Divine Simplicity (Simplicitas Dei)

Here are two Christian theologians’ discussions of divine simplicity (simplicitas Dei).  The first, comes from Anselm of Canterbury (around 1080) in Proslogion:

“What are you, Lord, what are You; what shall my heart understand You to be?  You are, assuredly, life, You are wisdom, You are truth, You are goodness, You are blessedness, You are eternity, and You are every true good.  These are many things, and my limited understanding cannot see them all in one single glance so as to delight in all at once.  How then, Lord, are You all these things?  Are they parts of You, or rather, is each one of these wholly what You are?  For whatever is made up of parts is not absolutely one, but in a sense many and other than itself, and it can be broken up either actually or by the mind – all of which things are foreign to You….”

“Therefore there are no parts in You, Lord, neither are You many, but You are so much one and the same with Yourself that in nothing You are dissimilar with Yourself.  Indeed You are unity itself not divisible by any mind.  Life and wisdom and the other [attributes] then, are not parts of You, but all are one and each one of them is wholly what You are and what all the others are.  Since, then, neither You nor Your eternity which You are have parts, no part of You or of Your eternity is anywhere or at any time, but You exist as a whole everywhere and Your eternity exists as a whole always.”

Second, around 800 years later, Herman Bavinck said it this way (c. 1900):

“On the whole, [Christian] teaching has been that God is ‘simple,’ that is, sublimely free from all composition, and that therefore one cannot make any real [i.e. ontological] distinction between his being and his attributes.  Each attribute is identical with God’s being: he is what he possesses.  In speaking of creatures we make all sorts of distinctions between what they are and what they have.  A person, for example, is still human even though he or she has lost the [original] image of God and has become a sinner.  But in God all his attributes are identical with his being.  God is light through and through; he is all mind, all wisdom, all logos, all spirit, and so forth.  …Whatever God is, he is that completely and simultaneously.  …This doctrine of God’s simplicity was the means by which Christian theology was kept from the danger of splitting God’s attributes from his essence and of making them more or less independent from, and opposed to, his essence” (Reformed Dogmatics II, 118).

rev. shane lems

Theology Is…

What is true, Christian, biblical theology?  What good is it?  Is it practical?  William Ames (d. 1633) has some great answers to these questions.  Here’s an edited version of Ames’ helpful discussion.

“Theology is the doctrine or teaching [doctrina] of living to God (Jn. 6:68, Acts 5:20, Rom. 6:11).  It is called doctrine, not to separate it from understanding, knowledge, wisdom, art, or prudence – for these go with every exact discipline, and most of all theology – but to mark it as a discipline which derives not from nature and human inquiry like others, but from divine revelation and appointment (Is. 51:4, Mat. 21:25, Jn. 9:29, Gal. 1:11-12).”

“Although it is within the compass of this life to live both happily and well; living well is more excellent than living happily.  What chiefly and finally ought to be striven for is not happiness which has to do with our own pleasure, but goodness which looks to God’s glory.  For this reason, theology is better defined as that good life whereby we live to God than as that happy life whereby we live to ourselves.  The apostle therefore calls it by synecdoche (a part which stands for the whole), the teaching that accords with godliness (1 Tim. 6:3).”

“The practice of life is so perfectly reflected in theology that there is no precept of universal truth relevant to living well in domestic economy, morality, political life, or lawmaking which does not rightly pertain to theology.”

“Theology, therefore, is to us the ultimate end and noblest of all exact teaching arts.  It is a guide and master plan for our highest end, sent in a special manner from God, treating of divine things, tending towards God, and leading man to God.  It may therefore rightly be called ‘theozoia,’ a living to God, or ‘theorgia,’ a working towards God, as well as ‘theology,’ a study of God.”

“The two parts of theology are faith (believing) and observance (doing) (2 Tim. 1:13, 1 Tim. 1:19, Gen 15:6, 17:1, Matt. 28:20, Titus 3:8).”

Indeed: theology is extremely practical every day of our pilgrim life.

William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, Book 1.1-2.

shane lems

Wisdom, Ignorance, Knowledge, Seminary

Around six months ago I wrote a short review of this book: Excellence: The Character of God and the Puruit of Scholarly Virtue by Andreas Kostenberger.  To summarize that review, I really liked the book and recommend it.  As I was paging through it again recently, I found this section that I had marked up.  It’s on knowledge, seminary, and wisdom.  After commenting on 1 Corinthians 8:1, Kostenberger says,

“…Knowledge is good and necessary, but it must be accompanied by love and humility, or it will lead to pride and arrogance.  When I was a freshly minted Christian considering seminary training in the United States, an American missionary recounted the story of an aspiring student who was told by a well-meaning counselor, ‘God doesn’t need your education.’  To which the young man replied, ‘God doesn’t need your ignorance either.’”

“…True, seminary sometimes removes students from the real world, and, as one of my former professors never tired of repeating, ‘must be gotten out of your system,’ before effective ministry can take place.  ‘Now you k now what the answers are,’ he kept saying.  ‘Go and find out the questions that people are actually asking.’  To be sure, there are those who are so other-worldly that they are little or no earthly good.  But at the same time, there is considerable value in formal training in virtually any profession, and, certainly, education in studying the Bible is no exception.”

As a side, that reminds me of someone who, when defending the need for pastors to go to seminary, quipped that no one would fly on a plane where the pilot wasn’t trained or go to a doctor who skipped medical school.  So he wouldn’t go to a church where the pastor wasn’t trained.  Kostenberger continues:

“There is a need to learn the original languages, Greek and Hebrew, in order to interpret the Bible more precisely and to preach it more accurately and authoritatively.  There is the benefit of formal instruction in preaching, theology, and church history.  If you have a well-educated pastor, or if you are a well-educated pastor, don’t hang your head – be grateful that God has given you the privilege of receiving proper formal training in studying and proclaiming his Word.  Whatever people may say, ignorance is not a virtue.  Neither is knowledge, however, unless it is applied and put to proper use.  This application of knowledge to real-life situations is called ‘wisdom’” (p. 177-178).

Andreas Kostenberger, Excellence (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011).

shane lems

Doctrine: Superfluous Paraphernalia of the Church?

Here’s a great critique of revivalistic pietism by Os Guinness.

“The trouble was that after the movement of revialistic pietism swept by [in the 1800s], evangelicalism had also become anti-intellectual and anti-theological to a fault.  Examples of this anti-theological anti-intellectualism abound.  ‘My theology!’ Dwight L.  Moody said later, ‘I didn’t know I had any.’  ‘If I had a creed,’ Sam Jones, the Moody of the South, added, ‘I would sell it to a museum.’  Billy Sunday did not ‘know any more about theology,’ he used to boast, ‘than a jack-rabbit knew about ping pong.’

“Faith without theology?  Creeds fit only for a museum?  Theology at a jack-rabbit level something to brag about?  The statements themselves are flamboyantly brash; the assumptions behind them appalling.  But they reveal our evangelical anti-intellectualism beyond any contradiction.”

“Current versions of anti-intellectual pietism are milder and sometimes even a little uneasy.  But they have not been forsworn. Again and again our pietist flaw shows through.  Whenever evangelicals have an experience of direct, personal access to God, we are tempted to think or act as if we can dispense with doctrine, sacraments, history, and all the other ‘superfluous paraphernalia’ of the church – and make our experience the sum and soul of our faith.”

“Thus our evangelical experience has become our strength and our weakness.  We are people with a true, sometimes a deep, experience of God.  But we are no longer a people of truth.  Only rarely are we serious about theology at a popular level.  We are still suspicious of thinking and scholarship.  We are still attracted to movements that replace thinking and theology by other emphases – relational, therapeutic, charismatic, and managerial (as in church growth).  Some of our ministries and organizations that operate at the highest level of national life are still deeply, explicitly, and persistently anti-intellectual.”

“Whatever the virtues of these movements and the unquestionable importance of piety, we must courageously repudiate anti-intellectualism for the sin it is.  Piety is essential, but it is not sufficient by itself.  Truth, thinking, theology, and the place of the mind must be given the emphasis they deserve from followers of Christ.”

I agree; Guinness said it well.  You can find this entire discussion on pages 38-39 of this great book: Fit Bodies, Fat Minds (which can be purchased used on Amazon for under $6 total).

shane lems

The Mystery of Evil

This section of Christopher Wright’s fine book, The God I Don’t Understand has cause me to think (which is part of the reason I like it!).  In fact, I’m still thinking about it.  Here it is:

“…God has revealed to us vast amounts of truth in the Bible – about God himself, about creation, about ourselves, our sin, God’s plan of salvation, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the future destiny of the world, and so on.  Thus, in light of all this abundant revelation, the Bible’s silence at this point on the ultimate origin of evil seems all the more significant, and not merely accidental.  It’s not as if God were now saying, ‘Oops, I forgot to mention that point, but never mind, they can figure it out for themselves.’  No, the truth is that God has chosen in his wisdom not to give us an answer to our questions about the ultimate origin of evil within creation.  It is simply not for us to know – and that is God’s sovereign decision, the prerogative of the one who is the source of all truth and revelation in the universe.”

Later in this chapter (chapter 1) Wright continues:

“God, with his infinite perspective, and for reasons known only to himself, knows that we finite human beings cannot, indeed must not ‘make sense’ of evil.  For the final truth is that evil does not make sense.  ‘Sense’ is part of our rationality that in itself is part of God’s good creation and God’s image in us.  So evil can have no sense, since sense itself is a good thing.”

“Evil has no proper place within creation.  It has no validity, no truth, no integrity.  It does not intrinsically belong to the creation as God originally made it nor will it belong to creation as God will ultimately redeem it.  It cannot and must not be integrated into the universe as a rational, legitimated, justified part of reality.  Evil is not there to be understood, but to be resisted and ultimately expelled.  Evil was and remains an intruder, an alien presence that has made itself almost (but not finally) inextricably ‘at home.’  Evil is beyond our understanding because it is not part of the ultimate reality that God in his perfect wisdom and utter truthfulness intends us to understand.  So God has withheld its secrets from his own revelation and our research.”

“Personally, I have come to accept this as a providentially good thing.  Indeed, as I have wrestled with this thought about evil, it brings a certain degree of relief.  And I think it carries the implication that whenever we are confronted with something utterly and dreadfully evil, appallingly wicked, or just plain tragic, we should resist the temptation that is wrapped up in the cry, ‘Where’s the sense in that?’  It’s not that we get no answer.  We get silence.  And that silence is the answer to our question.  There is no sense.  And that is a good thing too.”

“Can I understand that?  No.  Do I want to understand that?  Probably not, if God has decided it is better that I don’t.  So I am willing to live with the understanding that the God I don’t understand has chosen not to explain the origin of evil, but rather wants to concentrate my attention on what he has done to defeat and destroy it.”

If this brief discussion has piqued your interest, I recommend getting this book so you can read the rest of the chapter and other such discussions.  Here’s the full title: The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith by Christopher Wright.  I appreciate how Wright approaches these tough areas of the Christian faith with humility and a solid grounding in Scripture.  The book is a good one to have when considering answers for the real, tough, and deep questions we ask about the Christian faith.

shane lems

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