied to discussions on Divine simplicity, but for our purposes I simply want to focus on the positive reality that when Christians speak of God’s a se simplicity that this must be done within the context supplied by revelation. In other words, as Athanasius did before, we must think God from the Son, as the Son of the Father by the Holy Spirit. This changes the way we think of Divine simplicity; it removes that discussion away from an abstract philosophical conception, and reifies it in the concrete reality that God is a relationality of triune love; this is the shape of the Christian God’s simplicity. He is non-composite, the sui generis ultimate without any analogy; as such we must rely slavishly upon His Self-revelation about who He is; we must repudiate any other foundation than the one that has already been laid in Jesus Christ (cf. I Cor. 3.11). Simplicity, for the Christian, cannot be a standalone reality; it must be radically qualified by the reality of God’s triune multiplicity, and what that does to such grammar and thinking.

 

[1] See Jon M. Robertson, Christ as Mediator: A Study of the Theologies of Eusebius of Caesarea, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Athanasius of Alexandria (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs).

[2] Theological Dialogue between Orthodox and Reformed Churches, vol. 2, ‘Significant Features, a Common Reflection on the Agreed Statement’, ch. 7, p. 231 cited by Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 185.