In a previous article, we began to consider the attributes of God. That article served to initiate the discussion by reminding us that God is simple. Providentially hindered, this follow-on article has not been released two weeks later—as planned—but nearly a month later. In the meantime, some videos have appeared on the internet that challenge a proper doctrine of simplicity due to the complex language we use to attribute things to God. Using unfortunate reasoning, the individual making the video said something like, “Would you mind differentiating between immutability and eternality? If they’re the same thing, you better use the exact same words, right?” By way of quick response, we can begin to work through how we attribute things to God. Consider what immutability is. It is an apophatic statement (remember the via negativa) about the Uncreated using creatures as a reference. Creatures are by definition mutable; we change and progress from non-being to being and from one state of being to another. When we say that God is immutable, we are denying that he is a creature, and so things only proper to the creature cannot be said properly of him, though they might be said analogously. Consider, likewise, what eternality is. It is an apophatic statement about the Uncreated using creatures as a reference. Creatures’ changes—our mutations, if we want to continue the thought—are measured by time. When we say God is eternal, we are denying that he is a creature, and so he is not measured since this category is only proper to creatures. Thus, while the individual who has stated such things in his videos was scoffing when he said we better use the same words, in a real sense we are capable of using many of the same words to define both immutability and eternality.
However, let’s consider why we are able to attribute two different things to God in the case of immutability and eternality. Mutation is change while time is the measurement of change or succession. Both are proper statements about the creature and point to our complexity. But consider some other attributes as well. Location, or presence, is the existence of a being at a particular point in space. Movement is a change in both time—since we do not imagine existing in two places at the same moment—and space. Thus, when we step outside, we demonstrate our mutability through measurements of both time and space. We can say that God is omnipresent, or, in respect to creation, the Uncreated is not in some part of creation; all creation is present to him simultaneously and he is incapable of being measured by space (he is immense). His immutability, then, precludes spatiality since he would therefore have had to move from one space (or perhaps “non-space”) to another space. While language like this litters evangelical theology—and, yes, that includes our fellow Reformed Baptists, it is inappropriate within the traditional doctrine of God. In respect to causation, God is not the effect of any being, and is therefore independent and a se. In these ways, we recognize that when we utilize various words to say something about God, we are actually using complex language drawn from the complexity of creation. Creation is complex and relates to God complexly, and, therefore, we are reduced to speaking in complex terms about the simple Creator. Is God visible? No, he is not like corporeal beings that can be sensed with the eye; he is invisible.
This understanding was not merely affirmed by Thomas Aquinas—contrary to the notions of some—though he certainly taught this doctrine accurately. Consider Baptists’ greatest theologian, the scholastic John Gill: “nor is it [divine simplicity] to be disproved by the attributes of God; for they are no other than God himself, and neither differ from one another, but with respect to their objects and effects, and in our manner of conception of them.”1 While some would scoffingly claim that we can not say the attributes are not properly different, Gill follows the many generations preceding him in saying exactly that. But how, then, is he able to say this when there seems to be a difference? He points to the very things said above: they differ “with respect to their objects and effects, and in our manner of conception of them.” “Objects,” “effects,” and “our conception” are all characterized by what trait common among creatures but between creatures and God? Complexity. Thus, as we experience and contemplate the effects of the Uncaused Cause, we do so in complex ways.
Lest somehow we think that arguing for the simplicity of God and the divine attributes saps us of vital religion, we ought to consider the fact that the distinctions are in fact an accommodation to our creatureliness so that we might contemplate God. As Wilhelmus à Brakel says,
It is the goodness of God that He adjusts Himself to our limited ability to comprehend. Since a harmonious concept of God—which would include all that could be said and thought about Him—is beyond our comprehension, it pleases God by means of various concepts and ideas to make Himself known to man. These concepts we describe and designate from a human perspective as God’s essential attributes. This designation pertains to the various objects towards which God engages Himself and the deeds which He performs. We understand these attributes to be one from God’s perspective, however, such that they can neither be divorced from the divine Being nor essentially and properly from each other as they exist in God, but are the simple, absolute Being of God Himself. We, however, relate these attributes as distinct entities by themselves. Justice and mercy are one in God, but we differentiate between them in reference to the objects towards which they are manifested, and the effects of these manifestations.2
Some believe that there are two options regarding which God we worship. We can either worship the god of the pagans, an unknown being beyond our knowledge, or we can worship the god of the “theistic mutualists,” a god really no different than us except in that he is “bigger” and “older,” made in our image. However, we choose to worship the Christian God, the God who is beyond comprehension but has accommodated our creaturely minds by revealing himself to us in ways that we can apprehend. Choose this day which God you will serve, either the gods of the ancient nations from which came or the god of modernity in which you have been raised. As for us, we will worship the God of Scripture and our Christian forefathers.
1 John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity: Or A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, New Edition., vol. 1 (Tegg & Company, 1839), 49.
2 Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Bartel Elshout, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 1992), 89.