Divine Simplicity | James Dolezal

they have assigned me the easy section some of you looked at the title i think divine simplicity how hard can this be um i'll do my best to make it difficult for you and hopefully an encouragement to you as well as bob has prayed and given thanks to our lord we'll go in that spirit right into a consideration of the doctrine of simplicity and this will be a little different perhaps in some of the other sessions in that i will be trying to rehabilitate an ancient and classical doctrine but one that uh deserves uh currency and attention now this doctrine of god's simplicity i want to begin with a text in romans 11 36 as a point of departure and a point of return we'll be coming back to this uh in a few moments the apostle paul says for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be the glory forever amen the church has historically that god is simple which may seem peculiar to you perhaps even offensive you may have thought that god was in fact very complex simple sounds insulting it sounds like the wrong thing to say and yet it's because god is simple and by that we mean that god is not composed of parts that god is in fact absolutely irreducible in being and thus the most fundamental reality upon which all else depends when we talk about divine simplicity we're talking about divine irreducibility that god is not an entity that depends upon or is founded upon realities more basic and fundamental or absolute than himself the reason that the church for much of its history saw this doctrine as indispensable was that this grounded the particularity of our proclamation of god this is what distinguished god from the idols of the nation the idols of the nation are things that are cobbled together by composers our god has no composers and he has no components our god is just i am simplicity is an elaboration of that basic conviction it's a studied denial of composition and part hood which would render god a dependent deity an idol a false god a fallen angel perhaps certainly not worthy of the christian's worship we worship the one behind which beyond which nothing we worship the one who is the reason for all things but has no reason for himself that isn't just himself no doubt and by way of by way of ground clearing i want to say a few things before we get into a consideration of some of the claims and the biblical motivations for this doctrine i want to just um handle a few objections on the front end the first is that when we say that god is simple we do not mean that god is simplistic if i called someone a simpleton that would be perceived as an insult when we call someone simple uh in terms of intellect or capacities that is the equivalent of of someone who is inept a dunce uh all sorts of names we have for this we're not saying that god is simplistic we're also we're also um not suggesting that god lacks power and i think this is one particular objection that is raised in the modern mind to the notion of simplicity we are used to thinking of multi-parted things as more effective at operating at getting things done and so if god is to in fact be the ultimate operator the one who created and sustains all things wouldn't he need to be not simple but the most super complex thing in the world i came down from philadelphia with my daughter to florida and i had some transportation options set before me one was a boeing 737 non-stop from philadelphia the other uh could have been though no one seriously proposed it a tandem bicycle a tandem bicycle and both of these are machines made of parts designed for an operation namely the operation of transporting humans and yet one of those is just so much more effective and efficient at transporting many humans over vast distances in relatively short spaces of time with a bathroom coffee and i always go for the ginger ale i don't when i fly i go for the ginger ale um this jet airliner can do so many more things than the tandem bicycle and i have to think that a big part of the reason why is that it has more parts in fact a boeing 747 has i haven't i haven't counted but they say it has six million parts a tandem bicycle um i also haven't counted but uh i would suspect doesn't have six million parts and it's those it's that multiplicity of parts that actually enable that aircraft to do so many more things it can transport 300 people not two people it can serve you coffee air conditioning and everyone gets their own light and a flight attendant when you attend a bicycle offers none of that and so we are used to this idea that a more multi-part a thing is arguably the more facility it has to produce big outcomes and so we use that we use that kind of rationale and we say well if god is to do something more than just transport a few hundred people from philadelphia down to florida but actually create and sustain a universe wouldn't he by the same logic need to just be super multi-parted that's not bad reasoning if we are talking about finite causes an airplane is a finite cause it is a limited it is a machine that has limitations so is a bicycle the airline is not as limited as the bicycle and so its relative lack of limitation enables it to do things but finite causes are necessarily built of parts and the reason that we can't say this about god is that everything made of parts requires a maker when i got onto that airline at the philadelphia airport i assumed uh that someone had in fact assembled this and you assume the same same thing if i get on a bicycle i assume that there has been an assembler of this machine multi-parted entities depend in a double way first upon the parts of which they're composed and upon whatever agent imposes unity upon the parts and so while they may be causes and they may even be the kinds of causes that can produce great things they are themselves dependent causes they require insomuch as they are composed of parts a maker they depend for their being upon another their parts and their unifier this is what we can't say about the absolute creator of all things we cannot say that there is someone who supplied unity of being to god hear o israel the lord our god the lord is one and we don't look for a source of that unity outside of our back of god god's oneness god's unity of being is not something that was imposed upon him by a unifier god does not depend upon parts god does not depend upon a composer of the parts it has unfortunately been the case in recent history that divine simplicity has not been given its due pride of place in the last few centuries for about 1700 years this was the common confession i like to call this bread and butter orthodoxy this was the common confession of the church universal eastern orthodox roman catholics every branch of the protestant reformation every branch of the branches of the protestant reformation calvinists and yes armenians once upon a time methodists anglicans presbyterians congregationalists baptists arminian baptists and calvinistic baptists this was a doctrine confessed by everyone everywhere until modernity and when the thinking of physics sort of took over where machines and multi-parted machines were sort of the be all end-all this notion of divine simplicity started to be lost sight of louis burkhoff writing in the 1930s said in recent works on theology the simplicity of god is seldom mentioned many theologians positively deny it either because it is regarded as a purely metaphysical abstraction or because in their estimation it conflicts conflicts with the doctrine of the trinity well i'm not going to treat the trinity let me say something to that effect just briefly though we believe in three persons who are distinct we do not hold that these are three parts of god one part father one part son one part spirit shake well divinity this is not a it's not a bit of this and that and the other that cobble together to give us the unity of the godhead the unity of the godhead does not derive from parts more basic or fundamental in reality than itself the catholic lay theologian frank sheed writing around the same time as burkhoff offered this sobering assessment a study of what is happening to theology in its higher reaches would almost certainly take as its starting point the attribute of simplicity and show that every current heresy begins by being being wrong on that i submit to you that that's not hyperbole maybe slightly but if it is only slightly a doctrine uh that has been lost sight of and i think has opened the door for a kind of relativization of the divine being just a quick just a quick word about that when the divine being himself is relativized inevitably his word his works and his law will be relativized as well if we let loose the absoluteness of god we will also let loose our confidence in the surety and absoluteness of his word we need an absolute irreducible independent god to ground our worship so that we don't go looking for the cause of god and worship it instead so that we can have confidence in his promises and so that we can believe the unshakeableness of his precepts and his law if we relativize his being all of that is up for debate this doctrine is absolutely fundamental to the grounding of our christian faith in this talk i aim to do three things first just to briefly set forth some of the basic claims and implications of divine simplicity secondly to identify the main biblical and theological arguments that support it and then thirdly to say a few words about words if god is simple how come this talk about god being simple isn't simple uh and by the time we get there you'll want to know why so we'll say a few things about how language works uh even the statement i'll just give you a preview even the statement god is simple is not a simple it has a predicate it has a copula and it has a subject it's a multi-parted statement about non-multi-partedness so we need to talk a little bit about how theological language works and how theological concepts work with relation to god because if we let our language and the creaturely shape of our language which is good and inescapable if we let that as it were dictate to us the manner of god's being it's very difficult to keep idolatry at bay so we'll get there first then the basic claims and implications of divine simplicity the chief claim of the doctrine is that god is not composed of parts the reason we say this is because whatever is composed of parts depends upon its parts to be as it is now a brief definition of a part i know this is after dinner some of you some of you had a heavy meal and now you're getting you know there's a there's a name for this this the science of parts some of you might know what it is it's called myriology yeah myriology 101 uh after dinner the study of part hood i'm going to give you the best definition that i can come up with in terms of making it as easy as possible for you a part is anything in an entity that is less than the whole and without which the whole would be really different than it is and i think that that fits universally a part is anything in a hole that is less than the hole otherwise it would just be the hole and without which the hole would be different than it is if you take a part away i'm driving a toyota corolla if you take one of the wheels off um that car is going to be different than it is it may still be a car but it's not one that i can drive down the road so a part contributes something to the whole and yet is still less than the whole simply say it that way in short then composite beings need their parts in order to exist and to operate as they do moreover the parts in an integrated hole require a composer distinct from themselves to unify them an extrinsic source of unity as i'm driving this corolla call me crazy but i think i think that the steering column the fuel injector the fuel pump the air compressor for the air conditioning were all made and existed before the corolla you thought that too uh and then i i think that somebody actually took those parts and funded unity yeah that's a way of saying assemble them put them together something caused those parts to cohere in an integrated hole enabling that car to function as it ought to do if god were composed of parts then he would be doubly dependent first upon the parts themselves as everything composed of parts depends in some respect upon its parts and secondly upon whatever put them together or supplied the unity but if god is irreducible in being then god alone is the sufficient reason for himself the sufficient reason for a toyota corolla is not a toyota corolla it's the many parts and the assembler of the parts that give reason to that vehicle the medieval theologian thomas aquinas distills the concern this way every composite is posterior that means follows after its components since the simpler exists in itself before anything is added to it for the composition of a third but nothing is prior to the first therefore since god is the first principle by which he means the one from whom are all things the source of all things since god is the first principle thomas says he is not composite composites have sources of being that are ontologically that is in terms of being prior to themselves let me break down the basic concern this way if i were to ask you might be a strange question does god depend in any respect on what is not god in order to exist or be or do as he is and does or put it more basically does god depend on what is not god to be god if the answer is no then i submit to you that you are already committed to the doctrine of divine simplicity and the rest is just details divine simplicity is just a an elaborate scheme a good scheme to defend that basic christian conviction that god does not require or depend on what is not himself in order to be himself or in order to do anything that he does and simplicity is just a way of guarding that fundamental christian conviction now a number of implications follow and this is where uh i will i want to beg your apology i want to beg your forgiveness and offer my apology but i'm not going to do that i'm just going to charge right in uh and i'm going to i'm going to invite you to come with me the first implication of this is that god is not composed of existence and essence of existence and essence for god to be what he is and for god to be that he is are not distinct in god if i were to if i were to ask um of jared longshore does jared longshore exist and you said to me you gave me an aristotelian answer like jared longshore is a rational animal which he is that wouldn't tell me whether he existed it would just tell me that if he existed this would be the kind of thing he is if i were to ask you what is jared longshore i'm talking about his essence now and you were to say yes he exists be answering the wrong question my is and my what are not the same my what my essence my humanity has existence put a little differently to be human is not to be i am do you see you are but it's not your nature to be rather your nature has existence as something that that actualizes it and makes it to be but if you were to say to god or say of god um what is god and you were to give the answer uh the way the uh the way the septuagint translates exodus 3 14 um ha own he is if you were to give me an existential answer to an essential question you would in fact be giving me the answer his name is i am strange his name is a verb his name is a statement of his is-ness for god to be and for god to be this what he is are in fact one of the same it is the nature of god to be you have your existence as a gift he has his existence as his nature he just is the existence by which he is nothing makes god be god is the being by which he is you and all of the creative things are receivers holding as a gift that exists from god secondly this also means that god is not a mere instance of divinity this one's even harder if you might stay with me for a moment uh if the theologians protestant and medieval theologians used to say that a a a simple entity is not composed of nature and subjects so i'm a subject i'm a i'm a human uh and i'm a human i'm a particular human i'm not the human that you are you're not the human that i am but we also we all share the same generic nature but there has to be since there are so many of us there has to be something that just over and above being human that distinguishes me from you balding five foot eight in terms of posture uh standing upright and you are seated um i have a different favorite color than you um etc i have different relation my children are not your children i mean there are all sorts of ways in which we can sort of particularize the humans but all of those things are what i am over and above my nature my nature is human but to be human and to be 5 8 for instance are not the same thing in me and the reason i know this and i do know this is that i was once human and not five eight do you know what i'm do do you follow what i'm after so that for me so that something has to particularize me over and above my nature and it turns out that i am not humanity if i were humanity you would all be james insofar as you were human i'm not humanity itself i'm an ins i'm a particular instantiation of humanity so that there's a distinction in me between what particularizes me and what makes me the same as you this is not the case in a simple being and a simple being for god to be god and for god to be this god that we call yahweh father son and holy spirit the creator and sustainer of all things are in fact just one of the same thing divine simplicity means rather strangely that god is not a god you ready for this he is godness itself he's not an instantiation of a generic category of divinity he is divinity as such moreover this also means that all of god's attributes are identical with him my attributes have already given you the illustration are not necessarily identical with me the older theologians would have said that there's a distinction between substance and accidents in me my substance is what i am the accidents are the state of being upright standing upright the state of being asleep the state of being confused perhaps i've produced some of that uh in you already um so that i am actually a composite of substance a human and then a whole bunch of accidental states of being a human who is speaking a human who is confusing a human who is standing a human who is married these are all states of being i have over and above being this human i'm composed of substance and of accidents but in god that's not the case there's not god and then the stuff that isn't god over and above god that sort of qualifies him so for god to be good and wise loving just true and eternal are not features he has in addition to being god those just are god that is the nature of god not an accident that he has but the substance that he is perhaps even more counter-intuitively this means that all of god's attributes are identical with each other now this one begins to get confusing because i've just said that god is good and wise loving just true and eternal and yet as it is in god god is not a bundle or a set of properties a little goodness a little a little love a little wisdom a little justice put them all together and while deity rather all that is in god just is god the puritan john owen put it this way the attributes of god which alone seem to be distinct things in the essence of god are all of them essentially the same with one another and every one of them the same with god himself god's essence is not a bundle or a collection of attributes all sort of cobbled together to make a wonderful set of great making properties rather properly speaking god is all that he is simply in virtue of his godness so we could say god is good in virtue of god not goodness now if i'm good it's not in virtue of being human that i'm good because sometimes like you i'm not so that i have goodness over and above my nature the same thing is true with regard to wisdom if i have any wisdom i could also just as easily be a fool and to be human and to be wise are not the same thing you know this because you know some humans sometimes you are that human uh who isn't wise god doesn't have wisdom he is the wisdom by which he is wise god doesn't have love he is the love by which he is loving god doesn't have power he is the power by which he is the almighty so that all that all that god is he is in virtue of his own godness god is not an instantiation of a wonderful set of properties there's nothing in god that is not identical with divinity itself the anglican theologian peter sandlin says that simplicity makes claims about god that are profound counterintuitive difficult to articulate and that it recasts everything we say about god i've given you a little taste of that um i think he's correct about that and yet for all this the fundamental rationale is compelling all parts are sources or determinations of being really distinct from the entities in which they are incorporated those things that are composed of parts thus depend upon sources of being in actuality really distinct from and more fundamental than themselves but there's nothing more fundamental than god will help us a broccol great dutch theologian says all composition implies imperfection dependency divisibility he goes on to say we must not think of god as being composite even in the remotest sense of the word that was standard evangelical protestant preaching once upon a time listen to the words of stephen charnock and to those of you that um want to really drill into the history of protestant history of the doctrine of god his existence and attributes stands second of god stands second to none in that library of good books stephen charnock says this god is the most simple being for that which is first in nature having nothing beyond it cannot by any means be thought to be compounded for whatever is so depends upon the parts whereof it is compounded so it is not the first being if god is made of parts then the parts are more fundamental than the thing made out of them and then he's not the first being now god being infinitely simple hath nothing in himself which is not himself says charnock let's go into the second place and consider the main biblical motivations for this uh there's not a single verse that says the lord our god is simple stop fighting about it second ephesians there's not a it's not a verse that says this in that explicit way but it does follow by a good and necessary consequence from things that scripture does say rather clearly the first we should consider is god's independence that god is sufficient unto himself and stands in need of no other god gives to all but receives from none he enriches us but we do not return the favor romans 11 35 who has first given to him and it shall be repaid to him the idea is that god is not a receiver from his creature he does not receive something from us acts 17 25 paul says that god is not a man that he dwe god does not dwell in temples made by hands and he says nor is he served by human hands the word therefore served is therapeutic it's the idea of therapy therapy conveys goods to a patient you're not god's therapist working to improve and make his life better mentally of course not physically he's spirit god has no therapist god has no one that operates upon him thereby bestowing some goodness to him god is not the receiver of goodness he's goodness itself he's the giver of it but not the receiver of it the implications of this are that if god were to possess his existence essence or attributes as parts which and determinations of being which they would be if he were composed of parts then in fact he would be indebted to those parts which would not be identical with himself as a whole and to whatever assembled them as for our trust in god if god is composed of parts which as parts are necessarily distinct from the fullness of his being as god then our confidence in him must look to some source of being back of him some reality more fundamental than him and i think this really gets to it for christians if god were composed of parts and we are to put our trust in the absolute source of all things then we would have to be looking somewhere back of god for that source to worship a god composed of parts is to worship an entity that depends upon something else supplying its being and unity secondly the infinity of god supports simplicity in this respect that if god is boundless in being as solomon says the heaven of heavens cannot contain him first kings um if god is in fact unbounded in being if god is if his greatness is as we read in a psalm earlier today psalm 145 3 if his greatness is unfathomable if his greatness is unsearchable if there is no end or limit to his greatness then if the glory and greatness of god is boundless and and truly infinite then he cannot be composed of parts again for this simple reason that parts have to be finite for the reason that they are less than a hole because they are inferior and less than their holes they have to lack the being proper to the whole and no set of finite properties or attributes will ever yield an infinite being how much finitude needs to be collected together to finally achieve infinitude you've tried this uh the answer is there's no amount of finitude that could ever achieve infinitude if god is truly boundless and unfathomable in his being then he cannot be composed of parts because no parts could ever actually constitute an infinite being and finally and perhaps most fundamentally in the christian tradition is the doctrine of creation we read romans 11 36 from him through him and to him are all things the 24 elders who fall down and worship him in romans 4 11 says that by his will all things existed paul says in romans 4 14 that he calls that which is not as being this is creation ex nihilo if god is the absolute irreducible source of all being he couldn't be that source if he himself were reducible to components of being and to a composer of those units more fundamental than himself if god were composed of parts there would be aspects of his being that were more basic than his being itself this flouts the most fundamental biblical teaching regarding god as the all-sufficient source of all that is not identical to him everything not god is made by god and god is made by none the argument with creation is not that god is self-created or self-made god is not among the made-to-be things he couldn't make himself for the reason that you have to be in order to do you know that right that you have to be in order to do so that the idea of absolute self-causation is in fact an impossibility the argument is not that god is self-caused or the creator of himself the argument is that god is existence itself unbounded uncaused the subsisting i am that i am if this is the case then composition of parts must be denied of god i think what we need to certainly just drill down on this just a tiny bit before we get into the language question in the third place i think then what we need to be careful of when we think about the attributes of god his power and his justice and his love and his timelessness is that we want to be careful of thinking of these as a set of properties that sort of hang together as a bundle a a unit of bits one bit to another bit that comprises god now because of our finitude because of the limitations of our creatureliness because i've i've never had a simple thought about the simple god i've never had an infinite thought about the infinite god because my mind cannot correspond to the greatness of his being in a one-to-one way even as we were discussing earlier in our worship that there's a sort of overflow a profound sense of the of the finitude and the limitation of our worship and the what gives us that sense is the unboundedness of his being i think that we are overwhelmed with the sense that god is beyond my he's greater than the greatest thought i have of him he's more boundless than the statements i make about his boundlessness because even those statements come to an end i've never said an unbounded thing about an unbounded god i've definitely never said a simple thing about a simple god and i think the temptation becomes that we would read off of the manner of our god of the limitation of our thoughts about god or our talk about god the manner of his being and so because i have to cobble together my god talk god must be a corresponding cobbled together thing so in the third place let's consider how it is that we speak about a simple god the logic might be compelling that god is most absolute in existence and he cannot depend on that which is not himself for any actuality of his being nevertheless the doctrine carries some deeply counter-intuitive and even strange implications for our language it means that our ordinary creaturely patterns of speech subject plus predicate do not quite fit god in the way they fit creatures even as i observed earlier the statement god is simple is not itself a simple statement it's a multi-party statement so if god is simple how come our thoughts about god and our talk about god aren't isn't there so isn't this putting some kind of distance between the truth of god and the words that we use and the thoughts that we have about god a few things about language very briefly in the way that it works with creatures is that when i say james is standing that is actually a multi-parted statement james plus standing and in fact it turns out that being james and standing upright are really parts meaning sometimes i'm sitting and not standing so there really is a distinction both in my statement and there tends to be a corresponding distinction in the thing and so the easy thing is to assume that this is how it is with god if i say god is powerful there's god plus power except what simplicity is saying is that in god there's no distinction between being god and being powerful there's a distinction in my god talk but there's not a corresponding distinction in the divine being otherwise he would be reducible to units of being more fundamental than himself and as the absolute creator and sustainer of all things and the one whom we trust for all of his promises he just can't be that divine simplicity then insists on an inescapable sort of incapacity in all of our god talk that we cannot discover the manner of his being by attempting to read it off of the surface grammar of our propositions about him the shape of our propositional statements is only suited to correspond in a one-to-one manner to multi-part and composite beings multi-part statements tend to fit multi-part beings really nicely multi-part statements which are the only kinds of statements i can make don't tend to fit a simple god very nicely so how can they be true how can my statements that god is love that god is wise that god is just the god is powerful all these multi-part statements that i make and even those even those different terms that i make how can they be true i'm going to submit to you one way to think about how it is that this works there's a certain respect in which an absolutely simple god is incomprehensible to us this does not mean unknowable or unbelievable but it just means that we can't form a one-to-one concept in our mind that syncs up with divine simplicity just like you can't have a thought of infinity that is in fact infinite there's a there's an incommensability between our thoughts and the god about whom we think and yet god himself has deigned to use language and words in scripture and through the demonstration of his power and his grace his justice in the created order to give us as it were a bit by bit knowledge of him through the various ways in which he manifests himself and this is the reality his revelation of himself is not simple nor is it infinite the bible isn't infinite the created world isn't infinite only god is infinite and yet he condescends to as it were packaged infinitude the true revelation of himself and he makes it accessible to us as i said i can't have a simple thought of a simple god and so god allows me to think about him in multi-parted ways by disclosing the fullness of his being to me bit by bit showing me here his love showing me here his justice showing me here his gentleness showing me over there his power he reveals that to us in nature and he reveals it to us most remarkably in scripture the earlier theologians liked the imagery of light passing through a prism pure white light is not perceptible to the eye it needs to be refracted into a spectrum of color uh in order to be seen and apprehended by us we could think perhaps of the attributes of god in this way he causes that infinite plentitude of simple glory to pass through the prism of creation and redemption and refract as it were into a spectrum of glorious attributes and so once one beam of the spectrum might be goodness and another one be power and another one be wisdom and another be justice and what we're trying to say is that the multiplicity of those terms and those attributes is due to the refracted manner in which god manifests himself in our lives and in scripture and in nature but just as with that spectrum you wouldn't trace the spectrum back to a spectrum behind it the spectrum traces back to pure white light all that is contained in the rainbow of color is in pure white light just not spectrally when we talk about god and when we talk about his attributes as we're doing this week we are beholding the the beams of spectral glory that he has shown forth in the created order and in holy scripture to know him but we need to be careful not to assume that those are parts of god god is most absolute irreducible in being the one from whom through whom and to whom are all things and for this reason we don't look for a being prior to him and worship that for this reason we can worship him with absolute unreserved confidence for this reason we can trust his word unreservedly because god is not a relative being dependent upon what is not himself to be himself so this for a crash course in divine simplicity let's pray god you are good and you do good you have condescended to reveal yourself to us in your mighty deeds in nature and in holy scripture we bless you and thank you for these things but lord we do confess that you are the one from whom and through whom and to whom are all things that you are the one who does not depend upon another the great i am we bless you and thank you for the confidence that we can have in you and your word because of this it's in christ's name we pray amen

Channel: Founders Ministries

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Keywords: Founders Ministries, Tom Ascol, Founders, Reformed Theology, Theology, Reformed Baptist, James Dolezal, The doctrine of God, The Only God, Founders Conference, Founders Conference Sermons, james dolezal divine simplicity, divine simplicity, james dolezal doctrine, dolezal teaching, james dolezal sermon, national founders conference, founders conference 2021, NFC21, 2021 founders conference, theology proper, divine impassability, james dolezal all that is in god, the gospel

Id: sUafyDNQViA

Length: 42min 23sec (2543 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 22 2021