The Simplicity of God made Simple

Do you know someone who is typically warm, generous, and kind, but every now and again, a mood strikes and they become cold, bitter, and severe?

Sometimes, they can be the most enjoyable person to be around that you know. At other times, you couldn't be far enough from them even if you were on the opposite side of the globe. You never quite know which version of your friend you will encounter each time you meet.

So every encounter is preceded by anxiety. Am I getting the "light side" or the "dark side" today?

Most of us have known someone like this, and if we are honest, there's probably at least a little bit of that person in each of us.

But here's the question that is of most importance: Is God like that?

 

Approaching God in Prayer

Many Christians, whether they would admit it or not, live as though the answer is yes.

They picture God as having a loving side and a wrathful side. There's "merciful" God and "just" God, and we pray that it's the Merciful One who meets us at the pearly gates because, deep down, we know that if God is totally just we won't get through.

So, we pray in such a way that we approach God in "parts," hoping to appeal to His gentler side, rather than His severe side.

 

What "Simple" Really Means

Thomas Aquinas, in his treatment of the simplicity of God, offers an articulation of a doctrine that, if we actually get it, totally undermines this bifurcated/fractured image of God.

“Simple” does not mean God is vague or unimpressive. When we refer to someone who is "simple" we usually mean lacking in intelligence, not particularly astute. We use "simple" as a euphemism. We tend to think of "simple" things as less valuable than "complex" things. A small piece of glass, alone, is not nearly as valuable as an iPhone, which also includes glass. When things are more complex, they are more expensive to produce. So, we tend to associate "simplicity" with a kind of lesser status. We want devices, and phones, and automobiles, with more features, not less.

Usually. Unless you've been so overwhelmed by the complexity of such features, that a part of you longs for the day when you used to have to "crank" a handle to lower your window. Of when reading a book meant flipping a page rather than e-mailing your friendly neighborhood author asking, "How in the world do I get this e-book on my device?"

Yeah, I get those e-mails every day :)

Well, none of that is what we mean when we say (and Aquinas said) that God is absolutely simple.

The doctrine of "divine simplicity" simply means (see what I did there) that God is not composed of various parts; parts that might have to take turns, or different components that could contradict one another (see Summa Theologiae, I, Q. 3, A. 2).

When Aquinas asks whether God is composed of matter and form, he argues from the logic of what composition entails. Creatures are composites; their life and responses emerge from what they are “made of.”

To be a "dog" means not merely that you have fur. Rabbits and cats have fur. It doesn't just mean that you walk on four legs, because cats and bears do that. It doesn't even mean, solely, that you have canine DNA, because so does a blood sample in a lab, but that sample is not, properly, a dog.

To be a "dog" means all of those things (what philosophers call the "accidents") come together, and thus through these things we recognize that the composite is a dog in essence.

But God is not a composite reality.

To establish this point, Aquinas invites us look a little deeper into the analogical use of anthropomorphisms about God, the emotional language attributed to Him in Scripture.

When Scripture says the Lord is “angry,” it does not mean God is stirred like a creature whose passions wrestle against His more level-headed intellect and will. Aquinas explains that such language is used “on account of a similitude of effect,” and therefore is metaphorical:

“Anger and the like are attributed to God on account of a similitude of effect… God’s punishment is metaphorically spoken of as His anger” (Summa Theologiae, I, Q. 3, A. 2).

That matters immensely. And while it sounds very technical and philosophical, Aquinas is actually making a very pastoral point.

The God we meet in prayer is not one in conflict with Himself, as if his various attributes were fighting it out on some kind of cosmic inner inner battlefield where one emotion cancels another. God does not contain competing “sides” that take turns ruling the day, and leading His people.

Aquinas’s point is not merely that God is calm; it is that God cannot be a part of anything, since He is the first efficient cause who rules without commingling.

This truth is plainly evident in Scripture.

Consider first the great revelation of God’s name at the burning bush. When Moses asks God His name, the answer comes: “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14).

God does not define Himself by “roles” among other roles. He identifies Himself with His own unoriginated reality. God is not a being among beings. It's not as though He is a "being" in the way we exist, but only happens to be way more powerful and intelligent than we are. He is not a "being" on a hierarchy of other creatures, who is destined to remain king of the mountain because he's the biggest, baddest, being in the universe.

The Shema also drives the same truth home: “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad” "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One". The final word of this ancient prayer, Echad, literally means "God is one."

While it is true, some translations render this "God alone," the literal sense implies that He is alone God, but more than that. Unlike all the other "gods" of the ancient world, who were "beings" in a way (at least as they were conceived), God is not a "being" in that way.

As Aquinas puts it, God is impsum esse. Being itself. Existence itself. He is Being from whom all beings derive their origin, the Existence in which all things participate, to certain degrees, purely on account of their existence.

Saint John gives perhaps the most direct statement pertinent to divine simplicity when he says “God is love.”

Again, not loving. You and me? We are more or less "loving." But we are not love itself. The declaration that "God is love," flows from what it means to say that God is existence itself.

The claim ‘God is love’ means that God’s whole reality is love—without implying that love is a composite human emotion in God.

Without implying that God has emotional parts.

God is not composed; therefore His giving, forgiving, and judging are perfectly unified in His one act. Love is the bridge between Being itself and all beings. Yes, even and especially human beings.

Saint James describes God as one “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

Malachi reveals this truth in God's voice: “For I the Lord do not change.”

In other words, Scripture does not invite the worshiper to treat God as an unpredictable friend, but as the unchanging Lord who remains Himself. Who is love itself.

Because God is absolutely simple, mercy and justice are not rival ‘departments’ within Him, and Scripture’s language of ‘anger’ does not describe passions in God. When God is said to be angry, it is spoken metaphorically—by a similitude of effect—so that we may grasp God’s just opposition to sin without imagining inner division.

 

Why This Is Good News

If God is simple, then when you kneel in prayer, you are not approaching a divided being whose various parts you must negotiate. You do not approach God in a way to "appease his wrath" just so you can get to the loving part.

The Prayer of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity begs for an inner stability rooted in God’s unchangeableness: “O my unchanging God… May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you”

Notice the logic: if God is unchanging, then the stability of peace is not something you manufacture by hoping your prayer appeals to the the “right” divine mood. Peace is a response to God’s identity.

 

Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Relief for the Anxious Soul

If Divine Simplicity sounds like high-minded philosophy reserved for seminary classrooms, consider how radically it frees us in our day-to-day walk with God. Especially when our thoughts and internal dialogue becomes our worst enemy.

Freedom for the Scrupulous Mind.

If you struggle with religious scrupulosity, your mind is constantly searching for hidden landmines.

You replay your confessions or prayers, wondering: Did I say it with the right intention? Was I truly sorry enough? Did I accidentally provoke God’s “anger” today because of a rogue thought?

Divine Simplicity shatters this torment. God is not divided into “sides” that take turns ruling the day, and Scripture’s language of anger is not passion in God. It is metaphorical, describing the effect of God’s justice in human terms.

Because God does not change, peace is not something you manufacture by finding the right “divine mood,” but something you receive from the unchanging Lord who calls you to trust Him.

Peace for Those Afraid Their Faith “Isn’t Enough.”

Many believers live under a quiet, suffocating dread: What if I don’t have enough faith to be saved?

Notice what happens when we think this way: we treat our faith as a composite substance, something we need to dole out in the proper “amount” to sway God from a severe posture toward mercy .

But simplicity teaches that we do not approach God through negotiations with different “departments.” We rest, instead, in the One who truly is—“I AM who I am”—and who remains faithful.

Hope When You Feel Emotionally Numb.

We’ve all had seasons where, when we kneel at the bedside to pray, it feels like we're talking to our sheets.

You feel dry, cold, or completely empty, and the panic sets in: God must have withdrawn.

Simplicity reminds us that your internal emotional weather does not dictate the truth of God’s promise. The "climate" of God for you is always love.

 

Mercy, Justice, and the Cross

Because God is not internally composite, His mercy and justice are not “opposing lawyers” or rival powers in God taking turns to either defend or accuse you in a cosmic court of law.

Rather, when Scripture speaks of God’s opposition to sin (i.e. His “wrath,” His “punishment,” His “judgment”) Aquinas teaches us to understand the language correctly: the Scripture is speaking of God in terms that are analogous or metaphorical to human experience, but not identical with it.

Likewise, the cross is not a switch between God’s “moods.”

On the cross, we are encountering God’s one, undivided reality. This is not a picture of some kind of tug-of-war inside God. The cross discloses God’s love as the whole context of God’s justice.

 

The Practical Difference

What does this mean for how we live?

First, we can stop trying to catch God’s “mood.” He is not moody, He is not divided. He is the unchanging Lord.

When Scripture attributes passions—anger, joy, the like—to God, it does so because of the way divine action affects us, not because God’s inner life is made of creaturely passions.

As Aquinas notes, “God’s punishment is metaphorically spoken of as His anger” (Summa Theologiae, I, Q. 3, A. 2). So the variation you feel in prayer is not a variation in God. It is a variation in your capacity, attention, fear, and repentance.

Second, we must repent of caricatures that reduce Christ to some kind of "piece of flesh" that God demands merely because He is angry about sin and needs to be talked down from His throne of judgment.

Finally, discipline is not a separate “department” of God. It's not like going to the store, and finding the right department that fits your condition, i.e. the "Husky Boys" section, the maternity section, the active men's section. You are not trying to slip into God's "love" department where things fit, because the "wrath" department is a bit too constrictive.

God is not like the J.C. Penny's.

When you experience God’s correction, you are meeting Him in His love. "...the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives" (Hebrews 12:6). You are meeting the Lord whose opposition to sin is not a different God, but the same unchanging God, spoken of in human language because we need a way to grasp what our sin does and what God’s holiness means for us.

 

A Prayer of Love

I'd like to share a prayer with you. I didn't write it. I wish I could write prayers like this. It is from one of my favorite saints (you know her if you've been reading me a while) Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

This is abbreviated (you can find the long version HERE):

"O my God! I feel my helplessness and I beg You to be Yourself my Sanctity. In the evening of this life, I shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask You, Lord, to count my works... I wish to be clothed in Your own Justice and to receive from Your Love the eternal possession of Yourself. In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I offer myself to Your Merciful Love, asking You to consume me incessantly, until I may tell You of my Love in an eternal face to face."

Thérèse of Lisieux’s puts skin on every argument that Aquinas makes here.

She doesn’t approach God as though she has to find the “right” side, wrath one moment, mercy the next, justice in one "compartment" or love in another.

Instead, she asks to be “clothed in Your own Justice” and to receive “from Your Love the eternal possession of Yourself,” trusting that God’s mercy and God’s justice are inseparable from Love Himself.

The prayer culminates in a “single act of perfect Love” which is a surrender of self to love, what she calls a martyrdom of love. In the longer version, and elsewhere, she speaks of being "wounded" by His love. That is another way of saying, "You know all those attributes, justice, wrath, etc., that produce a particular effect within me? Let all of them fall into Your embrace of Love!"

In God, there is no internal division to appease, negotiate, or wait out. There is only one unchanging Lord whose whole being is offered to the soul.

 

God Bless,
Judah