Barrett on the Simplicity of God

The perfections of God are not like a pie, as if we sliced up the pie into different pieces, love being 10 percent, holiness 15 percent, omnipotence 7 percent, and so on. Unfortunately, this is how many Christians talk about God today, as if love, holiness, and omnipotence were all different parts of God, God being evenly divided among his various attributes. Some even go further, believing some attributes to be more important than others. This happens most with divine love, which some say is the most important attribute (the biggest piece of the pie).

-Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2019), 72–73.

Ask yourself that question that often entertained the brightest minds of the late medieval era: Is something good because God wills it to be good, or does God will something because it is good? This famous conundrum is the ultimate puzzle, situating God between a rock and a hard place. If we say something is good because God wills it to be good, then God sounds arbitrary. Nothing is inherently good, but God simply decides what he wants to be good. On the other hand, if God wills something because it is good, then is God not subservient to whatever is good? A standard of goodness exists external to God himself.

The paradox is far less problematic if we take into consideration divine simplicity. How so? “God neither obeys the moral order, nor does He invent it,” says Katherin Rogers. “He is Goodness Itself, and all else that is good is good in imitation of God’s nature.” The same applies to other perfections. Is something true because God says it is true, or does God declare something true because it is true? The question betrays God’s simplicity. God does not bow to some external norm for truth, nor does he invent truth ex nihilo. God is truthfulness itself. All truth is truth because it mimics the very nature of God, who is truth.

Each example should buffet any reversal of the Creator-creature distinction. If God is a simple God, then he is his perfections eternally. Any sign of his perfections in the created order finds its origin in God. As “absolute source God is indeed Wisdom and Justice and Goodness per se, and other things possess these qualities through participation in the divine.”

Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2019), 80–81.

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