Truth Unites - Why Believe in Divine Simplicity?

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund gives three reasons in five minutes to believe in divine simplicity. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

This video is going to give three reasons in five minutes for why Christians should believe in divine simplicity. If you want a longer case, see this video, which I'll link to in the video description. Going to talk fast here. Number one, divine simplicity is foundational to a biblical doctrine of God. So in the Bible, God is portrayed as supreme and unrivaled and transcendent. You think of God revealing his name to Moses as I am who I am, or the Apostle Paul saying that all things are from and through and to God. Throughout the book of Isaiah, you think of these repeat. declarations from God that I alone am God, I am the first and the last, there is no one like me, etc.

It's from those kinds of passages that Christians have always affirmed God's Aseity, meaning God exists from himself, God is not derived from anything external to himself, and God's absoluteness, meaning God is not conditioned by anything external to himself. And divine simplicity is important to uphold both of those doctrines as well as the general transcendence of God. simplicity simply means, I knew I was going to say that, simplicity simply means that God is not made up of parts. God is not broken down into more basic ontological constituents. God is his attributes. So God is not merely loving and righteous, but love and righteousness. And if we don't say that, if God merely instantiates his attributes, then in some sense they would exist independently of

Him. God would not be utterly absolute and self-determined. It'd be like love and righteousness are just floating out here somehow, and then God comes along and just happens to correspond to them, and that won't do. So divine simplicity is necessary to protect the godness of God. Number two, divine simplicity is a nearly universal part of Christian witness and worship. Basically, among all Christians at all times, the great theologian, historical theologian, Richard Mueller, calls divine simplicity one of the normative assumptions of theology, basically in every era of church history. It's a kind of consensus doctrine, and not merely so as a philosophical appendage, but as a vital part of the witness of the church and the

worship of the church. For example, in the late second century in his defense to the Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Comedus, yes, the emperors in the movie Gladiator, the early Christian apologist Athenagoras used divine simplicity to distinguish Christian theism from the polytheism of the day. He just assumed that's part of the Christian conception of God. Later among the church fathers, divine simplicity was everywhere put to use to ground Trinitarianism as monotheistic. More on that in a moment. In the medieval era, divine simplicity was the first thing that Thomas Aquinas sought to establish about God after proving that he exists in the Summa Theologica. In Bonaventure's mystical theology, divine simplicity was so important for establishing that God

can communicate with creatures. You know, a lot of modern theologians seem to have this idea that divine simplicity is a kind of static doctrine, slicing God off from meaningful relationship to creatures, but pre-modern theologians had the exact opposite instinct. Summed up like this, Herman Bovink, the Great Reform Theologian, basically said Christian theology has always been conscious of its calling to teach God's simplicity. This is simply how we've always worshipped God. Reason number three, divine simplicity establishes the Trinity as monotheistic, meaning we believe in one God. This is one of the great challenges against us. If we believe in the Trinity that there are three persons in the godhead, how can we still believe in only one God? Well, in recent years, a lot of

theologians have tried to use this idea of pericharis to address this concern. Paracharisis means interpenetration or mutual indwelling among the divine persons. Some people use it also for the two natures of Christ. So Yergen Moltman's social Trinitarianism, for example, went that route. But the traditional way of resolving this challenge among in response to early heretics, but then later on in response to Jewish and Muslim criticism, was divine simplicity. And the Trinity is under fire today. This is what we need today as well to defend the Trinity. Augustine makes this move all throughout De Trinitatte.

He's basically saying, if God is not simple, then each individual member of the Godhead is less than fully God. The Cappadocian fathers in the East make a similar argument, John of Damascus after them. saying the reason we don't have three gods is because the divine nature is simple rather than compound. And that makes sense because if all you have is paracarices, which I'm not denying paracarices as true, but if that's your only explanatory mechanism, then you have to say why we don't have three interpenetrating gods. What is needed is not simply a mechanism for binding the three persons into each other, but into the one divine essence. And so the doctrine of divine simplicity is a resource for us in defending the Trinity today. That's been the way it's been done.

So in sum, divine simplicity is important because it's basic to who God is. It's always been how Christians have worshipped God. And it's key to understanding how the father, the son, and the spirit constitute one God.