Heavy Theology | The Hardest Concepts in Christian Thought預覽

“Keep It Simple, Stupid”

Whatever you think of the Trinity, you need to stop playing around with ice and clovers. Pastors all the time will say that God’s like water — ice from one angle, water from another, steam from a third. Or leaves on a clover. Ultimately, those are insufficient. 

God. Does not depend. On your perception.

He doesn’t have aspects perceived by the believer. The first thing you need to know about God is that he’s simple. 

When we call God simple, we don’t mean he’ll ♫ be a simple kind of man ♫ or that he’s stupid. We mean that he’s not composed of parts. His being is his attributes. His attributes are his being. He has no parts in space (spatial simplicity) and he has no parts in time (temporal simplicity). He’s without the kind of metaphysical complexity where he would have different parts distinct from himself (property simplicity).

Meaning that we don’t say that God has goodness, but rather that God is goodness. Not that God looks beautiful, but that God is beauty. Not that God seems infinite, but that God is infinity. Not that God — compared to us — feels eternal, but that God is eternity. Not that God has an unchangeable side, but that God is immutability per se. Not that God speaks the truth, but that God is truth — all truth, total truth. Not that God took primacy over all powers, but that God is prime — the essence of primacy. These all flow out of asiety — being as such, being existing in and of itself.

In other words, the only self-sufficient being is God. He comes from himself and goes into himself. Literally he is “from-selfness.” You’re not. Everything else in all creation is contingent upon him, depends on him. So when we talk about his simplicity, we’re talking about what he is, not an aspect. And when we’re talking about unity, we’re further defining what he is, not an aspect. Same with infinity, eternity, immutability, primary, truth, goodness, beauty, etc. 

He has no parts. 

Yet we walk with divided minds. 

We are not God. 

We are only men.

Broken men. Men with attributes. 

And He is divinely simple: he is one. Divine simplicity is divine essence.