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Well, thanks to my brother, Sam, 
who got us off on a good footing. This looked lower from out there, 
and now that I stand behind it... But, anyway. You know what? I've preached in Dutch churches 
before, and I've never gotten taller as a result. It's okay. It's all right. The 
Lord gave me 5'8", and it makes for comfortable flying. So, I'll 
leave it at that. As Sam mentioned, now we get 
into some of the what of the confession and obviously not 
everything because first of all, the what is God and so He's infinite. In fact, our confession 
says, in every way, infinite. I wanna do one quick thing, though, 
just to give you a heads up. I'm gonna call an audible here. 
Hopefully it won't be too disorienting. I'm actually taking part of session 
two and putting it into session one and also taking part of session 
one and putting it into session two. So in this first session, 
we will treat divine simplicity and infinity together. On the 
one hand, treating divine simplicity makes you think it's gonna be 
an easy session, And then divine infinity makes you think it might 
not be an easy session, but actually it's divine simplicity that makes 
it not an easy session, and also divine infinity. I want to begin 
with a text of scripture, Romans chapter 11, verse 36, I'm sure 
well known to you, and then we'll ask the Lord to help us in this 
time together. For of him and through him and 
to him are all things. To whom be glory forever, amen. I wanna follow that with a non-inspired 
text, but one that we're considering. The confession, if you look at 
page seven in your spiral bound handout on the far left column, 
you'll see chapter one of the Second London Confession. I want 
to read that and then we'll ask the Lord's help. So page seven, 
far left column, article one. The Lord our God is but one only 
living and true God, whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite 
in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended 
by any but himself, a most pure spirit, invisible without body, 
parts, or passions, who only hath immortality, dwelling in 
the light which no man can approach unto, who is immutable, immense, 
eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, 
most wise, most free, most absolute, working all things according 
to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will for his 
own glory, Most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant 
in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity and transgression and 
sin, rewarder of all them that diligently seek him, and with 
all, most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, 
and who will by no means clear the guilty. Let's pray. God, 
you are good and you do good, and you have not hidden yourself 
from us, but you have revealed yourself to us in truth, Lord, 
that we might know you, that we might commune with you, that 
we might tremble before you, but that we also might draw near 
to you with hearts full of gratitude for you do forgive sins and iniquity, 
and you are a God full of compassion and mercy, indeed most loving. 
Lord, as we consider your simplicity and your infinity, these two 
grand and great mysterious truths of our faith, we pray, God, that 
you would give us wisdom and insight taught from above, that 
your spirit would illumine our hearts to see these glorious 
truths that we might even honor you and glorify you in our hearts. 
Lord, we pray that you would enlarge our hearts to be lifted 
up to you now in praise and gratitude and wonder. Give us the thing 
that we seek, which is the knowledge of you and greater love for you. 
We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Only a simple God and an infinite 
God could possibly be the creator of the universe. When Paul says 
in Romans 11, 36, for from him and through him and to him are 
all things, this rules out the possibility that God is in any 
way complex. Now, I know this sounds counterintuitive, 
I anticipated that, but consider with me. It's only because he 
is a simple God, that is to say, as our confession phrases it, 
not composed of parts, the way that the Belgic confesses it, 
we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that 
there is a single and simple spiritual being whom we call 
God. This is a very common confession, both among the Reformed churches 
and in the medieval and early churches as well. Only if God 
is simple is he absolutely irreducible in being and thus the most fundamental 
reality upon which all else depends. That's a major premise. I'm gonna 
repeat it. Only if God is simple is he absolutely irreducible 
in being and therefore the most fundamental being upon which 
everything else depends. If God were not absolutely simple, 
he would not be the God of Romans 11, 36. It's a very important 
thing that we confess in saying this. A composite spiritual deity, 
by contrast, or being even, would in fact not be sufficient to 
make the world or sustain it. and therefore completely unqualified 
for our worship. These would be, at worst, one 
of the gods of the nations, imposter gods that are in fact composed 
of parts. We'll get into more a little 
bit about what that is. Or at best, not one of the false 
gods of the nations, but perhaps a holy angel. Who is, I will 
grant, relatively simple, not being composed of a body and 
a soul, the way that we are, and so there is a kind of simplicity 
in angels. But angels are not entirely without 
parts, even if not physical ones. Even the angels must be ruled 
out. What we don't worship is a composite, spiritual, immaterial 
being with great power. composite, spiritual, immaterial 
being with great power. We have names for those kinds 
of beings. Michael, Gabriel, if you've been reading your Tobit 
lately, Raphael. I mean, it's not canonical, but 
I'm, I lay odds there's a Raphael. Anyway, we can talk about that 
on the break. Don't worship him. They're powerful, they can do 
extraordinary things, things that compared to us even appear 
supernatural, the angels, but they're not to be worshipped 
because they're composed of parts. At some fundamental level, they 
are dependent entities. Closely aligned with the confession 
of divine simplicity is that God is in every way infinite. 
even though Confession 2.1 begins with divine infinity and then 
goes to simplicity and then goes back to infinity, sort of in 
the order of knowing, I want to begin with the consideration 
of simplicity and then move from there to infinity, for one reason 
being that many historically, and I think rightly, have understood 
infinity to be an implication that follows from simplicity. 
If God is simple, that is not composed of parts, then we have 
the conditions for infinitude. If God were composed of parts, 
we would have the condition for finitude. So composition of parts 
is the structure of finitude. If God doesn't have that structure 
of finitude, then infinity seems to follow of necessity, but we'll 
step toward that. Undoubtedly, this claim will 
strike many as odd. If I say God is simple to the 
modern Christian, that might almost sound like an insult. 
If I say my friend Cam, he's a simple guy. There are a couple 
of ways in which you could understand that. It could mean that he doesn't 
clutter his life with a whole bunch of unnecessary things, 
and he keeps the main thing the main thing. When I say he's a 
simple guy, what I really mean is he has a very well-ordered 
life. That would be the very positive way of putting it. But 
then there's that other way of saying he's a simple guy. and 
you all know the implications of that. Something like simplistic 
or a simple ton tends not to be a compliment, and when we 
say that God is simple, it can almost sound to the modern ears, 
especially in English, as some kind of insult that we're hurling 
toward God. I think there's another reason 
why this might sound wrong to us, and it's because we tend 
to associate perhaps power and production with complexity. In the world of modern physics, 
we understand that machines composed of many parts are thereby enabled 
to do perhaps extraordinary things in the world of production. Maybe 
if you're like me, you remember 7th grade science class in which 
you had a culminating science fair project. My science fair 
project in 7th grade was Soil permeability. My dad was 
a farmer. I grew up on a farm in Northern 
California. And so we just went around to different parts of 
the farm. And we just dug up the soil, put them in glass jars, 
and tested soil permeability for the loam and the sandy loam 
and the clay. And then what you do is you bring 
your four jars to the science fair with your trifold board 
telling you all about soil permeability. And nobody lines up to look at 
your jars. jars of dirt in which water had 
been poured and observed. It's it's always the the robotics 
and the lever pulley Systems, you know that you can actually 
interact with that people are excited about now And the one that stands 
out to me is the lever pulley system where if you add enough 
fulcrums Into the mix if you distribute the work across more 
parts with relatively little effort you can do extraordinarily 
difficult tasks with your pinky you can lift a 12-pound bowling 
ball if you distribute the work across a number of fulcrums and 
pulleys and levers. Levers, in fact, are force multipliers. 
And the more parts you put in, the more force multiplication 
you get, and then the more extraordinary productions can be brought out. Well, I think that's true. I 
flew up yesterday from Dallas on a 737. I once read that a 
Boeing 747 has six million parts. I read that on Wikipedia. probably somebody in his basement, 
but you know what, that's probably about right, because I've seen 
Boeing 747s, and that's about, I sized it up for about six million 
parts, give or take a few. And the six million parts do 
amazing things. In fact, they're getting better 
at it. In the spring, earlier spring, I flew from Los Angeles 
back home to Philadelphia, and the flight from Los Angeles to 
Philadelphia, it's the first time I've ever done that flight 
in under four hours. the flight coast to coast under 
four hours with amazing tailwinds and average ground speed of, 
we were at 38,000 feet, no. 55 or 58,000 feet, that's way up 
there in a regular jet, and we were averaging 705 miles an hour. I didn't notice because I did 
some Bible reading, I listened to a little bit of music, and 
then I took a nap, and I felt the plane descending, and I woke 
up and I asked my wife if there was like an emergency, were we 
landing in Cleveland or something? And she said, no, we're coming 
into Philadelphia. Hundreds of people moved across 
the entire continent with relative ease, a personal little air conditioning 
thing, a reading lamp, ginger ale, coffee, cream, chilled. That's a lot of things going 
on at once, and I think you agree with me on this. We haven't talked, 
but I think we probably agree on this. I think the six million 
parts have something to do with it all. meaning coffee, bathrooms, 
air conditioning, personal reading lamps, your own seat with armrests. 
The six million parts all contribute to this great production of moving 
hundreds of people in relative ease and comfort across the entire 
continent at blinding speeds. And so I think what we tend to 
do is probably we move from something like that, an extraordinarily 
powerful event that we now have come to take for granted, I suppose, 
and we tend to think that power lies in complexity. And if you're 
talking about machines or a lever pulley system, there's a lot 
to that. If we're talking physics, Parts 
amplify power. More parts, more force multiplication, 
bigger productions. You got that? Now, take one step 
back from that and think about the biggest production ever. 
The biggest production ever. And God said, let there be, and 
there was. So I like to say the biggest 
production ever is the world. The world. Well, now you can 
see how the little wheels get turning in people's minds and 
they think, well, if it's six million parts to get people across 
a continent, how many parts, how complex must God be to make 
a world? But that's because they're thinking 
about God as if he is a kind of physical machine so that his 
power works the way that like, say, the power of a material 
force would work. And that would be exactly wrong. 
Let me now, stay with me for a moment. If a Boeing 747 has 
six million parts, Not a single one of those parts 
is a Boeing 747. Not a single part of a Boeing 
747 is a Boeing 747. Not a single one of those parts 
could hope to get you anywhere, much less across the country 
in relative ease and comfort quickly. So six million things, 
not a Boeing 747, all come together, are composed, to produce a Boeing 
747. And we could say, and this is 
a buy-in, I need you to agree with me on this or we're not 
going to get much farther in our talk this afternoon. that in some 
respects that plane depends upon those parts to be the plane it 
is and produce the production it does. Did I say that too? It depends on the parts to do 
the stuff it does. That's the other way of saying it. So in 
how many ways is a Boeing 747 a dependent entity? Six million plus Because it also 
requires, I've not been there, I've not, down to SeaTac, to 
the Boeing assembly line there, but I have, I've heard about 
this, that there are actually people there who put it together. 
They don't just, like, get the parts all laid out and then, 
all right, let's check back in the morning and see how the parts are doing. 
They show up and like, oh, good, they came together. It's actually six million 
parts plus whatever puts them together so that that plane, 
which produces remarkable effects, like moving people the way it 
does, is also a profoundly dependent entity. And there's no way you 
would call that the first cause. It has six million causes intrinsic 
to it, and then it has a whole bunch of extrinsic causes, namely 
the designers and the assemblers, who are actually imposing unity 
onto the six million intrinsic parts. That is not the first 
cause of being. That is not the one from which 
all things are. That is itself a thing that is 
from more than six million other things, not itself. And that 
would be blasphemy, blasphemy to attribute to God. Now, when 
people call God complex, I don't actually think that they necessarily 
intend to fall to the question of heresy. That is a material 
heresy, not a formal one. I appreciate that distinction, 
by the way. In which case, I would really be careful not to say, 
brother, you're a heretic. Maybe, but let's wait a while 
on that. Maybe what I want to say is, 
brother, I understand why you're saying this, because what you're 
saying is God is really powerful, and you associate power with complexity, 
but let me propose to you that complexity might be the wrong 
way to go about this, because complexity will not allow God 
to be the one from whom are all things. Give people a chance 
to finesse their language, Now, thankfully, the confession helps 
you fast track that because the confession's already finessed 
the language for you. I also have this idea that, this 
isn't about my ideas, but just while I'm on this for a moment, 
we're gonna put it into overdrive in a second, so this is all on 
ramp. I do actually think that most 
true Bible-believing Christians are already, in some inarticulate 
way, committed to the doctrine of divine simplicity. And here's 
what I mean by that. I think I want to be very careful 
not to propose that we ourselves have gone and discovered something 
in the past in the confession and now we're saying it to scandalize 
all the contemporary evangelicals around us who don't talk like 
that. Here's what I mean. If I ask the average Christian 
in a church that isn't confessional or even very theologically well-educated, 
do you think that God depends on what is not God to be God 
or do what he does. Just imagine that in your own 
head right now, asking a Christian you know who might not be from 
a confessional tradition or have had Sunday school classes going 
through all 32 chapters, and if you just said, does God depend 
on what is not God to be God or do God stuff? That's how I 
ask it to my undergraduate students. I'm very relieved to hear most 
of them say, that's kind of a weird sounding question, but no, no. Then what I want to say is, good, 
then you're already on board. Simplicity is already your doctrine. 
You're already committed to it. Simplicity is really just a scheme, 
a good scheme, a scheme I like, that helps protect and guard 
that fundamental conviction. That God does not depend on what 
is not himself to be himself. But things composed of parts 
do, namely parts which aren't wholes that actually fund the 
being of wholes, or support the being of wholes, are those upon 
which the wholes depend. I'm a human. You see that for 
yourself, I think. I depend upon some major parts, 
like soul and body. I am not my soul, plain and simple. 
My body is an essential constituent of mine. I'm also not merely 
a body. My soul is an essential constituent 
of mine. I'm not suggesting that there isn't a hierarchical relation 
between those two, I actually think that there is, but nevertheless, 
they are irreducibly distinct. My body and soul just are not, 
they are both in me, they're both intrinsic, I need both of 
them to be a living human, and they're not the same thing. Neither 
one of them is, properly speaking, a human. Each one of them is 
a major essential part of a human. I depend upon both of them, and 
I also depend upon their togetherness to be in an actual natural human 
state. So I depend on what is not a 
human to be a human, namely a soul and a body. Does that make sense? 
This is one way we can begin to realize that even natural 
substantial units like humans or angels depend upon intrinsic 
parts and a unity of those parts with which they are not identical 
so that they are actually dependent on what is not themselves to 
be themselves, namely their parts. Unfortunately, this is a doctrine 
that's been very eclipsed, lost sight of, if not just downright 
objected to, in the last couple of hundred years. Louis Burkhoff, 
writing in the early 1930s, said, In recent works on theology, 
the simplicity of God is seldom mentioned. Many theologians positively 
deny it, either because it is regarded as a purely metaphysical 
abstraction, or because, in their estimation, it conflicts with 
the doctrine of the Trinity. I leave that to the side. My 
brother has the heavier task even going into tomorrow of touching 
questions of Trinity. But some will say, well, there 
are three parts of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let me 
just anticipate you a little bit. Historically, we have never 
thought of the persons as parts, namely constituents less than 
the whole that collectively make up the whole. And then also, 
some find it overly metaphysical, they just, metaphysics is yucky, 
they don't have a taste for it, they don't want to talk about 
being in technical terms, and so the doctrine has just kind 
of slipped away into the mist. Frank Sheed, not a Protestant, 
a Catholic, giving a lecture in 1930 at Cambridge in a summer 
school of theology, said these words, later written down, A 
study of what is happening to theology in its higher reaches 
would almost certainly take as its starting point the attribute 
of simplicity and show that every current heresy begins by being 
wrong on that. I read these words, I think I 
read that in 2008. And I just remember thinking, this has got 
to be hyperbole. Just take simplicity and every 
major heresy begins by being wrong on simplicity. I've decided 
in the intervening years that he's almost right. If it's hyperbolic, 
it's Barely, barely hyperbolic. Now, Sheed is writing in 1930 
when the raging philosophies in higher academia at the time 
were process theism. This doesn't matter to you, but 
Henri Bergson down in France, Alfred North Whitehead in England. 
These are the pioneers of a process theology. For Bergson, the vitale 
lan, that living means becoming, that living means changing. Vitality 
means alteration. Vitality means time. passion, movement. The process 
theism of Alfred North Whitehead later in America via Charles 
Hartshorne made the argument basically effectively the same 
thing, that God is actually in a process toward his own future 
and he's interacting with the world in such a way that he affects 
the world and the world also then returns the favor and affects 
God and God is in this kind of symbiotic, mutualistic relationship 
with the world in which God himself is moving toward his own future 
and the world's helping him get there. that that's offensive 
to you, you're on the right track. And Bergson's point, or Sheed's 
point, writing as a lay Catholic, is basically saying, by the way, 
Catholics are on board with this, they have to be, because in 1215 
at the Fourth Council, Lateran Council, they made this official 
Roman Catholic dogma. And then when you get to the 
Protestant Reformation, every single major Protestant confession 
put this in their very, right up front in their doctrine of 
God, and so on this point, The Catholics, whether they know 
about this or not, they're on the hook. I mean, they should 
be good on this. Sheed was actually good on it. 
And I think he gets it. That if God were not composed 
of parts, then there wouldn't be a distinction between God's 
actuality and his passive potentiality. And if he doesn't have a distinct 
principle of passive potentiality that's distinct in him from actuality, 
then all this process theism and God becoming and God developing 
toward his own future would be a complete non-starter. No Catholic 
or any classic Protestant would have any business entertaining 
that kind of theology as a remote possibility By abandoning simplicity 
it opens the doors for things like process theism to actually 
begin to make sense in people's minds And I think she'd put his 
finger on probably one of the sore spot in terms of where the 
trouble may have lay. Well, let's talk then briefly 
about the basic claims of the doctrine. As our confession says, 
God is without parts. The chief claim of the doctrine 
is that he's without parts, but in order for this to make sense, 
we need to understand what a part is. If God doesn't have them, 
then what are they that he doesn't have so that the confession is 
meaningful? And so I propose this as a very broad definition 
for you of what a part is. A part is anything in an entity 
that is less than the whole and without which the whole would 
be somehow different than it is. I could also add and upon 
which the whole somehow depends, but that's implicit. So a part 
is anything in a whole that is less than the whole without which 
the whole would be somehow different than it is and therefore upon 
which the whole somehow depends. I know I changed the second definition 
a little bit, but that's got it, that's covered it. Anything 
in a whole that is less than the whole without which the whole 
would be somehow different. That's a part. And I want to propose 
that that version of a part actually applies to any composition of 
parts, anything that we call a part. Now here's the reason 
I am giving you this definition up front. Because when the confession 
says that God is without body, parts, or passions, I think it's 
very tempting for us in a kind of post-enlightenment context 
to read that as if it's saying that God is without body parts. 
But if you look at the confession, that comma is actually there 
in the original, which we now have reproductions of the original 
available. And so if you want to check me 
on this, as I recall, I think if you went back in the time 
machine and went to the street and looked at the actual original 
sheets, you would find there's a comma between body and parts. 
So that it doesn't say God's without body parts, well it doesn't 
not say that, it is of course saying that, but it's actually 
envisioning something more than that. It's not just that God 
doesn't have body parts, that's true, but that He also doesn't 
have any other kinds of parts. That is to say, it's not just 
ruling out physical parts, our confession is ruling out what 
we might call metaphysical parts. Any composition physical or metaphysical 
is being ruled out. This is important, especially 
if you believe that angels are spirits Because if you just said 
he's without body parts I could say that about Raphael the apocryphal 
angel and I would be right and that doesn't make him God This 
is makes sense. But if I say without body that 
covers God and Raphael, but if I say without parts At all then 
Raphael doesn't make the grade. Does this make sense? This is 
important for actually distinguishing God from the angels, that comma. 
That comma is vital to actually making that distinction. Basic 
claims then. First, the meaning of a part 
Second then, the recognition that anything composed of parts 
is doubly dependent. First upon the parts themselves, 
like the Boeing 747 or like I depend upon a soul and a body. Holes 
depend upon their parts. Some of the parts are essential 
major constituents without which the hole would dissolve and no 
longer be the hole. So like if my body separates 
from my soul, then there's no longer going to be a human in 
front of you. There will be an incomplete state 
of my soul that persists my death in the intermediate state, which 
is not a complete and human natural state in which I would be longing 
for the resurrection of my body, and you would too, I'm sure. 
There's that. We're early enough in the day, 
I think, for that. We can say it that way. I don't 
know about after dinner. That's going to be the rough 
one this evening, what kinds of things you can say with all the digestion. 
That's a major constituent part in which a human goes. But if 
all I do is clip my left pinky finger nail, which I do sometimes, 
I did it a few days ago actually, it was just time, and I clipped 
it, a part of me was missing in which I was no longer James 
with the pinky nail of such a length. That was no more. I lost it, 
it went in the garbage. But I survived it. This is not 
the intermediate state. I'm still here. I made it, in 
which case then I can remove some parts and make it, and if 
I remove other parts, I'm gone. I have shoved off the mortal 
coil, as they say. But all parts are less than the 
whole, and without which the whole would be somehow different 
than it is. Without my fingernail, I lose fingernail quantity. which 
is okay. Without my soul, I lose the very 
form of my body, making it human, and it thereby becomes a corpse, 
and you can fill it full of formaldehyde, dress it up, look at it, bury 
it in the ground, say we miss him, and you could not do that 
to me if that's an actual human. Something's changed. Something's 
changed. The disintegration has actually 
led to the loss of the thing itself in that case. The point, 
though, I'm dependent upon my parts. Some of them are not essential 
for my being. Some of them are essential for 
my being, but I'm dependent upon all of them for some aspect of 
my being. This is important. Every whole 
depends upon its parts for some aspect of its being. And then 
secondly, they also depend upon whatever accounts for the togetherness 
or whatever unifies them. So the unity of the Boeing 747 
depends upon the unity of the Boeing 747 depends upon whatever 
put the parts together. So it depends upon the parts 
for its function and operation and for being what it is. But 
then it also depends upon whatever accounts or funds the unity of 
the parts or the guy who put it together. And even if it were 
Very improbable, but let's just imagine you're down there in 
Sea-Tac and one night they have all six million parts laid out 
like all right tomorrow morning we're gonna assemble it and they showed 
up the next morning after a humongous windstorm and They showed up 
and lo and behold after this gigantic the windstorm to beat 
all windstorms like tornadoes all over the place and they showed 
up in the morning and lo and behold the tornado had just torn down 
the whole the whole assembly shed and and instead in its place 
was a fully assembled Boeing 747 fueled and ready to fly and 
The probability that a windstorm could be what imposed unity upon 
those parts, is that impossible? Mathematically impossible? It is not. Is it improbable? Are the numbers of zeros before 
the one after the period on the probability factor so immense 
that it just feels impossible? Yes, I'll grant that. But what 
you would, but it's, in other words, it's not strictly impossible, 
physically speaking. What would be impossible though, 
watch this, if you showed up there the next, so somebody said, 
wow, look, the windstorm put the plane together. Highly unlikely, I 
wouldn't hold my breath on that. But if you showed up the next 
morning and the plane were together, that is to say all the parts 
were now integrated. And somebody said, boy, I wonder 
what put this plane together. And somebody said, nothing. That 
wouldn't just be improbable. That would be actually impossible 
that is to say Something has to be the reason why there's 
a togetherness of the parts. All right now we're back to it 
if god were composed of parts god would be dependent upon the 
parts which would not be identical with himself the whole and he 
would be dependent upon whatever funded or whatever power accounted 
for the unity of those parts He would not be the one from 
whom and through whom and to whom are all things. He himself would 
be from That is to say from whatever assembled the parts or accounted 
for their assembly and he would be through the assembly of the 
parts themselves None of which is actually God because parts 
aren't holes. Are you following the rationale? This is now I 
step back from it all this is why Christians historically have 
recognized God to be absolutely simple not composed and The medieval 
theologian Thomas Aquinas says, every composite is posterior 
to its components. That is to say, it follows after. 
Since the simpler exists in itself before anything is added for 
the composition of a third, but nothing is prior to the first. 
Therefore, since God is the first principle, or cause is what he 
means, he is not composite. Composites depend upon unities 
of being more fundamental than themselves, namely the parts. 
But if God is the first cause of all things, and how do you 
know he's the first cause of all things? There are multiple 
ways of knowing this. The easiest one, Genesis 1.1. And then a 
whole bunch of other verses like Romans 11, 36. In other words, 
there are lots of biblical reasons to believe that God is the absolute 
first cause of all things. If he's the absolute first cause 
of all things, he cannot be composed of parts since things composed 
of parts follow from or are ontologically secondary to the things that 
comprise them. Does that make sense? A number 
of implications follow from this. I won't tease these out. This 
is usually where the sort of the difficulty gets in, but I'll 
say just a few things in this connection. First, most fundamentally, 
this means that God is not composed of existence in essence. Existence 
in essence, what do I mean by that? There is in God no distinction 
between his is and his what. And there is, in us, a distinction 
that way. For instance, if I asked you, 
it's just a simple kind of thought experiment with you, but you 
can even see this in the way we ask questions, the difference between that and 
what. If I say, what is Cam Porter? I just picked a few people I 
know. What is Cam Porter? And you say, yeah, Cam exists. You haven't told me that Cam 
Porter isn't the name of my goldfish. If I say, what is Cam Porter? 
And you say, yeah, he exists. I didn't say, is he? I said, 
what is he? And we recognize that you just 
giving me an is answer to a what question, or if I can put a little 
more technically, you give me an existential answer to an essential 
question, doesn't quite answer my question. I asked, what? Now, 
flip it around the other way. If I ask, does Cam Porter exist? 
And you said, Cam Porter, what a wonderful, rational animal. 
Well, that's what Aristotle would say his nature is. But does he 
exist? I always like to pick an extinct 
animal to illustrate this point. If I asked you, are there any 
dodo birds? Are there any? And you said, 
well, let me see. And you pulled off, I jest a 
little here, but you pulled off your, like an 1840, I think they 
were still around in 1840, you pulled off an 1840 ornithological 
desk reference antiquarian dictionary that I'm sure you have on your 
desk. That's a bird dictionary from 1840. And you opened to 
the Latin entry for Dode. I would say dotis burdanus, that's 
not it, don't quote that, but you open the dotis burdanus and 
you start reading and you say the dotis burdanus is a bird 
of such and such a mature state, the male weighs this and the 
female weighs this and this is its molting patterns and here 
is its diet and it lives on Madagascar and parts of southeastern Africa. 
and here are its mating patterns, and the thickness of its eggshells 
is roughly this, and this is when it lays its eggs, and this 
is how many eggs a female might lay in her lifetime, and you 
just read me this full, exhaustive, ornithological 1840 dictionary 
entrance of a dodo bird. I mean, let's just say that this 
thing is exactly scientifically correct. But my question, and 
I let you do your whole thing, but then at the end I tell you 
that wasn't my question. My question was not, what is 
a dodo bird? My question is, are there any? That is to say, I'm asking, is 
the dodo bird in existence? You're telling me what it would 
be if it were, but simply telling me what does not tell me that. 
Does that distinction make sense? And in us, there's actually a 
distinction between our humanity, what we are, and our existence, 
that is to say that act by which our humanity is placed outside 
of nothingness. I have to say it this way, an 
undergraduate once asked me two thirds of the way through the 
semester, what do you mean by existence? That seems like a 
big deal to know. I just said, whatever it is that 
places you outside of nothing. the Latin to be, if you will, 
and that was that. Oh, okay, so that's what I mean. 
That which places you, the dodo bird nest itself does not place 
it outside of existence. The dodo bird nest, when it was 
existing, was placed outside of, or outside of nothing, was 
placed outside of nothing by some act of being called existence. But the existence was not identical 
with the essence, because at some point, the essence and existence 
were separated when the last dodo bird died. That was a moment of silence 
for the last dodo bird. It's gone, it's not here anymore. But if I asked of God, what is 
God? And you said to me, you quoted 
the Septuagint translation of Exodus 3.14, ha-on, he is. Or the way that Durham renders 
it in his commentary. He is the ising one. And I asked 
you what, and you told me is. And if I flipped around and said, 
does God exist? And you told me his nature is 
to be. I ask you a what question, I 
ask you an essential question, you give me an existential answer. 
And in the case of God, it's the right answer. God is his 
own, this is the most fundamental thing about divine simplicity. 
God is his own is. Thomas Aquinas once said that 
God is not a hobbins essay. Some of you came here wanting 
that question answered. There you have it, he's not a 
hobbins essay. Which is a funny way of saying he's not a haver 
of is, that's what hobbins to have, essay, to be. He doesn't have to be, rather 
he, is to be, his words, ipsum esse subsistens, that God is 
his own being subsisting. God doesn't strictly possess 
what he is or that he is. He is that he is. His name is 
I am that I am. I think Durham is right. He is 
the ising one, and that he is his own is. God doesn't have 
existence. He's the very act by which he 
is existent. What he is and that he is in 
him are identical. They're not distinct principles 
of being. He's not reducible to an existential 
principle that is somehow distinct from a quantitative or essential 
principle. That, I want to propose, is the creator-creature distinction. 
That's the thing that you can say about God that you cannot 
even say about the archangel Michael. Because Michael's a 
Hobbins essay. He has existence. He has his 
to be. God is his own to be. That is 
most fundamental. This is that there's nothing 
in God, not God, upon which God depends to be God. But there 
is something in Michael, not Michael, upon which Michael depends 
to be Michael, which is his own act of existence, which is a 
gift given to him by God. God's existence is not a gift, 
it's himself. Your existence is a gift, he 
gave it. Simplicity puts a fine point 
on that distinction. Maybe in addition to this, one 
other point, that it also means that there's not a substance 
attribute distinction in God, like there is in me. So, for 
instance, I am a human substance. You see that, I suppose. But 
then there are also things I am over and above being a human 
substance. So you could say, like, James is human, but then 
you could also say James is talking. That's an accidental state of 
action. And how do I know that my talking 
and my human aren't the same thing? Like, how do I know those 
are really distinct parts of me? First of all, they're both 
real in me. I really am human, and I really 
am talking, and those really aren't the same thing, and they're 
both real in me. And how do I know? Because sometimes, and this does 
happen, but I am paid to talk, but sometimes I'm human, and for a little while I'm quiet. 
in which I conclude to be James and to be speaking can't be the 
same thing, because what's up with the fact that I'm not speaking 
and I'm still me? And some of you don't, your life goes by 
much more easily than mine. I do wonder about those questions. 
And I conclude, you can say the same thing about standing. Standing 
is a state of posture or position, but being human, which is what 
I am, and standing are not the same thing. And I know this also 
because I don't stand up when I sleep, but I count on still 
being human when I sleep. In which case, then, whatever 
it is in me that makes me human and whatever it is in me that 
accounts for my being standing or upright can't be the same 
thing because then what's up with the fact that sometimes 
I'm not standing but still human? Okay, you get the point. I have 
all sorts of attributes that are over and above my nature. 
My humanity is not what accounts for my standing. I could have 
been born a paraplegic without legs and never have stood and 
been fully human, even if in some kind of diminished way physically, 
be fully human, in which case then I have to conclude that 
there are all sorts of attributes or truths about me that are real 
in me, but they're not necessarily identical with my substance, 
and so I'm composed of substantial principles and then also principles 
of being over and above my substance that are somehow distinct from 
it. Does this make sense? And God, if God is not composed 
of parts, then there can't be that in him which is his Godness, 
and then something else real in him accounting for his being 
somehow that isn't his Godness. Because then God would depend 
on what is not his Godness to be his Godness. Like I depend 
on what is not humanity to be talking and to be speaking. These 
are states of being over and above the state of being human. God does not depend then upon 
qualities really distinct from his divine essence in order to 
be as he is. Some have also proposed that 
this means that God is not composed, that his attributes are in him 
all identical. And I don't want to go into this 
too much, but only to quote this from John Owen. In other words, 
in God, to be wise is to be good, is to be powerful, is to be just, 
is to be loving, is to be eternal. There are reasons why I can't 
conceive all of those together. The way God reveals that reality 
to me is bit by bit. He reveals His eternity one way, 
His power another way, His love another way, His wrath and His 
justice another way. In other words, the way in which 
He discloses His fullness of being to me is multi-parted. 
The revelation of God is not simple. God is. The language 
about God is not simple. God is. The statement, God is 
simple, is it simple? It's a three-parted statement 
with a predicate, a subject, and a copula. It's a three-parted 
statement declaring non-partedness in God. I could say the same 
thing about infinity. I've never had an infinite thought of God. 
I've only had finite thoughts of the infinite. There's a kind 
of non-symmetry in my familiarity with complexity and multi-partedness 
that in some ways will always mean that there's a kind of non-symmetry 
between the manner of God's being and the manner of my knowing 
or speaking of Him. But nevertheless, we do have the resources to know 
that the manner of God's being exceeds even the manner of my 
speaking about His being, because I do understand that if God depended 
upon parts, there'd be something in God, not God, making Him be 
God, and He would not be the one that created all things, 
and He would not be the one upon whom all things depend, because 
there'd be something not God upon which God Himself depended. 
In other words, I may not be able to say simplicity simply. 
I can't. Even the word simple isn't simple. 
I can't say simplicity simply, but that's not the same thing 
as not knowing why it's true and believing it. That's just 
recognizing that there are limitations in the way that I have to express 
myself. Well, let's then consider the doctrine of divine infinity 
as an implicate of divine simplicity. Our confession says, if you look 
again, that God is infinite in being and perfection. Infinite 
and being and perfection, two words are used here, being and 
perfection. I want to look just briefly at 
both. First, the meaning of infinite when we say it of God. Historically, 
the Greeks, until the Greek Plotinus, and I'll just leave Plotinus 
out here, he's a major game changer. The Greeks historically did not 
regard divine infinity as a perfection. They rather regarded infinity 
as an imperfection. So we tend to think of infinity 
as a perfection, they thought of infinity as an imperfection. 
To their minds, infinity denoted incompleteness or non-fullness. And you can appreciate why they 
would say this. If you read an older book, even 
a book in English, you sometimes get to the last page. And in 
a modern English book, you might get to the last page and it says, 
the end. In older books, they would sometimes 
sign the end in Latin, finis. Finis, we have our word finish 
from this. Finis, the end, the limit, and 
then that's when the thing was fulfilled. The fullness was when 
you got to the finish line. And anything that was infinis 
was incomplete. It was open to development. It was still lacking. Do you get what I'm after? The 
penultimate chapter would be non-finis or infinis. You know what I mean, the chapter 
that leaves you hanging and you're looking for the resolution and you're 
just waiting for more? And so in their minds, infinity 
meant incompleteness, non-fullness of being, and therefore was an 
imperfection. So it's kind of strange when 
our confession says that God is infinite in being and perfection, 
when in their mind, infinity meant lack of being, lack of 
fullness. openness to further actuality. 
Obviously, Christian theologians do not mean to say that God is 
incomplete or lacking in the fullness of being when they attribute 
infinity to him. Rather, they insist that God 
is actually as distinct from potentially infinite. A potentially 
infinite thing is exactly not actually infinite. Potentially 
infinite means possibly more. Does this make sense? Could be 
or could become what it is not yet. Potential infinity is something 
that could be attributed to possibly with heavy qualification the 
human soul or the angelic mind in a very limited or narrow sense, 
but that would be in the old imperfection sense. Actual infinity 
is saying that fullness of being without remainder, without lack, 
is in him. We say that God is actually infinite. 
Infinity does not deny actuality of God, rather it denies any 
end or limit to this actuality of being. What we're proposing 
is an actuality of being without limit. In the older Greek mind, 
that would be a potentiality of being, not an actuality of 
being. But by suggesting that God is actually infinite in being, 
infinite was precisely not being in the older Greek way of conceiving 
it. Edward Lee, an English Presbyterian of the 17th century, says infiniteness 
is such a property in God that He is not limited to any time, 
place, or, this is so key, or particular nature or being. He's 
not saying there isn't a divine nature. What he's saying is that 
God's nature is not like a nature among others distinguished by 
what it lacks that belongs properly to the others. The way that you 
actually categorize finite natures is by discovering the things 
that are unique to them that are lacking in all others, and 
then the way you distinguish them from all others is by discovering 
how they lack what properly belongs to the being of others. That's 
a finite kind of being. That's a limited kind of being. 
Lee is saying that's not how God is, a particular nature or 
being. Or it is that whereby God is 
free altogether from all limitation of place, time, or degree. If we're gonna say that God is 
infinite, and I do find actually that Christians are, many Christians 
still confess that God is infinite. Well, I'll put it differently. 
I don't meet Christians that say, yeah, I believe in a finite God. I'm hoping in 
a finite God. It's not a thing Christians tend 
to say. What I have discovered, and this 
is true for me as well, that that doesn't necessarily mean 
they know where infinitude consists. To say that God doesn't have 
it is one thing. To know what finitude consists of or what 
characterizes finitude, what is, if I can put it this way, 
what is the structure of finitude, if you knew what made finitude 
finitude, then you would do a better job at not mistakenly putting 
God into that category. Does this make sense? What I 
want to propose, coming off the heels of what we just read, is 
that the structure of finitude is complexity. That is to say, 
parts that are less than the whole and irreducibly distinct 
from each other outside of each other, thereby placing limits 
on each other in the intrinsic being of a thing. That's finitude. That's where you actually locate 
the intrinsic structure of limitation of being. I think the temptation 
for us is to think that finitude is purely accounted for by an 
extrinsic cause, because God made it and limited it. That 
would be an extrinsic, finitizing power. I agree with that. I think 
that's not wrong. But then the question is, and 
is there something about the way a thing is intrinsically 
that also manifests its finitude? Or is it only finite because 
God, as it were, slaps infinitude on from the outside? What I want 
to propose is that when God made things composed of parts, he 
built them with an intrinsic finite structure as such. So it's not just an extrinsic 
finitizing power, it's an intrinsic finite way of being. Multiplicity 
of parts does this. Francis Turretin says, the infinity 
of God follows from his simplicity. Essential and existential finitude 
in the creature is grounded in its compositeness. My existence 
isn't my essence, and my essence isn't my existence. And therefore, 
my essence and my existence have to be mutually delimiting principles 
inside of me, and therefore, I must be finite and limited. In the 19th century, well, do 
I want to go to the 19th? I'm looking at the clock, infinity 
and the clock. How do you manage those? No, I'm gonna do one better, 
I think. Petrus van Maastricht, little 
book advertisement briefly, his Theoretical Practical Theology, 
which is currently in the process of being published by Reformation 
Heritage Books, this is a worthy translation that we're getting 
of his work. And in his second volume, Maastricht 
writes this about parts and infinity. He says, for to have parts, And 
to be infinite is a most manifest inconsistency. If God had parts 
and were infinite, that would be impossible, he says. For these 
parts will be either infinite in their greatness or not infinite, 
that is finite. But do you get the silliness 
of infinite parts? Because if infinite parts were infinite, 
then how could they be inferior or less than the wholes composed 
of them? That would be absurd. A mean is not allowed between 
these contradictories, says Maastricht. Now, if you would say these parts 
are infinite, you will say that from many infinite things, one 
infinite thing comes together. If you should choose that they 
are finite, then you will have to say that from many finite 
things, one infinite thing is put together. I'm going to interrupt 
Maastricht for a second. How many bits of finitude does 
it take to finally graduate to infinitude? It's impossible. All you would 
ever get is a really amazing, great, big, still finite thing. 
In other words, you could have a great, great finite thing, 
but finitude only begets finitude. Which one of these is more absurd? 
He says, let them decide. Like if you want to say one infinite 
from many infinites, I don't even, what kind of mental calculus 
gets you there? How does that make sense? Or 
infinite from finite, that also doesn't make sense. Infinite 
and perfection will conclude with this thought. Historically, 
the meaning of perfection also was a somewhat difficult one. 
I remember reading a Francis Turretin years ago, and Turretin 
said, talking about perfection, he said, God is perfect, Comma, 
as it were. Kind of troubled me, I'll confess. God is perfect as it were. Do I do this? Risking losing context. I'm gonna take a shot at it. God is not literally perfect. 
Okay, don't walk out yet, hold on. Turretin knew this. Perfect literally means that 
which is thoroughly or completely made. Our word factum, facere, 
to make, the fect in perfect actually comes from this word, 
means made. That's what perfect means. All variations of fic, fec, fec 
in Latin are versions of made. Like when we talk about justification, 
we're talking about being made just, the fic is the make. Perfect 
is made, and then the per means made through. or made to completion. The reason God can't be perfect 
is because He isn't fact. So putting the preposition per 
on the front of it still leaves it literally not quite right. God is not completely made because 
He's not made. He's the maker. So then why do 
we say that God is perfect? Why do our confessions, why are 
they at ease with this language? Because perfect also means that 
which is, my alarm tells me we're out of time. That which is perfect 
also means that which is complete in itself and lacking in nothing. 
And in that customary sense of the term, when we say that God 
is infinite in perfection, this is another way of saying this 
is not the infinity of the Greeks' potential openness Incompleteness 
of being, what we're actually saying is that He is His own 
is, and that His is is an actual, unbounded, intensive, dynamic 
state of being, and that this is our God. A few points to conclude 
with. And I'll ask the so what. I'll 
ask the so what. I went more professorial on you, 
but I'll still ask it. Why does any of this matter? I think most importantly it matters 
in this respect. It's because God is absolutely 
simple and infinite that you can depend upon him and trust 
him utterly. And the reason is this, because 
he doesn't depend upon anything else. Yesterday I was late getting 
out of the airport. They said that there was a maintenance 
issue with the plane I was on. And so they were gonna check 
the maintenance issue because the plane actually does depend 
upon its parts. And if the parts are not in working 
order then the plane is gonna maybe not be in working order. 
And I don't know if that means the plane goes down in flames 
or we just don't get hot coffee. I'm not sure what the maintenance 
problem is. But either way, when you trust 
God, you're not trusting a dependent entity. There's never half hour 
delays for repair. You know what I'm after? There's 
no problem of disintegration with God because there's no integration 
with God. God doesn't fall apart on you 
because there are no parts to fall into. I mean, you could 
depend on me. I hope you could depend on me. 
And I could tell you tomorrow, you know, I'll do such and such 
for you. And you might say, James is a dependable guy. You could 
depend upon me. And it could be that before tomorrow, 
the said separation of soul and body, you know, finally takes 
place. And then you say, well, where's Dalzell? Why didn't he 
show up and follow through? You say, well, Dalzell, didn't 
you hear? He's gone. And then you think 
to yourself, well, all his sessions were yesterday, so. But anyway, 
if you're cold and callous, you think that. But he's gone. You know, that literally, I could 
disintegrate. The integration of my body, we 
call it death. The integration of my body and soul could be 
no more. My parts could come, we could negate parthood, and 
I could come apart. God can't fall apart on you because 
there are, I like to put it this way, there are no parts into 
which he might fall. A being not composed of parts 
can't fall apart. A being not composed of parts 
who is himself infinite in being and perfection He's the one. And when I say he's the one, 
I mean that in the maximal sense. From whom, through whom, and 
to whom are all things. He's the one you should pray 
to. He's the one you should worship. He's the one you should trust. 
And he's the one to whom you can give trust and dependence 
with absolute non-qualification. non-qualification because he 
is infinite being in perfection and without parts. Well, let's 
pray. God, you're good to us. You're kind. You've revealed 
yourself to us. You've reconciled us to us by 
your son. Lord, you've given us your word 
and you are dependable. perfectly because you are the 
I am that I am, infinite and being in perfection. Lord, we 
bless you and we adore you and we praise you for this. And Lord, 
we do trust you. Strengthen our trust, strengthen 
our faith, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. OK, we'll take our break now 
and then be back at four p.m. for our session before dinner. 
And when you hear the piano playing, that's the time or the signal 
to come back into the sanctuary.