What is God like? Simple!

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)

So far we’ve seen some incredible things about God’s power (omnipotent), knowledge (omniscient), and mind-boggling greatness (transcendent, independent, immanent). So perhaps it’s a surprise to see God described as simple! Yet there is a hugely powerful truth expressed in that word: that of the irreducible greatness of God; the fact that God cannot ever become less God.

What is the doctrine of divine simplicity?

Ancient theologian Anselm described God like this:
“Assuredly you are life, you are wisdom, you are truth, you are goodness, you are blessedness, you are eternity, and you are every true good. Many are these attributes: my straitened understanding cannot see so many at one view, that it may be gladdened by all at once. How, then, O Lord, are you all these things? Are they parts of you, or is each one of these rather the whole, which you are? For whatever is composed of parts is not altogether one, but is: in some sort plural, and diverse from itself; and either in fact or in concept is capable of dissolution. But these things are alien to you, than whom nothing better can be conceived of. Hence, there are no parts in you, Lord, nor are you more than one. But you are so truly one and the same with yourself, that in no respect are you unlike yourself; rather you are unity itself, indivisible by any conception. Therefore, life and wisdom and the rest are not parts of you, but all are one; and each of these is the whole, which you are, and which all the rest are.”

What was he getting at? Perhaps an example is in order. I’m writing this on a complex machine: a laptop. It has a processor, a power supply, a graphics chip, memory chips and a hard disk for long-term digital storage. All of these things are held together by a main circuit board (motherboard). So which part is the laptop? Is it the processor? Is it the motherboard? Is it the memory? Would it still be a laptop without the screen and keyboard? As much as it’s a wonderful piece of engineering, a laptop really isn’t just one thing, but many things stuck together to make one useful tool.

But what if God were like that? Could we speak of the kind of God for whom we could take out His graphics chip and upgrade it to a better one? That would be to speak of God as somehow not quite perfect – but perhaps with the odd upgrade here and there He’d reach full potential. That would not be a God worth worshipping.

Or think of it the other way round: what if God could somehow be downgraded? If He lost one of His memory chips, or short-circuited a vital part of His inner workings? Then we would be speaking of God as having the potential to become less perfect. Again, not a God worth worshipping.

What does the doctrine of divine simplicity mean for us?

The reality is that God simply is (remember Exodus 3:14?) Theologians describe God as being “without parts” in that He is indivisible – i.e. you can’t disconnect His holiness or His transcendence or His omnipotence or His love. They’re all inseparable from God. So He can never either upgrade or downgrade: He can never become either more perfect (as if He hadn’t quite arrived yet) nor less perfect (as if His perfection were only temporary). The God of the Bible is truly a God we can worship and trust, both now and forever – what a relief! What a joy!

But it also means that we must be careful how we think about God, in order to avoid falling into serious error. For example, well-known American pastor Rob Bell is famous for pitting God’s perfect love against His perfect justice and declaring, “Love wins”. But that is to misunderstand God, to try and divide God up and set one “part” of Him against another. But we cannot do this if God doesn’t have any “parts” in the first place!

We may, like Rob Bell, find the Bible’s teaching about God’s character hard to take. Yet, when all is said and done, the God of the Bible shines out as infinitely more glorious, infinitely more wonderful, infinitely more trustworthy and infinitely more worthy of our worship than any human conception of god.