As a simple being, God is one divine, undivided and incomprehensible essence—yet revealed to us through created things (e.g., language) because God’s simplicity is too complex to take in all at once due to the creator-creature distinction.

God is a simple being or he is not. If God is not a simple being, then he is made up of parts or a composite being, in which case God’s attributes would be what he has rather than is, making his attributes abstract properties that self-exist without ultimate reference to God. God would be subject to change and evaluation against forms without origin. Yet if God alone self-exists, then God is a simple being. As such, God is identical to what is in God.

There are at least five traps or ditches we must avoid when considering divine simplicity:

• One is to say that each attribute is identical to the others because God is his attributes.
• Another trap to avoid is to deny divine simplicity because “God is love” obviously means something different than “God is holy.”
• A third trap to avoid is trying to resolve the conundrum presented by the first two ditches by positing a kind of penetration or infusion of attributes using propositions like, God’s holiness is loving holiness.
• A forth trap to avoid, which is an advancement of the first, is saying that x-attribute is identical to y-attribute in God’s mind even though the transitivity of attributes is unintelligible to human minds.
• Finally, another trap to avoid is saying that because God is simple, then everything about God, including his will to create, must be God or identical to his essence.

Like creation ex nihilo, divine simplicity can be derived negatively. (Creation ex nihilo is deduced by the negation of eternal matter and pantheism.) Given that divine simplicity is entailed by God’s sole eternality, God is not comprised of parts. Accordingly, God’s revelation of his particular attributes is an accommodation to our creatureliness. It’s ectypal and analogical, not archetypal and univocal.

Theology and the creator-creature distinction:

When we consider God’s attributes we must be mindful that we are limited to drawing theological distinctions that pertain to the one undivided and divine essence that eternally exists in three modes of subsistence. Given our finitude we cannot help but draw such useful distinctions, but we should be mindful that such nuance, although proper in its place, does not belong to any true division in God.

God is unequivocally knowable yet incomprehensible. Notwithstanding, we only know God analogically, discretely and in part. Because our understanding of God is analogically-theological and not original or intuitive, we shouldn’t expect our compartmentalized creaturely understanding of (a) God is love and (b) God is holy to imply that at the univocal or analogical level love = holy. Consequently, there’s no reason to dismiss the doctrine of divine simplicity simply on the basis that love and holiness are not identical ideas. Nor should we be led to believe that attributes are mysteriously identical in God’s mind though not in our minds. That particular mystery card reduces each attribute to a meaningless predicate when played. Attributes become vacuous terms. Surely the law of identity was never intended for such misuse.

Given such frothy objections to simplicity, there’s no reason to try to resolve the fabricated problem by positing a kind of penetration or infusion of attributes using propositions like, God’s holiness is loving holiness. Although a helpful and in a sense unavoidable to a point, the infusion of attributes eventually breaks down when we consider love and wrath. Attempts to qualify attributes with other attributes do not save divine simplicity but instead, if taken too far, end in its denial. God is his undivided essence in three persons, yet reveals himself to his covenant creatures in discrete and sometimes interpenetrating attributes.

As a simple being, God is one divine, undivided and incomprehensible essence—yet revealed to us through created things (e.g., language) because God’s simplicity is too complex to take in all at once due to the creator-creature distinction. Accordingly, God’s self-disclosure comes to us as particular attributes, an accommodation to our creatureliness.

Before addressing the notion that God’s decree is essential to God, a bit more backdrop is in order.

We must not confuse God’s revelation of himself with God himself. Accordingly, it may be rightly said that we can apprehend God, but we can never comprehend God. To comprehend God is to know God exhaustively, as God knows himself. Surely, we would have to share in the divine essence to know God originally and intuitively—or as he is, a simple being.

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