Is love GREATER than justice?

Why we need the doctrine of Divine Simplicity Pt. 2

Why do we need the doctrine of Divine Simplicity? As I pointed out in my last post, one reason is that simplicity enables us to see unity in the three persons of the Trinity. Departing from this leads to multiple trinitarian errors. Another error that occurs when one denies simplicity is the notion that one attribute of God can be more prominent or more important than another.

The Error of Ranking God’s Attributes

If God is not simple, one can assert that God’s love is foremost and there’s no way God can exercise wrath against sinners to eradicate the sin that destroys His good design. Even if God does possess wrath, it is triumphed or taken over by love. Tim Mackie, founder of and teacher for The Bible Project, serves as a test case for this error.

In a teaching entitled Why is the Old Testament So Violent?¹ Mackie demonstrates that when God reveals Himself in the person of Jesus, God isn’t revealing a part of who He is, He is revealing all of who He is. This, of course, is true. He explains that Jesus’ teaching of “love your enemies” is ultimately displayed in Him dying for His enemies. This selfless love for people reveals who God has always been; even in the Old Testament. This is also true. But he goes on to admit that while God is committed to dealing with the sin in His world, He will never do so by destroying His enemies.

He asserts that the cross of Christ defines reality and fully reveals God in every sense. He concludes that God doesn’t pour out wrath on His enemies but rather bears upon Himself these sinful actions and defeats the sin that is in the world. How can He, according to Mackie, pour out scathing judgment when Jesus taught His followers to love their enemies? He takes the passages where God uses His people to destroy the Canaanites in Deuteronomy chapter 7 and has to rely heavily on Ancient Near-Eastern literature to demonstrate that God was never going to use violent means to drive out His enemies—His people were merely following a pagan practice of that day, and thus, acted completely out of the will of God.

Strangely, he seems to ignore 1 Samuel 15 where God explicitly commands His people to kill the Amalekites and leave not one person alive. Though he brilliantly makes connections from the New Testament to the Old Testament that display the cognitive peripheral vision of New Testament authors², there are several issues with this view/conclusion.

The major problem is that it doesn’t take into account Divine Simplicity. Granted, at one point, he does indicate that God’s very essence is mercy toward His enemies, which alludes to simplicity. But as he continues, his conclusion tends to elevate one attribute, love, to the highest place.

While it is true that the cross, in one sense, defines reality, reveals God’s character (this will be dealt with more below), and makes sense of evil in the world, Mackie never seems to indicate that the cross was a propitiation for sin (1 Jn. 2:2). This minimizes the wrath and justice of God. It seems as though, for Mackie, God is not a God who is “angry with the wicked every day” (Ps. 7:11). He may have anger towards sin and seek to destroy it, but He is not in heaven storing up wrath for the day of judgment towards the ones who act out certain sins (Rom. 2:5).

Understanding that God is simple keeps us from this error because it shows us that ultimacy cannot be attributed to one characteristic. This will effectively minimize the reality that God is one simple divine essence. Therefore, we can attribute ultimacy to a characteristic thereby deifying the characteristic, or at the very least, dividing the essence of God. If we affirm that God is one essence, then we must conclude that His attributes are simply descriptions of the divine essence and that every attribute must be simultaneous in God. Since they describe the divine essence, they are all unified, and yet, are wonderfully distinct from one another.

God’s attributes are not all the same; they are not all just synonyms of one thing. The scriptures make distinctions between God’s attributes and names but maintain the one essence. Bavinck writes,

This simplicity of being does not exclude the many names ascribed to him… but demands them. God is so abundantly rich that we can gain some idea of his richness only by the availability of many names. Every name refers to the same full divine being, but each time from a particular angle, the angle from which it reveals itself to us in his works. God is therefore simple in his multiplicity and manifold in his simplicity (Augustine).

Therefore it is not wrong to classify God’s attributes and show scripture’s use of each one. One can demonstrate from the Bible that there is a classic distinction between communicable and incommunicable attributes or absolute attributes and relational attributes. Therefore, certain attributes are primary (immanent in God), secondary (revealed in creation), and tertiary (revealed in sin and redemption).

By “primary”, one must not think that this means “more important.” It merely has to do with the order in which God reveals these attributes while maintaining that all His other attributes are simultaneous in God. They are all harmonized in the Bible and flow from one another. If this is what Mackie means when he explains God’s wrath, then he would be correct. But there is such a lack of clarity and completeness that he seems to emphasize one attribute to the neglect of the other. When we classify and distinguish attributes, we are never dividing the essence of God.

Mark Jones provides clarity here: “…when we speak of God’s attributes, we must keep in mind that because His essence remains undivided, His goodness is His power. Or, God’s love is His power is His eternity is His immutability is His omniscience is His goodness, and so forth.”

It is difficult to establish a strict distinction between divine attributes since the biblical authors rarely do such a thing. They draw attention to other attributes when describing one of them. Consider how David speaks of God in Psalm 145:8-9: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all and his mercy is over all that he has made.” God has all of these attributes at the same time. Always. Scripture expounds on this further.

Four texts serve to point to this reality.

Scriptural Allusions to Simplicity

The first is, “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

Here we see the Holy Spirit reveal that God doesn’t merely “have” love. He is love. This is a description of His very essence. Again, understanding the triunity of God helps us. In his book Delighting in the Trinity, Micheal Reeves speaks extensively about trinitarian love. Without the Trinity, the phrase “God is love” would make little to no sense. The reason we can say that love is immanent in God, and therefore, a primary attribute, is because, before creation, God was pouring out love. He has always been the “Father, loving and giving life to His Son in the fellowship of the Spirit.”³ Jesus affirms this in His prayer to the Father when He says, “…you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). If God were merely a “creator,” then without a creation, He would cease to be God. He would need creation to be who He is. If He were merely a “ruler”, then He would need servants to rule over to be who He is.

The scriptures reveal God to us as Father; a Father who has eternally poured out love to His Son in the fellowship of the Spirit. It is from this love, therefore, that God creates and rules the world. Additionally, Reeves demonstrates that you cannot make sense of God’s other attributes without the phrase, “God is love.” He points out three different examples such as glory, wrath, and holiness. For the sake of this argument, it’s important to see how he handles God’s wrath and how it cannot be divorced from God’s love. He points out how

The wrath of the triune God is exactly the opposite of a character blip or a nasty side in Him. It is the proof of the sincerity of His love, that He truly cares. His love is not mild-mannered and limp; it is livid, potent and committed. And therein lies our hope: through His wrath the living God shows that He is truly loving, and through His wrath He will destroy all devilry that we might enjoy Him in a purified world, the home of righteousness.⁴

Wrath and love fit together in perfect harmony. Love, however, is not the only thing God is.

The second text is, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John. 4:24).

Jesus here is speaking to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and after exposing her wicked heart, she turns the conversation to that of worship. She limits worship to a place, Jesus brings it back to a Person. By being the embodiment of the temple of God on the earth, Jesus is reminding her that the hour has come when God will not merely be worshiped on one mountain or another. True worship is centered on the true Temple; Jesus Christ. He points her to the reality that God is “spirit”.

He is describing the fact that God is immaterial. He cannot be confined to a location like she wrongly assumes. God’s spirituality is a description of the divine essence whereby we attribute to Him invisibility. As “spirit” we must see His infinity, His omnipresence, but also His wisdom and transcendence over all things. God is spirit, but spirit is not the only thing God is.

The third text is, “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn. 1:5).

By drawing the church’s attention to the fact that God is “light,” John draws the believer into the light of the all-seeing God to keep him from the darkness caused by sin. By affirming that God is light, the Bible is affirming that, in God’s very essence, God is pure, set apart, and without spot. Right after John writes, “God is light” he provides commentary by suggesting that there is no darkness in God. The darkness of sin is not a “thing” in itself but simply the privation of God’s goodness and holiness. When the light of God’s glorious goodness and purity shines forth, no darkness can be present. Hence, the exhortation, “if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (Vs. 7) But, of course, light is not the only thing God is.

The fourth and final text is, “God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29; Dt. 4:24).

The author of Hebrews is saying this with Deuteronomy in view which adds, “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” Both texts have to do with true worship. Moses here is stating this negatively by commanding the people of God to avoid idolatry by making a carved image. God is to be feared and what He forbids must be taken seriously. He is a consuming fire and a jealous God, therefore, idolatry must be put away. The author of Hebrews states this truth positively. He exhorts the people to offer acceptable worship to God which ought to be overflowing from a heart of gratitude and deep affection for the one who called them into His eternal kingdom. This affectionate submission ought to be done with reverence and awe knowing God’s character; He is a God who is not to be trifled with. Although He is spirit and not to be confined to location, He still does not leave man to themselves to formulate worship. For God to be a consuming fire implies the hotness of God’s anger towards idolatry; it implies His holiness which consumes all impurity.

Conclusion

In sum, God doesn’t merely have love or display love; nor does He have light or display light; nor does He send down His fire; nor does He merely possess a “spirit”; He is all of these things. Though we see Him display these things in His works as He communicates these attributes (and all of His attributes) analogically, we must affirm what God has given us by revelation—whatever is in God, God is. Micheal Horton sums this up when he writes, “We do not worship any divine attribute; we worship the personal God who is simultaneously the being that His attributes indicate. God is love, but love is not God.”

As will be explored, opponents of Divine Simplicity also are opponents of God’s immutability.

This is what I will take up in my next post.

1. Mackie, Tim. "Why is the Old Testament So Violent?” Westside: A Jesus Church. 2017

2. Beale, G. K. The Cognitive Peripheral Vision of Biblical Authors. Monergismcom Blog. https://www.monergism.com/content/cognitive-peripheral-vision-biblical-authors. 2014

3. Reeves, Michael. Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith, IVP Academic, Downers Grove, IL, 2012, p. 38.

4. Ibid. p. 120