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The absolute simplicity of God’s essence

– an alien philosophical intrusion from NeoPlatonism

into scriptural teaching on the Godhead.

'To set up on high those that be low; that those which mourn may be exalted to safety.
He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise.
He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong.' (Job 5.11-13)

'Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.' (1 Cor.1.20-21)

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.' (1 Cor.3.18-19a)

'As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments [stoiceia – fundamental axioms] of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.' (Col 2.6-9)

Absolute simplicity is a cardinal axiom of the first principle in NeoPlatonism

This supreme principle is designated “One”; it is removed from every sort of determination and is therefore absolutely simple.

The Platonic Tradition, Maria Gatti in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, Ed Lloyd Gerson, CUP 1996, UK.

He shares with Plato the principle that eternal complexity or multiplicity cannot be ultimate. That is, thee must be some first principle of all that is absolutely simple and stands in some sort of causal relation to the complex that accounts for eternal truth.

Introduction L.Gerson. Ibid.

Plotinus 5^th Ennead, Fourth Tractate.                                                                                                                                                                                                              

‘How the secondaries rise from the first: And on the One.

Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries, in which any second is to be referred to The First, any third to the second.

Standing before all things, there must exist a Simplex, differing from all its sequel, self-gathered not inter-blended with the forms that rise from it, and yet able in some mode of its own to be present to those others: it must be authentically a unity, not merely something elaborated into unity and so in reality no more than unity’s counterfeit; it will debar all telling and knowing except that it may be described as transcending Being — for if there were nothing outside all alliance and compromise, nothing authentically one, there would be no Source. Untouched by multiplicity, it will be wholly self-sufficing, an absolute First, whereas any not-first demands its earlier, and any non-simplex needs the simplicities within itself as the very foundations of its composite existence.’

Evidence for the impact of this erroneous teaching and its precursors on Christian doctrine.

Clement Of Alexandria,  A champion of apophatic theology and syncretism with Greek philosophy - though he antedated Plotinus and his Alexandrine teacher Ammonius Saccas.

He seems to have been profoundly influenced by the syncretism of Pantaenus the comverted Stoic and perhaps of Ahenagoras, the first two deans at the Catechetical School in Alexandria.

How careless he seems of the Apostolic warnings above!

Stromateis  5 (28, i)

'Philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness, until the coming of the Lord: and even now it is useful for the development of true religion, as a kind of preparatory discipline for those who arrive at faith by way of demonstration. For ‘your foot will not stumble,’ as the Scripture says, if you attribute to Providence all good things, whether belonging to the Greeks or to us. For God is the source of all good; either directly, as in the Old and New Testaments, or indirectly, as in the case of philosophy. But it may even be that philosophy was given to the Greeks directly; for it was ‘a schoolmaster,’ to bring Hellenism to Christ, as the Law was for the Hebrews. Thus philosophy was a preparation, paving the way for the man who is brought to perfection by Christ.' 

Stromata 5.12.

'And John the apostle says: “No man hath seen God at any time. The only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him,” —calling invisibility and ineffableness the bosom of God. Hence some have called it the Depth, as containing and embosoming all things, inaccessible and boundless.
This discourse respecting God is most difficult to handle. For since the first principle of everything is difficult to find out, the absolutely first and oldest principle, which is the cause of all other things being and having been, is difficult to exhibit. For bow can that be expressed which is neither genus, nor difference, nor species, nor individual, nor number; nay more, is neither an event, nor that to which an event happens? No one can rightly express Him wholly. For on account of His greatness He is ranked as the All, and is the Father of the universe. Nor are any parts to be predicated of Him. For the One is indivisible; wherefore also it is infinite, not considered with reference to inscrutability, but with reference to its being without dimensions, and not having a limit. And therefore it is without form and name. And if we name it, we do not do so properly, terming it either the One, or the Good, or Mind, or Absolute Being, or Father, or God, or Creator or Lord. We speak not as supplying His name; but for want, we use good names, in order that the mind may have these as points of support, so as not to err in other respects. For each one by itself does not express God; but all together are indicative of the power of the Omnipotent. For predicates are expressed either from what belongs to things themselves, or from their mutual relation. But none of these are admissible in reference to God. Nor any more is He apprehended by the science of demonstration. For it depends on primary and better known principles. But there is nothing antecedent to the Unbegotten.   It remains that we understand, then, the Unknown, by divine grace, and by the word alone that proceeds from Him...'

Gregory of Nazianzen

Speech on the Theophany (38: 7) Patrologia Graeca 36.319, Eng. translated by C. G. Browne, J. E. Swallow.

The Divine Nature then is boundless and hard to understand; and all that we can comprehend of Him is His boundlessness;  even though one may conceive that because He is of a simple nature He is therefore either wholly incomprehensible, or  perfectly comprehensible. For let us further enquire what is implied by "is of a simple nature." For it is quite certain  that this simplicity is not itself its nature, just as composition is not by itself the essence of compound beings.

Ἄπειρον οὖν τὸ θεῖον καὶ δυσθεώρητον καὶ τοῦτο πάντη καταληπτὸν αὐτοῦ μόνον ἡ ἀπειρία· κἄν τις οἴηται τῷ ἁπλῆς εἶναι φύσεως ἢ ὅλον  ἄληπτον εἶναι ἢ τελέως ληπτόν. Τί γὰρ ὃς ἁπλῆς ἐστι φύσεως͵ ἐπιζητήσωμεν. Οὐ γὰρ δὴ τοῦτο φύσις αὐτῷ ἡ ἁπλότης, εἴπερ μηδὲ τοῖς  συνθέτοις͵ μόνον τὸ εἶναι συνθέτοις.

Gregory of Nyssa

First Book against Eunomius Section 19 (Page 108 of CCEL pdf)

Both the Bishop and his extreme Arian opponent are firm advocates of Divine Simplicity and battle for the prize of the possession of Plotinus' ideology

'But let us still scrutinize his words. He declares each of these Beings, whom he has shadowed forth in his exposition, to be single and absolutely one. We believe that the most boorish and simple-minded would not deny that the Divine Nature, blessed and transcendent s it is, was ‘single.’ That which is viewless, formless, and sizeless, cannot be conceived of as multiform and composite. But it will be clear, upon the very slightest reflection, that this view of the supreme Being as ‘simple,’ however finely they may talk of it, is quite inconsistent with the system which they have elaborated. For who does not know that, to be exact, simplicity in the case of the Holy Trinity admits of no degrees. In this case there is no mixture or conflux of qualities to think of; we comprehend a potency without parts and composition; how then, and on what grounds, could any one perceive there any differences of less and more. For he who marks differences there must perforce think of an incidence of certain qualities in the su object. He must in fact have perceived differences in largeness and smallness therein, to have introduced this conception of quantity into the question: or he must posit abundance or diminution in the matter of goodness, strength, wisdom, or of anything else that can with reverence be associated with God: and neither way will he escape the idea of composition.'

'Having affirmed that the being of the Father alone is ‘Supreme’ and ‘Proper,’ and having refused both these titles to that of the Son and of the Spirit, in accordance with this, when he comes to speak of them all as ‘simple,’ he thinks it his duty to associate with them the idea of simplicity in proportion only to their essential worth, so that the Supreme alone is to be conceived of as at the height and perfection of simplicity, while the second, in proportion to its declension from supremacy, receives also a diminished measure of 8 simplicity, and in the case of the third Being also, there is as much variation from the perfect simplicity, as the amount of worth is lessened in the extremes: whence it results that the Father’s being is conceived as of pure simplicity, that of the Son as not so flawless in simplicity, but with a mixture of the composite, that of the Holy Spirit as still increasing in the composite, while the amount of simplicity is gradually lessened. Just as imperfect goodness ust be owned to share in some measure in the reverse disposition, so imperfect simplicity cannot escape being considered composite.'

John of Damascus

'God is without beginning, without end, eternal and everlasting, uncreate, unchangeable, invariable, simple, uncompound, incorporeal, invisible, impalpable, uncircumscribed, infinite, incognisable, indefinable, incomprehensible, good, just, maker of all things created, almighty, all-ruling, all-surveying, of all overseer, sovereign, judge; and that God is One, that is to say, one essence.

It is not within our capacity, therefore, to say anything about God or even to think of Him, beyond the things which have been divinely revealed to us, whether by word or by manifestation, by the divine oracles at once of the Old Testament and of the New.'
(Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 1, Chapter 2).

'We believe, then, in One God, one beginning , having no beginning, uncreate, unbegotten, imperishable and immortal, everlasting, infinite, uncircumscribed, boundless, of infinite power, simple, uncompound, incorporeal, without flux, passionless, unchangeable, unalterable, unseen, the fountain of goodness and justice, the light of the mind, inaccessible; a power known by no measure, measurable only by His own will alone (for all things that He wills He can ), creator of all created things,'
(Ibid, Chapter 8)

Divine Simplicity is the corner stone of Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, drawing explicitly from Aristotle and Augustine's De Trinitate, though the unstated influence of neo-Platonism seems strong.
It is the first primary attribute he addresses after establishing God's existence, prior to examining His goodness, unity, omnipresence or eternality.
Vol.1 Part 1. Q.3 Articles 1-8. Translated by Thomas Gilby.

From article 7 for example, 'It is clear then that there is no way in which God is composite, and that He must be altogether simple'.
His arguments are almost entirely philosophical, and draw scant if any reference to scripture. Many of the scripure quotes he cites are in the antithesis he seeks to address, Heb.10.38 and Ps.105.40 in article 2, or ten anthropomorphic references in article 1 are opposed to a bald statement of Jn.4.24 just before his reply, followed by a string of inferences. His arguments are largely based on proving that God's essence is not corporeal in any conceivable manner and then drawing opposite inferences about His real nature, in a manner that is singularly unsafe and unsupported.
He does not here address some of the more mysterious and problematic texts for his thesis, like Jn.5.37, 6.46, 8.38, or Phil.1.7.

The 4th Lateran Council. 1215
We firmly believe and openly confess that there is only one true God, eternal and immense, omnipotent, unchangeable, incomprehensible, and ineffable, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; three Persons indeed but one essense, substance, or nature absolutely simple...(substantia seu natura simplex omnino)

Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology, The One and Triune God, Q.V,

Can the divine attributes be distinguished from the divine essence? We deny against the Socinians.

VII The attributes of God cannot really differ from his essence or from one another (as one thing from another) because God is most simple and perfect. Now a real distinction presupposes things diverse in essence which the highest simplicity rejects.

VIII For where there is ground for founding distinct formal conceptions of anything (although one and simple in itself considered), there we must grant virtual and eminent distinction.

XII He who conceives what is actually and really one and simple in God as actually and really diverse, conceives what is false. But he who conceives that what is actually one in itself as more than one virtually and extrinsically or objectively, does not conceive what is false. Rather he conceives the thing imperfectly and inadequately on account of the weakness of the human intellect and the eminence and perfection of divine nature.

XIV The properties of many are on the part of the object and end (or of the operations and effects), but not on the part of the subject or principle, which is one and perfectly simple.

XVI The definition of a thing in itself differs from our conceptions of that thing. The former, not the latter, argues a real distinction. Now the definitions of the divine properties are rather of our conceptions (conceiving God under this or that relation) than of the thing itself (which is one and most simple).

Uncharacteristically Turretin quotes no proof texts in this section at all, and no surprise given the source of his curious assertions. His main concern for defending simplicity seems to be the use Socinus made of distinguishing God’s attributes from His essence to deny the personality of the Holy Spirit.

Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology - The incommunicable attributes. D.2

'When we speak of the simplicity of God, we use the term to describe the state or quality of being simple, the condition of being free from division into parts, and therefore from compositeness. It means that God is not composite and is not susceptible of division in any sense of the word.

The simplicity of God follows from some of His other perfections; from His Self-existence, which excludes the idea that something preceded Him, as in the case of compounds; and from His immutability, which could not be predicated of His nature if He were made up of parts.

Scripture does not explicitly assert it, but implies it where it speaks of God as righteousness, truth, wisdom, light, life, love and so on, and thus indicates that each of these properties, because of their absolute perfection is identical with His Being.'

A recent defence by Matthew Graham

A list of scripture quotes, proving what is not in dispute, namely monotheism, but scarcely grappling with the question of the simplicity of the Divine nature per se from the scriptural data, and at the end relying on philosophical reasoning to assert the case for cimplicity.

Have we not unwittingly fallen prey to Calvin’s warning about idolatry?

‘The human mind, stuffed as it is with presumptuous rashness, dares to imagine a god suited to its own capacity; as it labours under dullness, nay, is sunk in the grossest ignorance, it substitutes vanity and an empty phantom in the place of God’

John Calvin, Institutes, Book 1. Ch.XI. Sn.8.

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