Summary of Chapter 13: Divine Simplicity in Fr. White’s Book, The Trinity

In this chapter, White presents Aquinas’ view of the divine simplicity of God.

Some objections to divine simplicity:

  1. Not scriptural: It does not come from Scripture (but is a Hellenistic philosophical idea);
  2. Not needed with Trinitarian faith: is not essential to the integral confession of traditional Trinitarian faith;
  3. A barrier to encountering God’s love: It prevents us from understanding the God of revelation – since it depicts God as unable to relate to His creation and interact with us (no suffering, no change, no love?).

Some clarifications of divine simplicity:

  1. It is scriptural: The idea of God’s transcendence is emphasized in the Decalogue’s prohibition against images (since God is incorporeal and therefore non-representational), the prophets insistence on YHWH alone as the exclusive Creator & only God, and Second Temple Judaism’s clarification that God is eternally Himself – He does not ontologically change in any way with creation. He is, in the words of Exodus 3:14, “He who is.” God simply is. God’s essence is identical with his existence.He is not in potentiality to exist but is pure actuality.
  2. Essential to Trinitarian faith: The Trinitarian persons are not three gods but are each truly the one God, having in himself the plenitude of the divine nature, either from another or for another. The Trinity is therefore simple. “The very attribution of “common names” to all three divine persons implies some form of the doctrine of divine simplicity, since God’s power, wisdom, and goodness are present in a co-extensive way” (242). Therefore, the doctrine of divine simplicity “allows us to underscore the unity of the divine essence and therefore the monotheistic character of Trinitarian faith, that is to say, God as a Tri-Unity” (242).
  3. A path to encountering God’s love: “God as Creator can know and love all things perfectly in a way no other can, but that we understand best how God does so only if we also understand the simplicity of his nature. All created being derives from him, from his own knowledge and love of himself. Far from sequestering him in a compartmental isolation from creation, this perfection of simple knowledge and love is omni-comprehensive and all-inclusive. God can know all that is and love all that is precisely as the cause of its very existence and out of the perfection of his own goodness” (258).

“The holy, catholic, apostolic and Roman church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God, creator and lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding and every perfection. Since he is one, singular, completely simple [simplex omnino] and unchangeable spiritual substance, he must be declared to be in reality and essence, distinct from the world, supremely happy in himself and from himself, and inexpressibly loftier than anything besides himself which either exists or can be imagined” – the First Vatican Council, in Dei Filius, ch. 1, “On God, Creator of all things.”