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Psalm 11:7
“The Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.”
As we have seen, because the three persons dwell within one another, there is no division of the divine essence whereby part of it is doled out to each person. They all occupy the same divine “space,” as it were, being coextensive with one another and possessing identical divine attributes.
Speaking of divine attributes points us to another doctrine that preserves the unity of God’s essence and helps us understand what the personal properties of the three persons are not: divine simplicity. Francis Turretin, the Reformed theologian who served as professor of theology at the Academy of Geneva about a century after John Calvin, gives a helpful definition of this term. By divine simplicity, Turretin explains, we mean that the divine nature is “free from all composition and division, but also [is] incapable of composition and divisibility.” That is, the divine nature is not made up of parts and cannot be divided up into parts.
Consider human beings. We are made up of two core “parts,” body and soul. Because we are composite beings, these parts are more basic to us than our existence as individual people. Someone greater than us—God—must join these parts together to make a human being. If God could be divided into parts, there would be things more basic to all reality than God, and whatever assembles the parts to “make” God would be greater than God. This cannot be; therefore, God is simple, not composite.
Moreover, humans are not identical to their attributes. Our attributes can change, but we remain who we are. Robert might gain or lose wisdom, but he will still essentially be Robert. Many of our attributes are also not identical to who we are essentially. Sarah might have blue eyes, but she could have brown eyes and still be essentially Sarah. This is not true of the Lord. He is His attributes because He simply is. “I am who I am,” God told Moses (Ex. 3:14). Properly speaking, God does not even have attributes the way that we do, for all His attributes are equal to one another and to His essence. His love is His power is His holiness is His knowledge and so on. God is His attributes. He does not have love; He is love: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). God does not have righteousness. He is His righteousness: “The Lord is righteous” (Ps. 11:7).
Divine simplicity, therefore, means that God is not composed of parts as we are.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The simplicity of God and the fact that the persons are not attributes help us understand that one person in the Godhead is not more or less of something than the other. The Father is not more sovereign than the Son or the Holy Spirit. The Son is not more loving than the Father or the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not holier than the Father or the Son. If we think that the persons differ in terms of Their attributes, we will fall into error.
For further study
- Deuteronomy 6:4
- Malachi 3:6
- Galatians 3:20
- 1 John 1:5
The bible in a year
- Numbers 1–2
- Mark 3:1–21