There are various attributes that come to the forefront when considering the doctrine of God. One is divine simplicity.

Divine Simplicity

God is not simple so what does this mean? It has to do with the unity of God. God is one. This is traced back to the name "I AM THAT I AM" in Exodus 3. It describes that God is all that He is all the time. He does not have the potential to be anything other than He is.

Some would say that this makes God strange to us and that He is like a stone that does not have the potential to move and flow with us in all the changes in our lives. But it really means that God has no potential to be other than He is because everything that He is is perfect.

We talk about attributes as ways of describing the one essence of God. The doctrine of divine simplicity simply tells us that God is. He does not have love or have goodness or have truth. He is love. He is goodness. He is truth. More than this, He is not any of these attributes in parts. He is fully love and fully goodness and fully truth.

This has wide-ranging implications for the Christian life. This means that God does not have the potential to be more loving or less loving. He simply is love in the infinity of His being.

I've given a lot of thought over the last number of years, particularly to the doctrine of God. There are various attributes that come to the forefront of my mind. One would be probably not the first attribute that many people will think of, the doctrine of divine simplicity. In fact, when many people hear that, they think, well, God isn't simple, what does it mean? It has to do with the unity of God, that God is one.

And so we can trace that back to the name I am where God reveals himself to Moses. I am that I am. And basically it describes that God is all that He is all the time, that He doesn't have the potential to be anything other than He is. So when you think about that, on the one hand people would say well that makes God strange. It sounds as if he's like a stone, that he doesn't have the potential to move and flow with us in all the changes of our lives, but it really means that God has no potential to be other than He is because everything that He is is perfect.

So we talk about attributes as ways of describing the one essence of God. The doctrine of divine simplicity simply tells us that God is. So He doesn't have love, He doesn't have goodness, He doesn't have truth. He is good, He is love, He is truth. And more than that, He's not like a pie chart of attributes so that a part of Him is love and a part of Him is good and a part of Him is truth.

He's one. So His love is His truth, is His holiness, is His justice, is His grace. And that has wide-ranging implications for our own Christian life. So if you were to take the attribute of love but understand that God is simple, then that means God does not have the potential to be more loving or less loving. He simply is love in the infinity of His being.

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