God Made Simple: Second Concern

In the first part of my paper on divine simplicity, I raised a concern about the way certain versions of the doctrine apply modern concepts of person (consciousness, agency, subjectivity, etc.) to the essence of God—sometimes giving the impression that God is one “who” as well as one “what”.

My second concern is that divine simplicity’s zeal to protect God in se—God apart from the world—can cause it to undervalue the significance of God pro nobis—God for us.

Concern 2 – Muting God Pro Nobis

Divine simplicity insists that God is immutable, that he needs nothing and gains nothing from the world. We are the ones who benefit. Creation is for us and for our salvation. As Matthew Barrett writes in Simply Trinity, (p249) “Jesus did not go to the cross for himself; he went to the cross for us and for us alone.”

The Bible is clear that the deepest purposes of God are not soteriological but doxological

Now it’s fundamentally true that God doesn’t need us. And Barrett is absolutely correct to reject any notion that any Person of the Trinity depends on the world to be themselves—that’s panentheism. But it’s not true that God is indifferent to creation. Nor is it completely true that there is nothing in it for him. The Bible is clear that the deepest purposes of God are not soteriological—all about us and our salvation – but doxological – to the praise of his glorious grace.

It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations.
(Eze 36:22)

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy
(Rom 9:22-23)

God’s great purpose in salvation history is to glorify himself.

For the Glory of the Son …

Of course, in the New Testament, we learn that this also means glorifying his Son.

• God creates through and for his Son and appoints him heir of all things.
• God sends his Son into the world so that we can see his glory.
• The Father shows the Son all he does, makes him lifegiver and judge so that all will honour the Son even as they honour the Father who sent him.
• The Father raises the Son and sits him at his right hand

The new song of Revelation 5 is offered to God the Son on the basis of his earthly work.

We might interject at this point that all these developments only apply to the Son’s human nature. He doesn’t need or gain anything in his divinity. As God, he remains unchanged and unchanging. When he receives the name above all names or all authority in heaven and earth, these are things he already has as the Second Person of the Trinity.

And, again, this is absolutely correct. But the fact remains that Jesus the man is the second Person of the Trinity. When we gather before the throne along with every creature in heaven and earth and shout “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!” We aren’t just praising a man, or an abstract human nature. The new song of Revelation 5 is offered to God the Son on the basis of his earthly work. His sacrifice as a man occasions new praise for the Second Person of the Trinity.[1]

… And of the Father …

And that’s also true of God the Father. The pattern in Revelation 5 where the work of Christ occasions a new hymn of praise to both Father and Son is true for the whole mission.

• When Judas goes out to betray him, Jesus says that “the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him.” (Jn 13)
• When every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, it is to the glory of God the Father.
• When Jesus returns to judge, he hands over the kingdom so God will be all in all.

And so on!

So yes, we must insist that God’s intrinsic and transcendent glory never changes. Yet we shouldn’t let that fact mute our appreciation of the way God perfects his narrative presence in the story of the world. Because within that story, there are all sorts of startling developments.

• God’s character and trustworthiness is proven;
• God’s enemies are thrown down.
• God’s Kingdom comes.
• God comes to live with his people.

… Even through the Church of God

And even more astonishingly, we have a part to play in this too. We are the ones given to the Son by the Father; “glory has come to me through those you have given me,” says Jesus in John 17.

So we are part of the way the Father loves the Son.

And, the opposite too. As the Spirit unites us to Christ, we become part of his act of return:

This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (John 15:8)

As we bear witness to the gospel, as we receive its benefits and live according to it, we share in the love of the Father and Son. We participate in the translation of their eternal and perfect relationship into time and space.

In his exposition of Eph 1:23, John Calvin writes that:

… our Lord Jesus Christ, and even God his Father, account themselves imperfect, unless we are joined to him . . . God says that he does not consider himself full and perfect, except by gathering us to himself and by making us all one with himself. He takes his whole pleasure in us, and will have his glory shine forth in us, so that his beams may shine out on all sides. And although the whole glory is in himself, yet he will have it seen that it is his will that we should have our part and portion of it.
(Calvin, “Eighth Sermon on Ephesians,” 1:22-23)

Once again, Calvin is not saying here that God is imperfect or needy in himself. “How can he fare better by being joined to us? …” he writes in the next paragraph “…It is just as if the sun were joined with a stinking mire. For what have we but infection and filthiness?”

And yet, he says, “…[God] has set us here as on a stage, in order that we should see his glory … it is his will that we should have our part and portion of it.”

Calvin is pointing to what we see in Scripture. God has decided not just to communicate information to us, but his own self.[2] He has built a stage. He has written the script and cast his Son in the lead role. The play of creation will not be complete until the hero has triumphed and all the cast are gathered together on stage with the playwrite.

Simplicity and the Love of God

So what does divine simplicity have to say about this? Will it allow us to say such things?

Will it allow us to speak of the Father loving the Son and appointing him to be heir and saviour of the world? Will it embrace the idea of a Son who loves his Father and honours him by doing all that he has been given to do?

I think there are versions of divine simplicity that have difficulty with that. Any suggestion of the Persons of the Godhead really wanting good for each other becomes tritheism. Any talk of the Son doing the will of the Father sounds like Arianism. Speaking of a new extrinsic glory attacks God’s pure actuality. Even the language of love and response becomes difficult. Behind it all there is only one subject and one consciousness.

But there are also versions of divine simplicity that will allow it. The great tradition has always seen a fit or congruence between the missions of the persons and their processions.

We’ve already seen how John Owen offers us a vision of Father, Son and Spirit delighting in each other and acting toward one another both in eternity and in creation.

Other Puritans such as Thomas Goodwin and Jonathan Edwards would be bolder. Since I picked on Mark Jones in my last post, let me finish with a quote from his doctoral thesis on Thomas Goodwin:[3]

Because the Son takes on flesh, and acts as Mediator for his people, he possesses a threefold glory. The first glory has reference to the intrinsic glory of the divine Son. This glory cannot be added to nor diminished; it is essential to God. The second glory has reference to Christ’s person constituted as the God-man … Finally, Christ receives a glory, a kingdom, related to his work as Mediator. This glory is superadded above his native glory as the God-man and has reference to the successful performance of the work given to him by the Father. The Father rewards the Son with a bride, who in turn brings him glory, and the Son becomes the Lord of heaven and earth.

Jones is quoting Goodwin here, but what he writes encapsulates glorious biblical truth. The Persons of the Godhead have been doing a great thing in our midst. They work in distinction but in perfect harmony to honour each other as they save us.

However we understand divine simplicity, let’s not set it against these realities.

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[1] …the same Person of Christ is adored with “latria” on account of His Divinity, and with “dulia” on account of His perfect humanity. Nor is this unfitting. For the honor of “latria” is due to God the Father Himself on account of His Godhead; and the honor of “dulia” on account of the dominion by which He rules over creatures.

(Summa 3.25.2)

[2] See too Summa 1.65.2 …the entire universe, with all its parts, is ordained towards God as its end, inasmuch as it imitates, as it were, and shows forth the Divine goodness, to the glory of God.

[3] Mark Jones, Why Heaven Kissed Earth: The Christology of the Puritan Reformed Orthodox Theologian, Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), p226