Divine Simplicity and the Boundaries of Orthodoxy

Abstract

This paper explores whether the classical view of Divine Simplicity (DS) is required to remain in the bounds of Christian orthodoxy. After defining key terms, a method is proposed and employed for identifying the boundaries of orthodoxy: searching the statements of the four ecumenical councils for explicit affirmations of DS. In addition, three historic confessions and a significant contemporary statement of faith are examined for affirmations of the classical view of DS. The conclusion is that an affirmation of the classical view of DS is orthodox, but not required for orthodoxy.

1. Introduction

Divine Simplicity (DS) is a view of God commonly affirmed in the Christian Tradition, which recently gained renewed attention among some evangelical Christian scholars.1 In this paper, I will address the following question: Is an affirmation of the classical view of DS required to remain within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy?

I have structured my examination of the question as follows. First, I will highlight a prominent Christian scholar’s concern about evangelical Christians failing to affirm DS. Second, I will define DS, orthodoxy, and related terms. Third, I will suggest a method for identifying the boundaries of orthodoxy. Fourth, I will employ the method. Fifth, I will conclude by noting the implications and possible areas of further study.

2. A Prominent Christian Scholar’s Concern

In the foreword of Matthew Barrett’s significant historical–theological study of the patristic and scholastic background of the Protestant Reformation, Carl Trueman wrote: “Much of modern evangelical writing on this subject [the doctrine of God] would not have been recognized as orthodox by the Reformers and their heirs. While such deviation was no doubt pursued in good faith, the rejections of simplicity, immutability, and impassibility—as classically understood—place much of contemporary evangelical theology closer to the biblicist and highly problematic Socinianism of the early seventeenth century than to the Trinitarian orthodoxy of the church catholic” (Trueman 2023, p. xiv).

Trueman’s remark affirmed Barrett’s thesis that the theological aims of the Reformers were grounded in returning to Scholastic theology, or the theology of the church catholic. My focus is not Barrett’s thesis but Trueman’s perspective that any move away from the classical doctrines, including DS, is a move away from orthodoxy. He claims that the rejection of DS by many modern evangelicals places them closer to biblicism and Socinianism—a “highly problematic” viewpoint. Trueman’s remark appears only in the foreword of a book. Thus, someone might ask, why give this claim such weight? Why introduce a paper on DS by quoting Trueman’s minor and passing comment? In reply, Trueman is a prominent Christian scholar, and his remark reflects a much larger movement of Christian scholars who seem to equate classical theism with Christian orthodoxy.2 If so, then Trueman’s passing remark in the foreword represents the tip of a much larger, unseen iceberg under theological waters. What is the classical understanding of DS? What are these negative trajectories that Trueman identifies as biblicism and Socinianism? What is orthodoxy? These terms must be defined before addressing the following question: Is an affirmation of the classical view of DS required to remain within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy?

3. Definitions

Some definitions are in order. What is meant by the following terms: Divine Simplicity, biblicism, Socinianism, orthodox, and orthodoxy?

In his monograph advocating for the view, Steven J. Duby defines Divine Simplicity as “the teaching that God is not composed of parts but rather is identical with his own essence, existence and attributes, each of which is identical with the whole being of the triune God considered under some aspect” (Duby 2016, p. 2), or, as he contends later: “Simplicity is that which opposes composition” (Duby 2016, p. 81). Recall our main question: Is an affirmation of the classical view of DS required to remain within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy? Because the question concerns “the classical view of DS”, I will provide examples of another Protestant and a Catholic academic summary of DS to ensure that we have properly identified the classical view of DS.

In the Lexham Survey of Theology, Brandon Smith writes that “God’s simplicity entails that his essence and existence are identical, signifying that there is no composition or division within the divine nature.” Smith continues by identifying two significant ideas in the definition: God is uncreated (“no composition”) and undivided in his nature. Smith also notes that God’s attributes should not be elevated above one another. Additionally, DS has implications for the doctrine of the Trinity because the persons of the Godhead are not three parts, but “three personal modes of subsisting of the divine essence.” Smith notes examples of prominent Christians who affirmed views consistent with DS, such as Athanasius, Thomas Aquinas, and Hilary of Poitiers. He concludes as follows: “The Christian tradition does not have a monolithic view on God’s simplicity, especially considering the development of the concept between the patristic and medieval periods. However, the Christian tradition has largely agreed upon the indivisibility of God’s essence and attributes” (Smith 2018).

Thomas Joseph White’s entry on DS in the St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology provides more than 13,000 words of careful analytical explanation and examples of advocates from the patristic, medieval, and modern eras (White 2022). The first two sentences in White’s article establish the tension that this study is exploring. White begins as follows: “The conceptual notion of divine simplicity is a contested one, both in modern continental Christian theology and contemporary analytic philosophy.” Therefore, DS is a contested idea in Christian theology and contemporary philosophy. In the next sentence, however, he adds: “Nevertheless, it [Divine Simplicity] is of central importance in the patristic and scholastic traditions of mainstream Christian theology and has a place in significant conciliar decrees.” Therefore, DS is a contested idea, but it is also of central importance and found in significant conciliar decrees. What does White mean by “central importance”, and what constitutes a “significant conciliar decree”? There were seven conciliar decrees, from Nicaea I in 325 to Nicaea II in 787. Roman Catholics regard all seven councils to be authoritative, but some Christian traditions deny the authority of some of the final three councils. The first four are generally regarded as authoritative by all Christian traditions. Thus, White is correct in pointing to its importance in significant conciliar decrees—although not in all of them, according to most Protestants.

What is biblicism? Barrett dedicates an entire page in The Reformation as Renewal to identifying biblicism. He writes: “Biblicism moves beyond believing in the final authority of the Bible to imposing a restrictive hermeneutical method onto the Bible” (Barrett 2023, p. 21).3

What is Socinianism? An Italian uncle and nephew, Lelio Francesco Maria Sozini (1525–1562) and Faustus Socinus (1539–1604), respectively, were accused of problematic theology. One or both were accused of denying the eternal divinity of both the Son and the Holy Spirit, affirming an example theory of the atonement, and denying the doctrines of predestination, original sin, total inability, and the endless punishment of the unregenerate. Although some of the doctrines that the Socinians rejected are disputed doctrines outside the Reformed tradition (such as predestination and total inability), a true denial of the divinity of the Son and Spirit would put any group outside the bounds of Christian orthodoxy.4 The upshot of Trueman’s remark is that to deny DS (among the other classical positions, such as immutability and impassibility) would position one closer to the Socinians than to Trinitarian orthodoxy.

Orthodox refers not to the Eastern, Russian, or Greek Churches, but to the doctrines and practices of faithful Christians. A doctrine or practice can be orthodox without being affirmed by all Christians. For example, paedobaptism is orthodox but not affirmed and practiced by all Christians.

Orthodoxy refers to the beliefs that are essential to the Christian faith. Vincent of Lérins referred to doctrines believed everywhere, always, by all Christians (Vincent of Lérins, The Commonitory 2.3; see also Oden 2003, pp. 156–86). Such doctrines constitute the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy. Consider C. S. Lewis’s use of the term “mere Christianity”, or the first-order doctrines in Al Mohler’s theological triage (see Lewis 1952; Mohler 2008, pp. 105–14).

4. Method

In this study, orthodoxy will be measured against Vincent’s threefold test, a doctrine believed everywhere, always, by all Christians. To determine whether DS was believed everywhere, always, and by all Christians, I will conduct a brief search for affirmations of DS in the Christian Tradition by examining selected ecumenical creeds (Nicaea through Chalcedon), significant historic confessions (The Augsburg Confession, The Westminster Confession of Faith, and The Thirty-Nine Articles), and a prominent contemporary statement of faith (the Baptist Faith and Message). Does DS meet the threefold test of Vincent of Lérins, or did and do only some Christians believe it? I selected documents to represent the four ecumenical councils, three Christian confessions from the Reformation era (Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Anglican), and the statement of faith of the largest Protestant convention of churches in the US (the Baptist Faith and Message of the Southern Baptist Convention).

5. Examination of the Ecumenical Creeds

In this section, I will examine the creeds produced by the four ecumenical councils between Nicaea I in 325 and Chalcedon in 451 to search for explicit affirmations of DS. Regarding the method, I searched the English texts of Pelikan and Hotchkiss’s Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition for any words that could reasonably be understood as references to DS.5

5.1. The First Ecumenical Council

The Creed of Nicaea (325), prompted by Arianism, contains no explicit affirmation of DS. The following statement is made: “We believe in one God.” However, belief in one God (monotheism) is not synonymous with the belief that the one God is ontologically simple (DS). Furthermore, Jesus is referred to as “consubstantial with the Father” in this and many subsequent creeds. This phrase might lend support to DS. However, the confession indicates that the Son and Father are of the same substance, just as the Son is identified, in a previous line, as “from the substance of the Father.” These phrases refer to their shared divine nature, not a shared metaphysical simplicity.

5.2. The Second Ecumenical Council

The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), prompted by the Pneumatomachians, begins like the previous creed: “We believe in one God.” However, nothing else in the creed requires an affirmation of DS. The persons of the Godhead are mentioned but, as previously noted, merely identifying the distinctions among the divine persons does not require an affirmation of DS.

5.3. The Third Ecumenical Council

The third ecumenical council, prompted by Nestorianism, met in Ephesus and produced Canon 7 on the Nicene Creed (431) and The Formula of Union (433). Nothing new was added to the content of the creed in Canon 7 on the Nicene Creed. Other matters, however, were noted, such as a recommendation of the creed’s global recitation and a rejection of “the disgusting, perverted views of Nestorius.” The Formula of Union mentions that the Son is “consubstantial with the Father in Godhead”, referring to the Son and Father’s shared divine nature. The word consubstantial, in this context cannot refer to a simple nature because, in the same sentence, the Son is declared to be “consubstantial with us in humanity.” Thus, the sharing refers in this context to the same nature, not a simple nature.

5.4. The Fourth Ecumenical Council

The fourth ecumenical council, prompted by Eutyichianism (or Monophysitism), produced The Definition of Faith (451). The document reaffirmed the creeds of 325 and 381, the doctrinal authority of Cyril’s letters to Nestorius and the Antiochenes, and The Tome of Leo (459). The additional material clarified that Christ is consubstantial with the Father in his divinity and with us in our natures—although without sin. This council sought to clarify matters concerning Christ’s two natures in one person and issued no statements about DS.

This brief survey of the first four ecumenical councils in no way rules out DS as orthodox. Christians affirm many doctrines not mentioned in these documents. However, if these documents reflect the doctrines believed everywhere, always, by all Christians, then DS is not among those first-order doctrines. Thus, DS might be orthodox, but an affirmation of DS should not be required for orthodoxy.

One possible objection to this method was raised in a conversation with a colleague. He observed that DS was assumed to be true by all the participants in the councils and all the church fathers, even if it was not explicitly stated in the documents (see, for example, Ip 2022). This is an interesting concern that is worthy of further exploration. Did all orthodox thinkers assume DS in the early church? If so, was it understood as implicit in their affirmation of belief in “one God”? Even if the view was implicit, does the fact that the phrase does not appear in the creeds mean that the view was not regarded as necessary for orthodoxy?

6. Examination of Three Historic Confessions

In this section, I will examine three historic confessions to search for explicit affirmations of DS. Regarding the selection of the confessions, I chose three confessions, which, in my judgment, represent significant influence on some Christian traditions and variety in Christian orthodoxy. Like in the previous section, I searched the English texts of Pelikan and Hotchkiss’s Creeds and Confessions for any words that could reasonably be understood as references to DS. I selected The Augsburg Confession (1530), The Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), and The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647).

6.1. The Augsburg Confession

The Augsburg Confession (1530) was a document that was drafted by multiple individuals for Emperor Charles V and revised by Melanchthon in consultation with Luther.6 The ecumenical nature of the document is evidenced by its acceptance by John Calvin, its use in formulating The Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), and the consideration by the Catholic Church at the end of the twentieth century that the confession might be a valid expression of truth (Pelikan and Hotchkiss 2003b, p. 52). The first article is on God and notes alignment with the views expressed at Nicaea. The earlier examination found no affirmation of DS in The Creed of Nicaea (325). However, the section on God in The Augsburg Confession was examined for any possible mention of DS. God is affirmed as “one divine essence.” Although DS could be inferred from this phrase, the view is not required. The confession could merely be affirming monotheism, not DS. In addition, the document confesses that “there are three persons in this one divine essence.” Furthermore, the three persons are “without division.” These phrases could be interpreted as supporting DS because the view affirms an undivided, divine essence. However, these statements do not require DS because the undivided, divine essence could merely refer to the unity of the divine persons. The article also contains negative statements, identifying “heresies” contrary to the doctrine articulated by the article. Significantly, there is no mention of condemning those teachers who reject DS. Thus, The Augsburg Confession neither explicitly affirms DS nor identifies those who deny DS as heretical.

6.2. The Thirty-Nine Articles

The Church of England’s The Thirty-Nine Articles (1571) influenced Anglican and Episcopal Churches for roughly three centuries (Pelikan and Hotchkiss 2003b, p. 527).7 The first sentence in the first article explicitly affirms DS. The document reads as follows: “There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions.” The sentence continues, but the affirmation of DS is unmistakable. God is “without body, parts, or passions.” The second denial by itself, that God is without parts, is all that is needed to establish DS. The Thirty-Nine Articles explicitly affirms DS.

6.3. The Westminster Confession of Faith

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) was the last major confession emerging from the Reformation. It has influenced other confessions and remains the doctrinal standard for many Presbyterian Churches today.8 Chapter 2 of the confession concerns God and the Holy Trinity. The first sentence of the first section includes an explicit affirmation of DS. I will only include part of the sentence because it is eight lines of print. The relevant words are the description of God as “without body, parts, or passions.” Note that the same words appeared in the same order in The Thirty-Nine Articles, published more than 70 years earlier. As an interesting detail, biblical citations were added to the WCF by order of the House of Commons before the document was approved in 1647 (Pelikan and Hotchkiss 2003b, p. 602).9 The Westminster Confession of Faith explicitly affirms DS.

7. Examination of a Contemporary Statement of Faith

It would be interesting to search the statements of faith from a dozen or more of the largest Christian denominations in the US or globally. However, I selected only one document, the Baptist Faith and Message (2000), to illustrate a contemporary statement of faith. If my analysis of the ecumenical creeds and historic confessions is correct, then this investigation could end with the conclusion that DS is not affirmed explicitly in the earlier creeds, but that it is affirmed explicitly in some of the Reformed confessions. If true, then DS is orthodox, but not orthodoxy. However, I included one contemporary document, the BFM of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), because it represents the largest Protestant group in the US and the tradition to which I belong. Investigating the statement of faith I agreed to teach in accordance with and not in contradiction to—as a condition of my employment as an SBC seminary professor—is a matter of personal interest.

Theology proper is addressed in Article 2 of the BFM.10 The article is composed of a six-sentence paragraph and three brief subsections entitled “God the Father”, “God the Son”, and “God the Holy Spirit.” From my reading of the document, there is no explicit affirmation of DS. However, two statements could be interpreted as providing implicit support for DS. The first instance is in the first sentence: “There is one and only one living and true God.” The second instance is found in the sixth sentence of the opening paragraph: “The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being” (emphasis mine).

Doug Blount wrote a chapter on Article 2 in a collection of essays that comment on each article of the BFM (Blount 2007, pp. 13–24). Blount highlights the changes in the article and what those changes were intended to address when the BFM (1963) was updated in 2000. Specifically, he notes the addition of a line about God’s comprehensive knowledge (“all things past, present, and future”) to rule out open theism and the insertion of the word “triune.”11 In Blount’s view, the article’s first sentence (“There is one and only one living and true God.”) precludes tritheism. In addition, in Blount’s estimation, the phrase in the sixth sentence (“without division of nature, essence, or being”) makes “explicit the Baptist rejection of modalism” (Blount 2007, p. 17). While an advocate of DS might read the phrases describing God as “one and only one” and “without division of nature, essence, or being” as consistent with and providing support for DS, Blount’s interpretation is only that the phrases rule out tritheism and modalism, respectively, with no mention of DS.

8. Conclusions

In this study, I explored the following question: “Is an affirmation of the classical view of DS required to remain within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy?” First, I highlighted Trueman’s concern that evangelical Christians’ failure to affirm DS results in biblicism and highly problematic doctrinal views. Second, I defined key terms (DS, biblicism, Socinianism, orthodox, and orthodoxy). Third, I suggested a method for identifying the boundaries of orthodoxy, namely, search creeds and confessions, to determine whether a doctrine met Vincent’s test of being believed everywhere, always, by all Christians. Fourth, I employed the method by searching the creeds of the four ecumenical councils, three Reformation confessions, and a contemporary statement of faith for affirmations of DS. At the risk of over-simplifying the matter, my findings are illustrated in

Table 1. Explicit Affirmations of DS in Select Councils, Confessions, and Statements of Faith.

Council, Confession, or Statement of Faith	DS Is Explicitly Affirmed	DS Is Not Explicitly Affirmed
First Ecumenical Council, The Creed of Nicaea (325)		✓
Second Ecumenical Council, The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381)		✓
Third Ecumenical Council, Canon 7 on the Nicene Creed (431); The Formula of Union (433)		✓
Fourth Ecumenical Council, The Definition of Faith (451)		✓
The Augsburg Confession (1530)		✓
The Thirty-Nine Articles (1571)	✓
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)	✓
Baptist Faith and Message (2000)		✓

.

If DS has not been universally affirmed in the Christian Tradition, then DS should be regarded as orthodox, but not orthodoxy. One Christian who affirms DS and another Christian who does not affirm DS can both defend their views as orthodox and be situated safely under the same umbrella of orthodoxy. Many skilled theologians and philosophers have examined DS. I plan to devote further attention to the matter if the Lord wills. My tentative thesis is that certain views of God can be affirmed as orthodox (including the classical view of DS). However, these views should be distinguished from those required for orthodoxy (such as God as a unity of divine attributes, God as Triune, and God as uncreated). Several steps will be needed to explore this topic more fully. My next step is to examine the biblical reasoning for DS provided by advocates such as Thomas Aquinas, Steven Duby, and Thomas Joseph White.

I will end on a personal note. When I told a friend and respected colleague—a DS advocate—about my research for this paper, he asked, “Why? To what end?” I have reflected on his question. My answer is that I desire, as he does, to know God more deeply and fully. I want to think and believe rightly about God. If God is simple, I want to know this so I can know the truth about the One who created all things, redeemed, sustains, and will one day welcome his people into his presence.