Does the Trinity Contradict Divine Simplicity?
There is no shortage of objections to divine simplicity. First, we looked at the claim that simplicity removes our ability to distinguish between God’s attributes. Then we looked at the objection that simplicity can’t be supported biblically. In this post, we will look at a third objection to simplicity.
Several modern theologians believe simplicity somehow contradicts the Trinity.
I quoted John Frame positively in the previous article, so it’s worth noting here that he does eventually object to the doctrine of simplicity on the grounds of the Trinity. He writes, “Thomists argue that their view of simplicity is consistent with the Trinity, because simplicity pertains not to the three persons, but to the divine nature that they all share. However, I do not believe that we can make such a neat separation between nature and persons. Certainly the persons are just as essential to God’s being as any attribute. It is not evident to me why triunity should not be considered an attribute of God along with the others.”[1]
Elsewhere he adds, “This doctrine of the simplicity of God presents a picture of him rather like the Neoplatonic One, and raises questions about the biblical affirmations of his numerous attributes and especially of his Trinitarian plurality.”[2]
Simplicity: The Safeguard of the Trinity
I don’t intend to argue against Frame point-for-point in this blog (for a full review of Frame’s systematic theology, click here). But these two quotes by him represent a standard objection to simplicity.
This objection is somewhat surprising because the doctrine of simplicity has historically been used to defend the Trinity. Richard Muller summarizes,
“Virtually all theologians we will examine on this point, whether medieval scholastics like Aquinas, Reformers like Calvin and Musculus, or subsequent Protestant scholastic writers like Perkins, Turretin, Howe, and Rijssen, held to the patristic assumption that, far from contradicting the doctrine of the Trinity, the notion of divine simplicity offered a profound support to an orthodox doctrine of the triune God.”[3]
Steven J. Duby elaborates on Turretin specifically, “Although contemporary students of theology may be inclined to think divine simplicity and the doctrine of the Trinity stand in tension with one another, Turretin begins his account of simplicity by complaining that the Socinians sought to reject simplicity in order to undermine the Trinity by introducing composition in God.”[4]
Turretin begins his section on simplicity with the question and answer, “Is God most simple and free from all composition? We affirm against Socinus and Vorstius.” And why do the Socinians deny simplicity? Turretin continues, “The Socinians agitate this controversy with us since they deny that simplicity can be attributed to God according to the Scriptures and think it should be expunged from the number of the divine attributes for no other purpose than to weaken more easily the mystery of the Trinity by establishing the composition of the divine essence.”[5]
Far from flattening out the Trinity, the doctrine of simplicity demands that each person of the Trinity is equally the one true God. As Ames writes, “The same essence is common to three subsistences…nothing is attributed to the Essence, which may not be attributed to each subsistence in regards to the Essence of it.” This is because, as Berkhof says, the divine nature “is numerically one and the same, and therefore the unity of essence in the persons is a numerical unity.”[6]
van Mastricht elaborates further against the objection that simplicity contradicts the Trinity: “[The three persons] do not argue for composition, because persons do not differ from essence in God, but rather in us and in our conception. Nor also do the persons differ between themselves except through their modes of subsisting, which, because they are not things or beings, but only modes of being, do not compose, but only distinguish.”[7]
A Dangerous Objection
Even though there is some understandable confusion when it comes to the Trinity and simplicity, believing the two doctrines contradict one another requires a dangerous assumption.
As we have seen, the divine essence is numerically one and undivided between the three persons. Therefore, the three persons of God can only negate simplicity if the three persons are separate parts of the divine essence. MacArthur and Mayhue write, “God’s essence is not composed of three persons. Rather, the uncompounded, undivided divine essence exists in each of the three persons. The various personal properties unique to each person are not things added to the divine essence but are only distinctions of personal subsistence.”[8]
Muller adds, “the paternity, filiation, and, procession are real relational or relative distinctions, but they are not real essential distinctions such as subsist between things and other things or such as would imply composition in one thing.”[9] Divine simplicity is a statement about the essence of the Trinity. So, to say that the tri-personality of God is incompatible with simplicity is to say that the three persons are different parts of God.
As Muller says above, “real essential distinctions such as subsist between things and other things” do not exist in the Trinity. The persons of the Trinity are not separate things. They are three subsistences of the same thing—which is the one, simple divine essence. When someone says “the Trinity is incompatible with simplicity,” what they are usually saying is “the divine essence is divided between the persons” or “the Trinity is composed of three persons.” When the objection is restated in those terms, the error is obvious.
Thus Muller concludes, “In short, the plurality of persons in God does not contravene the divine simplicity, but can even be said to imply it. As far as the seventeenth-century orthodox are concerned, moreover, the doctrine of divine simplicity is a corollary and support of the doctrine of the Trinity.”[10] Because the divine essence is one and simple, all divine persons must exist as the one essence, rather than separate divine essences (tritheism).
If simplicity has served as a safeguard for the Trinity throughout history, why is it that modern theologians come to the exact opposite conclusion? Is it that theologians of the past simply never considered these objections? Or do modern theologians reject what they have not fully understood? I am inclined to believe the latter.
References:
[1] John Frame, The Doctrine of God (Philipsburg, PA: P&R, 2002), 227. By “Thomists,” Frame is referring to the view of simplicity taught by the Reformed Scholastics as well.
[2] John M. Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology (Phillipsburg, PA: P&R, 2015), 151.
[3] Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 3, The Divine Essence and Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 298.
[4] Steven J. Duby, “Receiving No Perfection from Another: Francis Turretin on Divine Simplicity,” Modern Theology 35:3 (July 2019): 526.
[5] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., vol. 1 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 191.
[6] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (1938; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 88.
[7] Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, Vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God, trans. Todd M. Rester, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2019), 148.
[8] John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, Biblical Doctrine (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017), 176.
[9] Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 3, The Divine Essence and Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 55.
[10] Ibid., 282.