Divine Simplicity and Plato

The doctrine of the Simplicity of God, or Divine Simplicity is a good (perhaps the best) place to see the potential for the effects of Greek philosophy on theology. As an aside, I find it sad that many will readily use pagan philosophy (which is unfalsifiable) to inform their theology, and will even apply the word “heretic” to those who disagree with their subjective conclusions, while at the same time they will discount the idea that science (which by definition is falsifiable) should play any role (other than a trophy wife) in one’s view of creation.

 Divine Simplicity is defined this way:

[T]he doctrine of divine simplicity says that God is without parts. The general idea can be stated in this way: the being of God is identical to the "attributes" of God. Characteristics such as omnipresence, goodness, truth, eternity, etc. are identical to God's being, not qualities that make up that being, nor abstract entities inhering in God as in a substance; in other words we can say that in God both essence and existence are one and the same.

This discussion is independent of whether the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity is correct or not. I happen to agree with a form of the doctrine, although I would use an Einsteinian version: God is as simple as he can be, but not simpler.

Where does the idea originate? It does not come from the bible. It comes from a pagan idea, the Platonic theory of forms:

The theory of Forms or theory of Ideas is a philosophical theory, concept, or world-view, attributed to Plato, that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas.

In a nutshell, what is real are the timeless, unchangeable, immutable forms (ideas.) Their realm is “heaven”, if you will. What we see around us are sort of cheap (and shifting) approximations to these forms. This is not at all consistent with the biblical view of God's revelation, either special or general. The theory of forms would recast what used to be a proud doctrine of the Reformed, the perspicuity of scripture, into a doctrine that scripture sort of "approximates" the reality of the shadowy forms.

To ancient pre-science theologians, steeped in Greek philosophy, it was undoubtedly tempting to make God the ultimate, unchangeable Platonic form. In some sense I would agree with that—should it not be taken too far—and should the abused notion of “parts” not be taken so literally.

Hard-core adherents to Divine Simplicity state that God is without parts, and therefore God does not have attributes, but rather he is his attributes. For example, you’ll get slapped by a pedantic advocate if you say “God has mercy” because that makes mercy a “thing” or a part—so instead we must say that God is mercy.

But what exactly is a part, and why would it be so bad if God had some divine version of parts? Here is a hard-core proponent (and extremely popular) theologian James Dolezal:

Classical Christian orthodoxy contends that the first cause of all being must be simple for the straightforward reason that complex or compound things depend upon parts that are more fundamental in being than themselves. And nothing is more primary in being than God. Parts are really so many causes giving some form of actuality to those entities in which they are integrated, and enabling them to operate as they do, like the six million parts of a Boeing 747. Composite beings are doubly dependent: first, upon their various component parts, and second, upon whatever agent or power acts to unify their parts in them.

Notice what he does. For his example of something that has parts, he uses a complex machine, a 747. But of course nobody would ever suggest that God, if he has parts, would be anything like a machine with six million independent parts riveted and bolted together. It’s a strawman.

But that is still not the part that is trouble. It is what slides into these arguments, sometimes without mention or with the argument-killing announcement that it is “totally obvious.” Let us take a look at Bavinck:

This simplicity is of great importance, nevertheless, for our understanding of God. It is not only taught in Scripture (where God is called “light,” “life,” and “love”) but also automatically follows from the idea of God and is necessarily implied in the other attributes. Simplicity here is the antonym of “compounded.” If God is composed of parts, like a body, or composed of genus (class) and differentiae (attributes of differing species belonging to the same genus), substance and accidents, matter and form, potentiality and actuality, essence and existence, then his perfection, oneness, independence, and immutability cannot be maintained.

The first thing to note, as I said earlier, is that the doctrine of Divine Simplicity is not in scripture. It is derived. You have to decide whether it was derived properly or not. Bavinck’s scriptural references, such as they are, is that God is called “light,” “life,” and “love.” Fair enough. Nobody disputes that. However it falls far short of proving “the” Doctrine of Divine Simplicity.

But here, finally, is the part I want to get to, it is, in some form, in every “proof” of Divine Simplicity:

If God is composed of parts, like a body, or composed of genus (class) and differentiae (attributes of differing species belonging to the same genus), substance and accidents, matter and form, potentiality and actuality, essence and existence, then his perfection, oneness, independence, and immutability cannot be maintained.

There is no proof of this “obvious” statement, a statement that is pure Platonism (which doesn’t mean it is wrong.)

This statement is presented as an indisputable assertion; it is presented axiomatically, and Dolezal, in his version, uses a 747 as a rhetorical device to slide this axiom by the unsuspecting reader. It is so horrible to think of God as being like a 747 that we are ready to accept, without discussion, an axiomatic statement that sweeps that ugly vision aside and  then, in a question-begging way, renders the answer that is sought as a foregone conclusion.

The argument boils down to this: if God has “parts”, then he has them in the same sense that a 747 has parts, and clearly the parts are (indeed) more fundamental, and therefore that composite "thing" can’t be God. The same people who later will insist that God is so utterly different from man (true enough) that all the references to emotions are purely anthropomorphic (not true) are here insisting that if God has parts, then he has them not in some divine manner that we cannot fully grasp, but precisely in the same sense and in the same relationship to the whole as the parts of a man-made contraption.

But let me argue (without proposing) that we (or at least I) can readily conceive of a God who has a heart, whatever that means for God, and that heart is the seat of God’s disposition toward us. And that God has a head, whatever that means for God, and that head is the seat of God’s plan of redemption and also God’s own free will. And let me further argue that God (without proposing) is a perfect union (so unlike an airplane!) of these two “parts” and that he is not less fundamental that his heart or head, and that nothing about God, such as his immutability (properly understood) is necessarily compromised by this view.

It is only when you invoke Platonism as universal truth can you “derive” a conclusion that such a view is not possible. The real problem, as I see it, with a God that is simpler than he needs be, who is without parts in the sense that utterly everything about him is unified in his essence, is that God becomes the ultimate deterministic being. He doesn’t decide to create a flood—that “decision” was simply part of his essence from eternity. Not only must all God’s emotions in scripture be anthropomorphic, so must all his decisions that appear in the bible.

But the absolute worst part of this debate how arrogant some are, how certain they are that they are correct in their derivation (ultimately due to Plato) about the nature of God at a microscopic level of granularity—for an aspect of God that is not described in scripture, that they are willing to label disagreements over this ultimately unimportant doctrine (it has no ramification for the Gospel)  as heresy. They, in a very real sense, allow Plato to determine what is Christian heresy.