Divine Simplicity and the Trinity Explained

A Relational Vision of the One God

Robert Moses Dryer’s view on the Trinity

Intro: Summary

I want to portray the Trinity from simplicity so that its harmony is evident through and through. I therefore posit one absolutely simple divine essence that eternally gives itself in three irreducible relations: the Father as the originary Gift, the Son as the Gift perfectly received and returned, and the Spirit as the Gift-of-Gift (spiration), so that relation and essence are identical and unity is preserved while real personal distinction is grounded.

Divine Simplicity and Triune Relations

God is sheer act, actus purus, pure actuality with no unrealized potency, “one essence, substance, or nature absolutely simple.”¹ Nothing can be added, subtracted, or layered upon that plenitude. John Scotus Eriugena evokes it as “the ineffable and incomprehensible radiance of the divine goodness… better known through not-being-known.”² ³ Within that unbroken light the Church nevertheless confesses three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Joseph Ratzinger supplies the key, “In God, person means relation… relation is the person itself.”⁴ Thomas Aquinas had already carved the same insight in scholastic stone, “Relation really existing in God is really the same as His essence,”⁵ and again, “The persons are the subsisting relations themselves; it is not against the simplicity of the divine persons for them to be distinguished by the relations.”⁶

Accordingly, the Father is not a slice of deity but paternity itself, the originary Gift. The Son is not a second substance but filiation, Gift perfectly received and perfectly returned. The Spirit is not a tertiary fragment but spiration, the Gift-of-Gift, the breath of mutual love. The Spirit therefore proceeds eternally from the Father with the Son, so that one act of spiration manifests their shared communion without subordinating either. “So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; yet they are not three Gods, but one God.”⁷ The Council of Florence confirms, “Each of the Persons is wholly in the others.”⁸ Equality of essence alongside order of origin, “equality according to the essence, but order according to origin,”⁹ stands without a hint of subordination, for in God relation is essence.

Eternal Act of Self-Gift

Because relation and essence coincide, every divine attribute is simply the one God viewed from a distinct vantage, my term for a particular angle of self-manifestation that keeps unity intact while clarifying perspective.¹⁰ All operations toward creation are therefore a single indivisible act of the tri-personal God, appropriated to each Person only for our instruction. Since the absolutely simple essence is wholly present in each subsisting relation, any attribute we name, such as wisdom, power, or love, is nothing but the same undivided God disclosed through the specific relational act. These attributions belong wholly to the one God and are assigned to Persons only to aid contemplation. Omniscience, then, is the Father’s knowing Gift, omnipotence the Son’s creative return, goodness the Spirit’s diffusive embrace, three devotional appropriations of one undivided perfection. Such hyper-intensional naming lets us multiply perspectives without multiplying essences. Jean-Luc Marion explains the secret, “The phenomenon shows itself only insofar as it gives itself,”¹¹ and, “The gift depends only on itself to give itself.”¹² God is never first something that later decides to love; He is the very act of self-giving whose excess invites created participation. Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity captures the whole mystery in a single gasp of prayer, “O my Three, my All!”¹³

Metaphysical Frame

Jiri Benovsky notes that “relations are as fundamental as the things they relate; in some cases the relation is ontologically prior to its relata.”¹⁴ Such primitives, he adds, are “problem-solvers,”¹⁵ conceptual stopping points that halt regress. Divine relations serve precisely in this way; nothing lies beneath them, for they are identical with the unum esse they express. In creatures, any hint that relation precedes relata remains strictly analogical, preserving the infinite gap between created dependence and divine self-subsistence.¹⁸ Erich Przywara’s analogia entis amplifies the point, “Every similarity between Creator and creature always already implies an even greater dissimilarity,”¹⁶ so our analogies, whether family, society, or dance, point toward God without imprisoning Him. Created being forever “swings between its own finite essence and its ceaseless orientation to the divine plenitude.”¹⁷ Even when quantum entanglement hints that relation may precede relata, it echoes only in miniature what is supremely true in God: subsisting relations are ontological firsts.

Summation

If I have succeeded, these witnesses come together so that simplicity and Trinity rest in a nice harmony. God is simultaneously and inseparably subsistent tri-personal relationality and the infinite communion constituted by those very relations. One simple divine essence, three subsisting relations of origin. No part precedes the whole, no attribute bloats the substance. The Father is the eternal Giver, the Son the Gift received and returned, the Spirit the Gift that is communion. From the Athanasian Creed to the baptismal font the Church proclaims the mystery, “three persons indeed but one essence, substance, or nature absolutely simple.”¹ Thus, the mystic’s cry becomes a phrase in service for the One Holy and Apostolic Church: One God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternal Gift, eternal Giver, eternal Communion.

Numbered Notes Key

1. Fourth Lateran Council, Firmiter credimus (1215).
2. John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon I (trans. O’Meara).
3. John Scotus Eriugena, further exposition in Periphyseon I on “nothing.”
4. Joseph Ratzinger, “On the Understanding of ‘Person’ in Theology” (1966).
5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 28, a. 2, ad 3.
6. Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 40, a. 1, ad 1.
7. Athanasian Creed, lines 15–16.
8. Council of Florence, Laetentur caeli (1439).
9. Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 42, a. 4.
10. Robert Dryer, “What’s a Mode and Vantage in Divine Simplicity?” https://robertdryer.com/whats-a-mode-and-vantage-in-divine-simplicity/
11. Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given, Book I, §§1 and 6.
12. Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given, Book III, §11.
13. St Elizabeth of the Trinity, Prayer, 21 Nov 1904.
14. Jiri Benovsky, “Metaphysics of Relations,” Metaphilosophy 42 (2011) 170.
15. Jiri Benovsky, “Primitives,” in Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics (2020).
16. Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis, Part I, ch. 3.
17. Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis, Preface to 1932 edition.
18. Catechism of the Catholic Church §43 (Denz.-Hün. 36).

Further Reading & Key Sources

1. Magisterial Touchstones
• Fourth Lateran Council IV, Firmiter credimus (1215) – first dogmatic statement that God is “one essence, substance, or nature absolutely simple.”
• Council of Florence, Laetentur caeli (1439) – classic line: “Each of the Persons is wholly in the others.”
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 202-267 – concise exposition of divine simplicity and Trinitarian relations.

2. Classical Theologians
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, qq. 28, 40, 42 – establishes “relation = essence,” “subsisting relations,” and “equality of essence, order of origin.”
• Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 30 (“On the Son”) – Cappadocian witness that everything the Father has is the Son’s without division.
• John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon I – apophatic vision of God as “ineffable radiance… better known through not-being-known.”

3. Modern Catholic Voices
• Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), “On the Understanding of ‘Person’ in Theology” (1966) – famous dictum: “In God, person means relation.”
• Karl Rahner, The Trinity (1970) and Foundations of Christian Faith (1976) – argues that economic and immanent Trinity are identical.
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV, § III-C-1 – meditation on the Son’s filial receptivity as consubstantial self-gift.

4. Eastern & Personalist Perspectives
• John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (see “Analysis of the Opus,” Zizioulas Foundation website) – Father-as-source model making communion ontologically basic.

5. Philosophical Companions
• Jiri Benovsky, “Primitives” (in Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, 2020) and “Metaphysics of Relations” (Metaphilosophy 42, 2011) – supplies the idea of relation as an explanatory primitive.
• Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given (2002) and Reduction and Givenness (1998) – phenomenology of self-donation that undergirds Dryer’s “self-standing givenness.”

6. Dryer’s Core Papers (all at RobertDryer.com)
• “Rethinking Divine Simplicity: A Meta-Metaphysical Reconfiguration.”
• “What Is SSGO and How Does It Defend Divine Simplicity?” (50-question series).
• “Modal Collapse & Classical Simplicity Revisited.”
• “Scriptural Testimony: koinōnía and plērōma.”
• “SSGO and Information Theory.”

7. Supplementary Reads
• Lucas Hattenberger, “Life of the Trinity: Self-Giving Love” (blog) – accessible overview of Balthasar’s kenotic Trinity.
• Lateran IV text archive and Benovsky primer pages hosted at RobertDryer.com – handy primary-source links and metaphysical background.