AP

God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.

We have considered many of God’s attributes as we have gone through the fourth question of the Westminster Catechism. But there is one attribute of God I’d like to consider last of all.

This last attribute is that God is simple.

As we consider many different attributes of God, we can be tempted to think that God is made up of a combination of these attributes. Just like how a person can sometimes be loving, sometimes be good, sometimes be wise – we fall into thinking that God is sometimes wise and then at other times he is good and at yet another time he is just. Because of our own failings, we might think that God’s justice and his goodness are at odds with each other.

God’s simplicity means that this it completely not true. God is all of his attributes all at once all the time. God is good and just, he is loving and truthful, he is powerful and wise all the time.

But God’s simplicity goes further than this.

There is a difference between a noun and an adjective. You can describe person as a truthful person, for example. That is using truthful as an adjective. God is truthful – that is certainly true.

It is another thing to say that a person is truth. That is using truth as a noun. This means that that person is the very definition of truth. Truth and that person are the same thing.

In the scriptures, God is described with adjectives, but he is also described using nouns. God is truth (John 14:6), God is light (John 1:9, 1 John 1:5), God is righteousness (Jer. 23:6), God is love (1 John 4:8).

As Bavinck puts it: “he is whatever he has.”

God’s attributes also perfectly harmonise. God’s wisdom is good wisdom. His justice is powerful justice. His truth is loving truth. His love is holy love.

This all points us to the fact that God is absolute perfection. There is nothing missing from him at any time. He is all that a glorious God should be. Nothing can be taken from him or added to him to make him more perfect.

– Tom Eglinton