One of the trips I remember taking with my parents was to Crater of Diamonds in Arkansas. Where most of the world’s diamonds are mined deep out of the earth, here, in a little spot just outside of Murfreesboro, these precious gems are scattered about in a simple plowed field and can be found with a minimal bit of digging (and a bit of God’s good providence!). I didn’t find any diamonds that day, but I found tons of amethyst, garnet, and quartz.
One of the recent “hot button” topics in recent Reformed theology has been the doctrine of divine simplicity, spurred in part by James Dolezal’s excellent book, All That is in God. But, what is divine simplicity? In barest terms, it means that God is not composed of parts. When we discuss the various attributes of God, we have to see that we are not describing different parts of God, but the simple, undivided, and singular divine nature. As an example, when God executes judgment on the wicked, it is perfectly consistent with the same divine nature as when He has mercy. We are not seeing “two sides” of God. It is crucial to understand that this simplicity means that God’s character is perfectly self-consistent.
At first blush, this doctrine seems to be arcane and irrelevant, better suited to those who study in ivory towers than to those who sit in church pews. But as we plow this field —understanding even a little— profound truths, like diamonds, begin to glimmer all around us.
First, Christians often have this vision of a wrathful Father —burning with a sort of “Let-me-at-them!” ferocity— being held at bay by the merciful Son. The Father, ready to smite all humanity, is reluctantly swayed by His Son’s pleading. Philip made this kind of mistake once, saying, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” (John 14:8) Jesus’s answer is precisely the remedy we need: “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9a). In Christ, all of God’s attributes are put on display, united with His humanity, and culminating with the glory of the cross itself. AW Tozer said, “When God justifies a sinner, everything in God is on the sinner’s side. All the attributes of God are on the sinner’s side. It isn’t that mercy is pleading for the sinner and justice is trying to beat him to death. All of God does all that God does.”[ref]Attributes of God, 71[/ref] Even one of the more quoted verses in the Bible shows how wrongheaded this thinking is: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
Second, the simplicity of God also fences us against the mistake of ranking God’s attributes one above another. Gregory of Nyssa said, “For all the divine attributes, whether named or conceived, are of like rank one with another.” As Michael Horton notes, “There is a caution here against the tendency of hyper-Calvinism to rank God’s sovereignty and justice over his love and of Arminianism to reverse the order. This comes perilously close to idolatry by worshiping an attribute of God rather than God himself.” This is precisely the error people make when they say, “Well, my god is a god of…” Without simplicity hedging us in, we begin to remake God after our own image rather than worshiping and serving God as His is.
Finally, we better understand the Christian life and the singular fruit of the Spirit. In God Is, Mark Jones notes that Galatians 5:22 says love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are said to be a singular fruit, not multiple fruits. When we manifest the fruit of the Spirit, we in some limited sense model God’s simplicity. Quoting Jonathan Edwards, Jones explains, “All the graces of Christianity always go together, so that where there is one, there are all; and when one is wanting, all are wanting….”
Let us, then, pursue the simple God and model the simple fruit in our lives.