Thoughts on the Essence of God and Divine Simplicity

Before we further dive in to the subjects of 1) John Calvin, 2) friends and contemporaries of Calvin who supported his advocacy of Christ being ‘God-of-Himself’, and 3) other autothean Calvinists from the post-Reformation era to the present, it is necessary to attempt to cover two topics—two deep, mysterious and eternal realities that I mentioned in my previous essay: the essence of God and divine simplicity.

Now it is absolutely important that we always speak of the things of God, the nature of God, and the truths of the Bible with great reverence, prayer, care, and precision. We definitely need to speak cautiously and carefully, by the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit, about our thrice-holy, triune God, so as not to lead ourselves, and others, into error. After all, as the ESV renders Psalm 138:2, “You [God] have exalted above all things Your name and Your word.”

So what is the essence of God, or, as Richard A. Muller says in his Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, “the whatness, or quidditas, of a being, which makes the being precisely what it is” [in this case, God’s Being]? We must first realize that because God is infinite, invisible, and dwells in unapproachable light, that we cannot comprehend the very essence of God (1 Kings 8:27, 1 Timothy 1:17, 1 Timothy 6:16). Only God has fully comprehensive knowledge of Himself and creation. Also, as God told Moses in Exodus 33:20, no creature can see His face—that is, His essence—and live.

But it is possible to gather some idea about the essence of God from Scripture itself.  Jesus, during His conversation with the Samaritan woman, declared that “God is Spirit”(John 4:24). Since a spirit has no flesh or bones (Luke 24:39), we can conclude that God is a non-physical Being, or, as older Protestant writers would say, “hyperphysical.”

Some remarks from the 18th-century Particular Baptist author John Gill are helpful here: “The description of God, as a Spirit, teaches us to ascribe to God all the excellencies to be found in spirits [angelic and human] in a more eminent manner, and to consider them as transcendent and infinite in Him.” [Body of Divinity, Book 1, Chapter 4] It is also highly important to know that “essence” and “existence,” which are distinct in all humans, creatures, angels, and all living things, are not distinct in God at all.

Since the New Testament gives an abundance of verses that affirm the Deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we can say that each Person (or subsistence) of the Godhead is the essence. The great Puritan author John Owen wrote: “A divine person is nothing but the divine essence…subsisting in an especial manner.” [The Works of John Owen, 2:407] It is extremely important hat we affirm that each Member of the Trinity is the full essence of God, because otherwise, if we say that they have the essence of God, then we inadvertently make the essence a fourth thing in the Godhead, implying a “quaternity” instead of the Trinity.

We can also consider at least three other verses from the Old and New Testament that relate to God’s essence: Psalm 36:9, Jeremiah 17:13, and John 5:26.  Between these three passages, we learn that: 1) God has life in Himself, eternally, therefore has no beginning or end; 2) the triune God is, analogically, compared to an ever-flowing, never-ceasing fountain. All creaturely life is sustained in and by Him, because is a “fountain of life.” God has ever-vibrant, ineffable, eternal life in Himself, in His essence, yet without any degree of change in His Being whatsoever (Malachi 3:6; James 1:17; Hebrews 13:8).

Let us move on to the subject of God’s divine simplicity.

What is divine simplicity? It means that God is not made of parts or components. God does not havegoodness, holiness, righteousness, etc.; he is those attributes. As the Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck phrased it: “Each attribute is identical to God’s being. He is what He possesses.” (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2: God and Creation, Baker Publishing, p. 118) There is no distinction between the essence of God and His attributes. As Reformed author Harrison Perkins says, “God is not a LEGO set of attributes but is entirely each and all of his attributes.” (https://www.modernreformation.org/resources/articles/grappling-with-the-god-of-the-gospel-stephen-charnocks-the-existence-and-attributes-of-god )

Perhaps the most obvious verse of Scripture that confirms divine simplicity is the simple but wonderfully unsearchable statement that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). It does not God has love; it says God is love. God does not have this attribute (or any other attribute) from another source, since there is no God before or after Him (Isaiah 44:6). It makes perfect sense, then, to logically infer that God is righteousness, God is holiness, and so forth, “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 90:2).

Another verse of the Bible by which we can infer the reality of divine simplicity is from Exodus 3:14 (KJV), where God utters these holy words: “I AM THAT I AM”. Even though many other Bible versions translate that phrase “I AM WHO I AM”, I am fonder of the KJV rendering of it. Either way, though, God’s words in Exodus 3:14 are a perfect foundation for saying “I AM love, I AM mercy, I AM wisdom,” etc. We do not serve a kaleidoscopic or preassembled deity; God is what He is, and all three Persons of the Godhead—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—are their attributes, without remainder, as the essence of God and attributes of God are the same, eternally.

But wait, there’s another Scriptural inference to divine simplicity: Galatians 5:22-23 lists nine specific, communicable attributes of God, from the Holy Spirit, that are developed within God’s children in Christ: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness [and] self-control.” But Galatians lists them collectively as “fruit,” not “fruits” by the way, the word ‘fruits’ is used in verses such as Matthew 7:20 and Revelation 22:2).

Now how could these two verses from Galatians 5 be related to divine simplicity? Because each attribute is inextricably woven to each other, and thus define one another, which is why these “fruits” are labeled simply as “fruit”: you can’t have one without the other. As John Frame (who I sometimes severely disagree with) says: “The divine attributes all have divine attributes. In fact, each one has all the others. When we try to describe one attribute, we find that we are describing them all: his love, for example, is infinite, eternal, unchangeable. It is wise, just, good, true, all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent… (John Frame, Theology in Three Dimensions: A Guide to Triperspectivalism and Its Significance, P&R Publishing, 2017, Chapter Two.  We would disagree with his statement, in the same chapter, that God is “one and complex,” though, as this would utterly violate divine simplicity.)

More could be written about divine simplicity, and the essence of God, but I feel that is wise to stop here, at least for now. Perhaps I’ll write more about them in the future.

Thank you for reading!