What does it mean to say God has no parts?
Question #43: what does it mean to say God has no parts?
No Composition in SSGO and “God from God”
In SSGO, God is an infinite act of relational givenness, meaning there is no external principle or additive component that “assembles” Him. From this standpoint, there can be no parts that come together to form God. Rather, each Person of the Trinity fully is the divine essence in a unique relational vantage. This reflects the Creed’s statement that the Son is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,” affirming that the Son possesses the complete reality of deity just as the Father does. By extension, the Spirit too is wholly God, not an afterthought or a fragment.
Such an approach directly addresses the fear that distinguishing Persons might divide God. In SSGO, if any Person were merely a portion of God, we would be denying God’s oneness. Hence, each Person stands as a self-standing relational mode of the same, undivided essence. This clarifies why “God from God” and “Light from Light” do not suggest an inferior or lesser deity; rather, they communicate the irreducible “who” of the Son, who is entirely God in the vantage of begottenness, not a carved-out part.
Scriptural Foundations for SSGO’s Premise
From Scripture’s earliest affirmations, we see that God is never described as a composite. Deuteronomy 6:4 declares that “the LORD our God, the LORD is one,” ruling out any notion of an assembled God. Isaiah 43:10 adds that there was no god before Him, nor shall there be any after, underscoring His uniqueness and indivisibility. In John 10:30, Jesus proclaims, “I and the Father are one,” which early Christians read as a statement of complete unity, not partial overlap. Likewise, John 1:1–14 teaches that the Word is fully God, even in taking on flesh as Jesus. These passages align perfectly with “God from God” and challenge any assumption that the Son could be a sub-deity or partial manifestation.
SSGO and the Self-Standing Relational Horizon
SSGO insists that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do not require an external cause or assembly to be who They are. The Father is unbegotten fullness, the Son is begotten fullness, and the Spirit is proceeding fullness, but all are the same single divine essence in self-standing relational acts. “God from God” thus signifies that the Son’s begottenness is not a mere fragment but the entire essence expressed in a begotten stance. The Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father (and from the Son in Western tradition), likewise manifests the fullness of deity in a distinct relational vantage. Each Person’s identity is fully God’s identity lived in a particular way, with no composition added.
Why This Matters: No Composition and Full Givenness
If God were a composite of parts, an outside force would have to unite those parts–making God dependent, thus undercutting His status as the uncaused Creator (Genesis 1:1). The scriptural motif of God’s self-identification–“I AM” (John 8:58 and Exodus 3:14)–affirms a Being with no need for assembly or supplementation. Hence, SSGO’s logic is that since God is absolute relational fullness, no Person can be a detachable piece that would compromise divine unity. Instead, each Person reveals the entire divine life.
Relational Mode: Communion (κοινωνία, koinōnía)
This notion of a fully shared essence is illuminated by the biblical term κοινωνία (koinōnía), “communion” or “fellowship.” Passages like John 17:21–23, Acts 2:42, 1 John 1:3–7, and 2 Corinthians 13:13 depict communion as the very nature of God’s life extended to believers. In SSGO, the Holy Spirit’s role of uniting believers to God, for example, arises from the Spirit’s self-standing relational vantage, in which the Spirit is the entire essence proceeding relationally. Because there is no partition in the Spirit, what He communicates is not part of God but the whole. This underscores that communion is intrinsic: each Person is a complete disclosure of God, enabling total fellowship rather than fractional contact.
Full Givenness of God: Fullness (πλήρωμα, plērōma)
Alongside κοινωνία stands πλήρωμα (plērōma), “fullness.” The New Testament employs this term to stress that Christ is not a reduced share of divinity. John 1:16, Ephesians 1:10, Ephesians 3:19, and especially Colossians 2:9 show that in the Son, “all the fullness of the Godhead” dwells bodily. SSGO contends that the Son is the entire essence in the vantage of begottenness–no partial overlap with the Father, but rather “true God from true God,” each Person wholly divine. This is biblical support for the premise that God’s oneness is never compromised by real distinctions among the Persons; fullness belongs equally to Father, Son, and Spirit.
Communion and Fullness in SSGO’s Core Thesis
SSGO proposes that divine reality is neither split among the Persons nor blurred into a single Person with modes of operation. Instead, each Person is an irreducible vantage possessing the fullness of the one essence. Communion (κοινωνία) exposes the relational unity that embraces believers, while fullness (πλήρωμα) testifies to the undivided essence. Together, they confirm that the Trinity is not a set of parts but a threefold expression of the same infinite givenness–aligning perfectly with passages across the Septuagint and the New Testament.
Whether we look to Genesis 1:26–27 hinting at a relational “us,” Isaiah 6:3 proclaiming creation’s saturation with divine glory, John 17 announcing the Father-Son unity, or Colossians 2:9 affirming Christ’s total deity, each text resonates with a God who is not composed of bits and pieces. Instead, God is an eternal communion of Persons in which the fullness of the Godhead is wholly present in each. Far from a philosophical add-on, this vision is profoundly biblical.
Conclusion: SSGO as a Biblical Vision of “God from God”
By naming each Person as a self-standing relational mode of the one essence, SSGO exhibits a coherent theological stance that both honors Scripture’s teaching about God’s oneness and accounts for the Trinity’s real personal distinctions. “God from God, Light from Light” no longer implies a derivative slice of divinity. Rather, the Son stands in begotten fullness, and the Spirit in proceeding fullness, both fully God just as the Father is fully God, with no composition to unite them. Scripture’s use of κοινωνία illustrates the deep relational unity binding the Persons, and its emphasis on πλήρωμα shows the indivisible reality of the divine essence shared by them all.
Hence, through these biblical concepts, SSGO illuminates its main premise: God’s essence is never compartmentalized, each Person is wholly and truly God, and the Trinity is an eternal communion of fullness–one God, three irreducible vantages, and no composition.
here’s how ChatGpt puts it: “From a deeply informed Catholic point of view, saying God has no parts means that God is absolutely simple—His essence is not composed of distinct components like physical parts, metaphysical divisions (e.g., essence and existence), or separate attributes. God’s being is entirely one and indivisible, such that His attributes (like love, justice, and power) are not distinct qualities added to Him but are identical with His essence. This simplicity ensures that God is utterly self-sufficient, unchanging, and uncaused, the ultimate source of all being, free from any dependency or potentiality that would arise from composition.”