Scriptural Testimony: κοινωνία (koinōnía) and πλήρωμα (plērōma)

Q #42: how does κοινωνία (koinōnía) and πλήρωμα (plērōma) demonstrate divine simplicity?

No Composition in SSGO and “God from God”

In SSGO, God is understood as an infinite, relational “horizon” of givenness, meaning there is no external principle or additive component that “assembles” Him. No parts come together to form God. Rather, each divine Person wholly is God’s essence in a specific relational stance. The Creed’s affirmation, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,” testifies that the Son is the complete reality of deity just as the Father is, and by extension the Spirit too is wholly God, not an extra or lesser portion. Crucially, this approach meets the concern that recognizing distinct Persons might break God’s unity. If any Person were just a segment of the divine, God would be fragmented. In SSGO, however, each Person is a distinct “mode” of the one essence: the Father never “had” the essence alone and “then” gave it to the Son; rather, Father and Son co-eternally possess and express the same infinite being. Whatever God is, He is fully and fully given, complete and completely, because God is love and perfect.

Scriptural Foundations for SSGO’s Premise

From Scripture’s earliest affirmations, God is never portrayed as a composite. Deuteronomy 6:4 proclaims, “the LORD our God, the LORD is one,” ruling out an “assembled deity.” Isaiah 43:10 declares that there was no god before Him nor after, asserting His uncompromised singularity. The New Testament echoes this unity: John 10:30 has Jesus say, “I and the Father are one,” which early Christians understood as total oneness of essence. Likewise, John 1:1–14 shows the Word fully divine, even as He becomes flesh. These passages align with “God from God,” rejecting the notion that the Son might be a sub-deity or fragmentary manifestation. The same logic applies to the Spirit, whom John 14–16 depicts as proceeding without diminishing or dividing the Godhead.

SSGO and the Self-Standing Relational Horizon

According to SSGO, no external cause or mechanism “joins” the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each Person is the undivided essence in a self-standing relational vantage—unbegotten for the Father, begotten for the Son, and proceeding for the Spirit. “God from God” thus signifies that the Son’s begottenness is not a sliced-off share but the entire divine essence lived as “begotten fullness.” Likewise, the Spirit embodies “proceeding fullness,” containing nothing less than the same God. There is no partial transfer or leftover, because all of God’s being is one infinite act of givenness. As such, every mode is a co-eternal horizon of the single, complete reality.

Why This Matters: No Composition and Full Givenness

If God were somehow assembled from parts, an external cause would be required to unite them, diminishing God’s status as the uncaused Creator. The Bible’s motif of God’s self-identification—“I AM” (John 8:58 and Exodus 3:14)—underscores that there is no process of assembly or supplementation in Him. SSGO’s reasoning follows: since God is absolute relational fullness, no Person is detachable. Each Person is the entirety of the divine life, simply expressed from a distinct relational stance. For the Father, we speak of “unbegotten fullness,” for the Son, “begotten fullness,” and for the Spirit, “proceeding fullness,” each revealing the same indivisible God.

Relational Mode: Communion (κοινωνία, koinōnía)

The term κοινωνία in Scripture vividly conveys that God’s essence is not doled out in increments. In texts like John 17:21–23, Acts 2:42, 1 John 1:3–7, and 2 Corinthians 13:13, “communion” describes God’s own tri-personal life extending to believers. Under SSGO, this emerges from the Spirit’s self-standing vantage: the Spirit is the single divine essence proceeding eternally, thus able to unite creatures in God’s infinite love. What He communicates is never a fraction; it is participation in the boundless, unpartitioned reality of God’s own being. Consequently, communion is not an external or partial “gift,” but an offering of the same divine reality, engaged from the Spirit’s proceeding perspective.

Full Givenness of God: Fullness (πλήρωμα, plērōma)

Alongside κοινωνία stands the concept of πλήρωμα, translated “fullness.” The New Testament underscores that Christ does not hold a reduced or subordinate form of deity. John 1:16, Ephesians 1:10, Ephesians 3:19, and especially Colossians 2:9 proclaim that in the Son “all the fullness of the Godhead” dwells bodily. SSGO states that the Son, in His begotten mode, is no partial overlap with the Father but “true God from true God,” as the Creed puts it. This biblical teaching supports SSGO’s premise that each Person holds the entirety of God’s essence: the Father has it in an unbegotten stance, the Son in a begotten vantage, and the Spirit in a proceeding mode. None is a fraction; all are fully divine, distinctly expressed.

Integrating Communion and Fullness into SSGO’s Core Thesis

SSGO holds that divine reality is neither divided among the Persons nor collapsed into a single Person with different hats. Instead, each Person, as an irreducible vantage, possesses the fullness of the one God. Communion (κοινωνία) reveals this relational unity that envelops believers, while fullness (πλήρωμα) proclaims an undivided essence wholly instantiated in Father, Son, and Spirit. Together, these terms affirm that the Trinity is not an aggregate of God’s parts but a threefold expression of the same infinite givenness—the biblical witness from Genesis to Revelation being consistent with this portrayal.

Whether we consider Genesis 1:26–27, where “Let us make man in our image” anticipates relational plurality, Isaiah 6:3, where the earth brims with divine glory, John 17, where the Father-Son unity emerges as a model of oneness, or Colossians 2:9, which insists on Christ’s total deity, all exemplify a God who is no assemblage of bits. Rather, God is an eternal communion of Persons, each wholly possessing the divine essence without remainder. Far from a mere speculative philosophy, this vision springs from Scripture’s portrayal of the tri-personal God.

Conclusion: SSGO as a Biblical Vision of “God from God”

By labeling each Person a “self-standing relational mode” of one undivided essence, SSGO reconciles Scripture’s insistence on God’s oneness with the real distinctions of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “God from God, Light from Light” thus ceases to imply any derivative or secondary form of deity. Instead, the Father is “unbegotten fullness,” the Son is “begotten fullness,” and the Spirit is “proceeding fullness.” Each is wholly God, each stands in an eternal relational stance, and there is no compositional puzzle to solve. Through the lens of κοινωνία, Scripture illustrates the shared, tri-personal life of God that invites believers into divine fellowship, and through πλήρωμα, it proclaims the totality of God’s essence in each Person. Holding these biblical threads together, SSGO illuminates how the Trinity can truly be one God in three irreducible vantages, each fully and perfectly God, because God is love and perfect, giving Himself completely in tri-perichoretic modes eternally relational without partition or residue.

please see here: Q #43: Given #42, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SAY GOD HAS NO PARTS?