Is Simplicity Biblical?

The Biblical “Simplicity Profile” and Its Convergence with Relational Ontology

Scripture’s primary discourse regarding God focuses on ultimacy rather than arithmetic. God is the incomparable source, not merely one entity among many. Israel’s foundational confession: “The LORD is our God, the LORD alone” (Deut. 6:4), rejects any framework that would categorize God alongside created beings. God reveals himself as sheer self-subsistence: “I AM WHO I AM” (Exod. 3:14). Scripture further secures this self-subsistence through the lens of immutability: “I the LORD do not change” (Mal. 3:6), and “with him there is no alteration or shadow caused by change” (Jas. 1:17).

In this same register, Scripture presents God not as a subject possessing detachable perfections, but as one whose perfections are identical to his being. “God is spirit” (John 4:24), “God is light” (1 John 1:5), and “God is love” (1 John 4:8) describe what God is, rather than what God has. This constitutes a biblical grammar of simplicity: to confess that God is love is to reject the idea of composition within the Source.

Jared Michelson identifies this movement as “plausibly seen as a biblical doctrine” of simplicity (2025, 1). Through a reading of Jeremiah 10, he argues that Scripture implies a “radical account of divine aseity” from which “one may infer divine simplicity” (2025, 5). Michelson’s methodology clarifies that “Scripture was not merely mined for raw material and then shunted aside,” but continues to govern the inference (2025, 14). Aseity, God’s underived existence, thus serves as the canonical ground for simplicity: if God depends on nothing, God cannot be composed of dependent parts.

The New Testament’s Triune Pattern

The New Testament maintains this profile of the one God while simultaneously requiring the Church to name three divine Persons. The Son is identified with God without resulting in a multiplicity of gods: “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God” (John 1:1); “All things came to be through him” (John 1:3). Jesus declares, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30) and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Nevertheless, mission language preserves a specific order (taxis): “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent” (John 17:3).

The Spirit also belongs on the divine side of the ontological divide. Peter equates lying to the Spirit with lying to God: “You have lied to the holy Spirit… You have lied not to human beings but to God” (Acts 5:3–4). The Spirit’s mission reflects eternal procession: “He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14). This triune cadence persists in blessing and indwelling: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the holy Spirit be with all of you” (2 Cor. 13:13); “You are the temple of God, and… the Spirit of God dwells in you” (1 Cor. 3:16). Paul’s confession that “in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily” (Col. 2:9) affirms an undivided divine plenitude rather than a collection of properties.

The Catechism’s Dogmatic Grammar

The Catechism of the Catholic Church articulates this biblical profile in doctrinal form, receiving the Fourth Lateran Council’s teaching of “one essence, substance or nature entirely simple” (§ 202). it upholds both unity and personal distinction: “We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons” (§ 253); and the distinctions “reside solely in the relationships which relate them to one another” (§ 255). It further interprets divine missions as the revelation of God’s eternal life: “God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange” (§ 221).

The Catechism thus codifies the logic visible in Scripture: one non-composite divine reality and three subsistent relations distinguished only by origin. Tritheism and modalism are excluded; simplicity and relation coincide.

The Act-of-Relation-as-Gift Primitive

Within the relational metaphysical framework known as the Principle of Relationality, divine simplicity and the Trinity are understood as a single structured act called the act-of-relation-as-gift. A “primitive” is a foundational explanatory unit that cannot be derived from deeper principles. The act-of-relation-as-gift identifies God not as a “thing” possessing relations, but as relation itself subsisting. To be is to be given; to exist is to be self-given relationally. This primitive identifies the divine essence with the eternal self-communication of the Father, Son, and Spirit. It is not a layer beneath the Trinity, but a way of naming the Trinity’s simplicity as a living act.

In this context, simplicity means the Source of all things is not composite, not measurable by an external scale, and not internally assembled. Michelson’s argument that God “neither depends upon nor is substantially augmented by external things” (2025, 5) expresses this intuition. The act-of-relation-as-gift reformulates it ontologically: the divine life is pure self-giving, with no hidden substrate beneath personal relations, only one self-existent act.

Horizon and Inscription: Explaining the Ad Extra

The Horizon and Inscription distinction provides a conceptual bridge between divine simplicity and historical divine action. Horizon designates the eternal, unchanging plenitude of divine giving; Inscription names the finite realization of that gift in creatures. God remains immutable while new predicates become true because creatures are newly inscribed within the divine gift. As the formula states: “God does not change. Creatures change… Creatures become related by receiving.” Ad extra novelty (novelty outside the inner divine life) is a fact regarding created participation, not divine alteration.

This framework allows biblical predications such as indwelling (“the Spirit of God dwells in you,” 1 Cor. 3:16) and mission (“He will take from what is mine and declare it to you,” John 16:14) to be taken as real and maximal without violating God’s immutability (“I the LORD do not change,” Mal. 3:6). The Horizon-Inscription grammar sustains both biblical dynamism and metaphysical invariance.

Synthesis

Scripture offers a “simplicity profile” of the incomparable “I AM” who is identical with his perfections. The New Testament discloses this same God as triune without fracturing that profile. The Catechism codifies this as dogma: one simple divine essence, three relations of origin, inseparable in being and operation. Relational ontology then provides a contemporary metaphysical articulation. The act-of-relation-as-gift primitive expresses God’s simplicity as eternal self-communication; the Horizon-Inscription principle explains the world’s participation as the reception of that gift. Together, they show that divine simplicity is the living plenitude of the triune act.

Glossary of Technical Terms

Primitive: In metaphysics, a first explanatory principle that cannot be reduced to or derived from anything more basic.
Principle of Relationality: The claim that relation, not substance, is the primary ontological fact.
Act-of-Relation-as-Gift: The name for God’s simple triune act: the Father as unoriginated giving, the Son as receptive redonation, and the Spirit as the communion of that gift.
Horizon: The eternal and immutable plenitude of divine giving.
Inscription: The finite realization of divine giving within creaturely history; the creature’s being is an “inscription” of the divine act.
Ad extra: “Toward the outside”; theological term for God’s actions in creation/redemption as distinct from his internal life (ad intra).
Taxis: The ordered relation of the divine Persons (from the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit).
Aseity: God’s self-existence and independence from anything not God.

Bibliography

Catechism of the Catholic Church. 1997. 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
Michelson, Jared. 2025. “Is Divine Simplicity Biblical? A Fresh Argument on Behalf of a Traditional Doctrine.” Scottish Journal of Theology 1–14.
The Holy Bible. New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE).

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