Genesis 1:1 - Divine Simplicity

Intro:

Well after a brief detour to consider the events of Palm Sunday for a week we are back today in the book of Genesis. Now while we are back here in the book we aren't going to get very far today. In fact we are going to be staying put in the first half of of the first verse of Genesis and taking up another important consideration we find here related to the nature and being of God.

In reality we could spend weeks and weeks and weeks here! God is the inexhaustible fountain head and source of all that is. God is the great “I AM” as we will learn more about today and as my favorite hymn says “Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above would drain the oceans dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky.”

I love that expression of the magnitude and the magnificence of God. That written large across the very fabric of the universe is the truth that God is far above and beyond our mightiest efforts to comprehend and understand Him.

God as we learned in our last time together here in Genesis exists in a timeless present, that God is outside of time and is the only being who is timeless. All other created beings have a beginning and though those with certain types of life will never cease to exist yet they are not eternal, they are not timeless, only God is that.

We learned that apart from God making Himself knowable to us that we would be hopelessly lost in our ability to comprehend Him and that when God does reveal Himself to us it is most often if not always through the use of anthropomorphic language. This is still one of the most staggering truths that I have learned thus far in considering these foundational chapters of Genesis, that it is not just the language of hands, and wings and such that are anthropomorphic but it is nearly all language. We are trying, as we will see today, to describe infinite realities of Divine essence with finite words. As such all of our words and expressions are going to fall short of fully describing the exact reality of God. The amazing thing is that God knew this and yet still created language, and reason, and mental capacity with the ability to consider Him in all of the ways that He is made manifest to us, both in the natural revelation of Him in the world and in the special revelation on Him in His word. God condescends and makes Himself knowable to us and gives us the capacity to know and understand that revelation.

Now today we need to consider, as I said a few weeks ago, the idea of divine simplicity, This as we will see is far from a simple task. Few theological truths are this ironic, that divine simplicity is one of the most unsimple things you can think about. I had said that we would be considering the triune nature of God as well this morning and while we will consider that to an extent we will save a more full consideration of the trinity for a later message here in these first 11 chapters.

Lets take a moment to open in prayer and then we will get at it.

Pray

Now as I said we are going to be taking on the concept of divine simplicity this morning. It is unfortunate that you don’t hear much about these rich theological themes that many god fearing and honoring folks throughout history have applied themselves to understand. Many believers today seem to have no desire to think and meditate on the deep things of the Lord.

There is of course nothing wrong with coming to the Lord in simple faith and placing your trust in Him. This is what all of us have been called to do. However, there is also the continual exhortation in the New Testament through writers like Paul to continue to mature and to grow in your knowledge of God. The continual call of the biblical authors is to grow, to mature, to apply yourself to the text of scripture and to firmly establish your life on the God who has revealed Himself there.

We must resist the urge to take the easy road, to use excuses to keep us from thinking deeply on these things. We must resist the constant barrage of the worlds pleasures and entertainment that can so fill up our mental scratch discs that we don’t have any room left for applying our mental faculties to these kinds of big, hard to grasp truths about God. We are not all called to be theologians in a professional sense, God certainly does endow certain individuals in His church with a supernatural ability to clearly see and understand these truths and explain them to others, I am grateful to some of them for their help in writingthis message. However, as RC Sproul noted and then wrote a book of the same title, as children of God, everyone is a theologian. We all have thoughts of God, tings that we have learned and understand about God. The difference is not that one is a theologian and one is not, it is that one is a good one and has been faithful with the knowledge and understanding that God has been pleased to reveal and one is not.

As I said ,and I issue this as a warning to myself as well as to all of you here, the greatest hinderance to applying your heart and mind to the consideration and application of these rich theological truths is to allow your mind to always be at the task of consuming the worlds drivel. We must learn to put away the junk food of the onstant barrage of paltry entertainment and foster in our hearts and minds a deep seeted desire for the things of the Lord. The two can not exist simultaniously.

Anyway, I wanted to use some time here this morning to encourage you in this. Don’t take a few messages like this as the be all, end all, of applying your minds to understanding the deep things found in the Word, this is going to be my best effort at only scratching the surface of the glorious material available to us. We must learn to apply ourselves and to persis in digging deep and mining these rich truths about God from the revelation that He has provided to us with the mental faculties that He has granted us.

Simplicity

So now onto divine simplicity. I believe it is important to see this doctrine right here at the outset of scripture because it is essential to understanding God rightly. This God who we meet in the first verse of Genesis, this God who we learned about in His timeless eternality in our last message, as we have already said this morning is what is termed a simple being.

Now we need to understand again, that simple does not mean simplistic. In fact the idea of God’s being a simple being is, as was timelessness, almost impossible for us to truly define with words. Just as we can only describe a timeless eternal God in words that are based in time an are themselves time bound so we can only describe a simple God in words that are not themselves simple.

Now we don’t want to get too far ahead of the horse here so we need to define what we mean by divine simplicity.

Basically, a simple being is a being who is not made up of parts. Ill say that again, a simple being is a being who is not made up of parts. Our immediate thought might be to picture some sort of amoeba or something like that, small single cell organisms, the simplest of lifeforms and that is understandable but we immediately come up against the fact that even the simplest of lifeforms that we can consider is made up of a staggering amount of parts. The bits and prices of the cell, the very atoms themselves and the composite pieces of those atoms. There are a staggering number of bits and pieces that make up even the most “simple” things that we can think of.

We also need to understand that when we say that a simple being is a being that is not made up of parts we aren't just talking about arms and legs and atoms. Rather we need think of these parts in a more philosophical sense and so we think about attributes or accidents and essence.

The essence of a thing is what it is and without which that thing would cease to be what it is. Essence is hard to define, the essence of being a human is humanity. The essence of being a fish for example would be ichthyicity, the thing about fish that makes a fish a fish.

Now, philosophically we can think about ichthyicity essence as distinct from an individual fish’s attributes. For example, a halibut is a flat fish, it has a distinct body form, distinct attributes from say a salmon and yet both of these we know as fish. They share the essence of fish, the ichthyicity, but different distinct attributes. We understand this with people too, I am taller than Enoch and yet we are both humans. Dya is a female human and Jadon is a male human and they are both human.

Now from experience we know that we are composite creatures made up of both our essence and our attributes because even personally our attributes change. Soon I will be one year older, I grew taller and now I am getting shorter as the years go on. We change, if our accidental properties, our attributes change we still retain our essence, I remain the human named Albert.

Now for a simple being this is not the case. When we say that a simple being is a being that is not made up of parts we don’t just mean that the being doesn't have bits and pieces but we also mean that its essence and its accidental properties are one and the same.

Another way to think of this is to think of a thing’s what-ness and its is-ness. That a thing is and what a thing is for composite creatures are two distinct things. Going back to our fish if I were to ask you what kind of a fish that is and you said that it exists, that it has being that would not answer my question. You would have to say that it is a halibut or describe to me the accidental properties of the fish that show it to be a halibut. What the fish is, is flat, with a white belly and both eyes on one side of its body. However If I asked you if there was a fish in the water and you described its “whatness” to me, you told me that it was white and brown, etc, etc. you would not have answerd my question. There may be other things that could fit that description and you have not answered the question of being.

However, when we think about God we need to understand that God’s what-ness can not be separated from His is-ness, what God is and that God is are one and the same thing.

Think of it this way, again for a person, we can think of an accidental attribute of a person being kindness. I may be kind and I may not be kind but the presence of that accidental attribute, while it may make me a more pleasant person to be around, does not make me any more human nor does its absence make me any less human. I can be a kind human and I can be an unkind human.

However, when we come to God, for God to exist means that all of His attributes are essential and identical with His essence or with His being. Think of any of the attributes that we think of in God. That God is loving, wise, holy, righteous, just, perfect, merciful. A human person may express those attributes or they may not and still be a person but for God to be and we know that God is, for God to exist, for the divine essence to be a real thing God must be all of these things all at once. God does not express holiness in one place and love in another and righteousness in another and yet again justice in another. As a simple being God is all of these things all of the time. For God to be is for God to be all that He is in totality and nothing less.

I will be completely honest and admit that it really tugs at the nerve strings in my brain to even try and hold that straight in the ol noggin! But it is important and we will see why that is before we close for today.

As we work through this though we must realize that divine simplicity is something that makes God utterly unique from anything and everything else in all of creation!

Romans 11:33-36 tell us:

Romans 11:33–36 ESV

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

This is the unique God of creation. There is none like Him!

The Psalmist declares in Psalm 86:8

Psalm 86:8 ESV

There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours.

The prophet Jeremiah tells us:

Jeremiah 10:6 ESV

There is none like you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is great in might.

There is none like You is a refrain that rings out in scripture and this doctrine of divine simplicity certainly bears this out, our God is unique from anything else in all of creation.

Parts and Makers

We need to now consider a bit more about how we can know that this is true about God, that God is a simple rather than a composite being. That God is not made up of parts, that he does not have bits and pieces and that His what-ness and His is-ness, His essence and His accidental attributes are one and the same.

There are two key considerations here that show this must be the case.

The first is in the nature of parts. Again philosophically a part is defined as: “Anything in an entity that is less than the whole but without which the whole would be different from what it is.” I owe that definition to James Dolezal (might have butchered that last name) but you can find several messages from Him on divine simplicity and He was very helpful in getting me to grasp what I could of this concept as I prepared for this morning.

So we see there that a part is something less than the whole, a screwdriver has a shaft, a tip and a handle, there may be more but as far as essential parts go thats a good list. Each of those is less than a screwdriver, they are not the whole. Yet, without them the thing we are holding would cease to be a screwdriver. Less than the whole but without which the thing would be different from what it is.

So then a being with parts becomes dependent on their parts for their existence. If I cut the Philips head from my screwdriver it ceases to be a screwdriver! The essence of screwdriver is dependent on that part to be what it is, for its being, for its is-ness.

However, God is not dependent on anything to be what He is. If God were dependent on anything for His existence then there would be things that exist outside of God.

However Colossians 1 tells us:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18

Additional John tells us in John 1:1-3

John 1:1–3 ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

All that was created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible , that which exists in the heavenly spiritual realm and that which exists in the earthly physical realm, that which we can taste and see and touch, that which is visible such as the matter in creation and that which is invisible, the laws, the forces: mathematics and love, visible and invisible, all of these were created by the Son who as we will see when we dive more fully into the Trinity is one divine person in the eternally existent Godhead that we are discussing this morning. Therefore God can not be dependent on any of these things as parts for His existence because of this were so then they would exist outside of Him.

We have mentioned this before, but simply put, God does not love because love as a thing that can be defined outside of God to which God’s own actions comport, no, God loves because God is Love, love comes from God.

1 John 4:7 ESV

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

Love is from God, love enters into the creation as an essential attribute of God that He chooses to make available to certain of His creatures to which He has granted the capacity to love. Love is not outside of God love is of God!

God is not made of parts and is therefore not dependent on parts or His existence, God just is!

Secondly and this is connected and should be easy enough to follow. God can not have parts because to be a composite being with parts assumes that there was a part assembler to which the entity owes its existence. We owe our being, our is-ness not only to our parts but also to the one who chose to assemble our parts and grant us our existence. We owe our is-ness to our creator.

This is a natural and observable trait of all composite things. This is why we reject the notions of evolution as a creative process because it fundamentally denies what is blatantly obvious in creation, that all that is composed of parts has a creator.

When we watch a play like the Missoula play that happened yesterday we don’t just assume, we know and understand that someone had to assemble all the parts to make that play possible. A play is a complete entity that clearly displays that it was made.

Likewise we stand on the foundational truths brought to us about the special creation of the universe and all that is in it by the word and power of God found here in Genesis because we see the marks of creation everywhere at the most basic level that all of creation consists of composite things and composite things require a sufficient cause a creator.

So if God were to be a compost being made of parts there would be at least two things that existed before God and outside of God, the parts He was composed of and the assembler of the parts. We know that nothing exists outside of God and therefore, though, like the Trinity you will not find a specific verse or passage outlining divine simplicity we never the less can firmly establish this doctrine from the truths revealed to us in Scripture.

This is why for most of church history all of the church from the branches of roman catholic to the orthodox, through all of the mainline denominations wether they were reformed or not, all of the denomination believed and taught the doctrine of divine simplicity.

Application Points

We need though, to bring this doctrine to its touchstone points in our lives. If you like thinking and pondering on things like this them maybe this is a fine exercise, if you don’t them maybe this all seems a bit arduous but I want us to see just why this doctrine is so important, why we are standing on a much more firm and resolute foundation when we seek to understand this truth about God.

One of the main points of application that we can draw from this truth is that there is only one God. Now we know this from scripture but there are plenty of pluralists in our day who seek to say that maybe the God we believe in is just one instance of the divine essence.

However, it is actually divine simplicity that guards against this error.

You can see how people could arrive at the thought that maybe our God is just one instance of a being with a divine essence. Could there not be others. After all you and I are all instances of individuals with a human essence. Could not the God of the Bible be just another instance another is-ness of a being with a divine essence.

No, because as we have seen to be a simple being to be a being that is not composed of parts makes that being, makes our God truly unique. Essential to the being and essence of divinity is that there is only one God and that this is the God who has revealed Himself through the sacred revelation of Holy Scripture and also through the world He has created.

As Isaiah tells is in Isaiah 45: 5

Isaiah 45:5 ESV

I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God;

Additionally if God were not simple there would always be the creeping susceptibility to want to worship that thing that was more fundamental than God as a God itself. This is what lies behind the propensity to worship things like Love, even in many apostate modern churches the loss of the doctrine of divine simplicity has caused these folks to worship what they see as a piece of God’s what-ness rather than God Himself because they believe the piece to be even more foundational than God. This is a tragic error and it is rooted in the loss of this doctrine!

Point 2

The second point we consider is the application of this truth to creation and the power of God on display there and through the rest of scripture. Dolezal labors this point more that I have this morning but we naturally associate power with more complex things. He makes the point that a 747, I believe, with its myriads of parts is far more powerful than your bike. More parts more power is a generality that proves to be pretty true in the world of composite creatures. However this is far from true with God. As a simple being God is power. God’s power is not a part of Him God is power.

We can see this when we talk about the 747, it has a lot of power when it comes to moving people through the air, as a boat though it would not be very powerful at all.

God is not limited in this way because His power is not a part of who He is; so His power is operative in everything that He does. This is why God can speak the universe into existence, His creator-ness and His power are expressed in the “and God said let there be’s” of Genesis 1.

We see the power of God on display as He creates the universe out of nothing, God’s will alone is a sufficient cause for all that we see. We see the heavenly angles in Revelation worshiping God for this power in Chapter 4:

English Standard Version Chapter 4

8 And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,

who was and is and is to come!”

9 And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

11  “Worthy are you, our Lord and God,

to receive glory and honor and power,

for you created all things,

and by your will they existed and were created.”

We see here expressions of God’s timelessness and also his power as creator and we understand that these are the praises that have and will for all eternity fill heaven.

This power of God displayed in creation leads me to my most important truth that we can apply to our lives and thank and praise God for His divine simplicity.

Because God is not made up of parts we never need to worry that if God has moved in Grace to save us that we will somehow wind up on the wrong side of God.

When we act, we act through our parts, and so I can move to discipline my children in love but I can also discipline my children out of anger or spite. Because I am a composit creature it is possible for me to act this way. This is not possible for God. When God acts He simply acts and all of His attributes are there 100% even as we have to talk about them in parts. In a minute we are going to say some final words about how hard it is to talk about God in this way and how He has accomidated Himself to language for us that we can know Him here in the world.

For this point though we need to understand that when God moves to justify a sinner through the sacrifice of His Son it is not as though He stops acting in His just anger against sin and instead acts in love and mercy and forgiveness. This is parts language. No when God justifies a sinner through the cross we understand that his love and His mercy and His justice and His Holy wrath are all at work. His wrath and justice fall on Christ the substitute for us and His love and mercy fall on us. This is a staggering reality of the cross, at the cross Jesus didn’t bear part of God’s wrath, as if for a moment in time God vented His anger and then was satiated, no He bore the full wrath of God against all of the sins of all of God’s children in all of time. When God showed up at the cross in His Holy wrath it wasn't part of God it was God. Christ truly bore for us a penalty that we could never have bore for ourselves the eternal wrath of God on our behalf!

This then fills the promises of scripture like Romans 8:31 with so much more hope and power:

Romans 8:31 ESV

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

If this God is for us, who can be against us because all of God is for us!

Speaking of God

Our time is gone but I want to say one last thing about speaking about this God. We, as we have seen this morning in my struggles to put these things into words are people who speak in composite language. When, for example I say, “Grace is sitting” this is a composite phrase. There is a Grace and there is sitting. The statement that God is love is also a composite statement. There is God and there is love. However we realize that when I say that God is love I am saying a great deal more than that because we know that God is the great “I AM.” When I tell my child I love them that is a wonderful thing, when they tell me they love me that is a wonderful thing because we are expressing a wonderful part of our being created in God’s likeness to each other. However, with all that we have seen this morning, we understand that when we say that God is love and when God tells us that He so loved the world that He sent His Son into the world to die for us, that this means infinitely more when it comes from a being of such divine simplicity. We need to keep that reality in our minds even as we, by His provision and with His blessing use out composite language to put into words our love and praise for this glorious God.