The Complexity of Divine Simplicity: A Test Case for Reformed Catholic Retrieval

Since “Reformed catholicity” began to emerge over the past two decades, several of my students have surfaced a practical question that impinges on catholicity: Can we approach earlier modern theologians like Søren Kierkegaard or Herman Bavinck in terms of “retrieval”? Or is that approach inherently oriented around pre-modern materials? Another practical question impinges on Reformed identity: Can theologians count as “Reformed” apart from any confessional subscription, simply by virtue of appeals to sola scriptura and certain figures or themes? Or, if confessional subscription is ingredient in Reformed identity, to which confession(s) and with what minimal form(s) of church order? Many academic theologians are accountable to multiple statements of faith—as parachurch employees, congregational members, and perhaps ordained clergy. The intersections of these statements and those forms of accountability can be complicated. Academic contexts may broaden theologians’ expected intellectual engagements while congregations may narrow their confessional standards—or vice versa.

Divine simplicity provides a prominent test case within some recent sectors of “Reformed catholic” retrieval. My employer, Wheaton College, does not reference the doctrine in its Statement of Faith. My congregation, Immanuel Presbyterian Church (EPC), requires subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith for ordination as an elder, although not for church membership. The Westminster Confession 2.1 affirms that God is “without body, parts, or passions,” but it does not use the word “simplicity” and it does not specify a theoretical definition. Meanwhile, strands of neo-Calvinism that shaped some of my teachers—via both Dutch Reformed philosophy and Westminster biblical theology—have criticized “scholastic” doctrines of God or even rejected divine simplicity. Sometimes such cases may be confessionally underdetermined, but here the Belgic Confession explicitly characterizes God as “simple” in its first article. Sometimes such cases reflect ignorance or misunderstanding of traditional teaching—hence the efforts at retrieval. Yet it is sobering to encounter the emerging tensions between some advocates of Reformed catholicity and influential theologians from the previous evangelical generation.

Without naively hoping to resolve such tensions in short compass here, I wonder if the test case of divine simplicity points toward a few contours of authentically Reformed and catholic retrieval.

1.  Judgments about divine perfections like simplicity often accompanied, however implicitly, the “Nicene orthodoxy” of the ecumenical creeds and/or later Protestant confessions. Their straightforward rejection undermines, perhaps unintentionally, basic biblical teaching. An instructive earlier example, now widely acknowledged so that it may shed light on current cases, would be the venerable B. B. Warfield’s critique of the eternal generation of the Son. Given his explicit Trinitarian orthodoxy, a heresy trial would be inappropriate, as would the failure to appreciate his profound theological contributions. But the damaging effects of his biblicist and rationalist error must also be acknowledged; pastoral discernment would probably prevent the churchly teaching of his view on eternal generation even if it merited academic discussion or occasionally necessitated churchly inoculation.
2.  Advocates for retrieving such “classical” concepts are sometimes more philosophically rigid about their formulation, or less rhetorically charitable toward their detractors, than is warranted. The likes of “Christian Platonism” or Thomistic “metaphysical” concepts may not be essential to the Reformed catholic retrieval of a doctrinal judgment like divine simplicity. Indeed, it may be anachronistic to overload the requirement of specific formulations or subsequent entailments onto earlier, more general affirmations. Affirmation of divine simplicity may not preclude all forms of “relational” or “social” Trinitarianism, or at least it may not prevent them from contributing insight. Otherwise, globally considered, claims to “catholicity” may ring hollow.
3.  Although some “neo-Calvinist” thinkers have made unguarded critiques of so-called “classical” theism, sola scriptura still authorizes possible reform of the medieval Catholic heritage. Some strict versions of simplicity seemingly preclude intratrinitarian divine love. Some scholastic accounts render it pastorally difficult—as some neo-Calvinist critiques recognize—to speak of God acting in history. When our theological speech struggles to incorporate the dynamism of the biblical narrative and the diversity of biblical genres, perhaps a metaphysical system has become domineering. Perhaps more attention—on all sides—to the analogical character of theological language could forestall both the rejection of divine simplicity and the rigid reduction of its complexity.
4.  Greater attention to confessional contexts and church order may be important for Reformed catholicity to flourish theologically. Evangelical and broader academic contexts are not churches with synods and courts. Straightforward rejections of a confessional judgment like divine simplicity should be confronted. The threshold and form of such confrontations, however, need discernment. It would not necessarily be appropriate to initiate a heresy trial for a critique of certain versions or unintended consequences of a doctrine like divine simplicity. It might also be inappropriate to imply in broader evangelical or academic contexts that an opponent’s view borders on heresy if one would be unwilling to initiate such a trial in a churchly setting. Admittedly, confessional Reformed churches have their unseemly histories of heresy-hunting church trials in potentially kangaroo courts. However, the enlarging tent of “Reformed” catholicity should not shelter overheated rhetoric and overgeneralized allegations that, at their best, confessional church polities would preclude.

Reformed catholic retrieval efforts have been spreading into broader evangelical and academic spaces. It is not yet clear how fully, say, the advocacy of Thomistic metaphysics will cohere with Baptistic ecclesiology. At the same time, all church polities have been struggling with new technological challenges for obeying the Ninth Commandment. Thus, part of the complexity of divine simplicity is contextual. Yet part of its complexity is also conceptual: What counts as an entailment or a denial thereof when its confessional apparatus is quite modest?

The aspiration of “catholicity” requires retrieving the biblical heritage of “classical” theism that is, to some degree, entailed by Nicene orthodoxy and expressed in Reformed confessions. Yet the aspiration of “Reformed” catholicity requires retaining the evangelical heritage of freedom to reform the church—its formulations of its teaching and its loving respect for its teachers—according to the Word of God.