THE SYMPHONY OF OUR LORD: ON DIVINE SIMPLICITY
One of the more profound concepts a person can learn about in their life of faith is the doctrine of divine simplicity. It’s shrouded in mystery and confusion for most, but when grasped with clarity, it really opens up doors to knowing and loving God in a much deeper way. I go so far as to teach the 6th grade students I have about Divine Simplicity at the end of the school year, and venturing to do that has helped me to gain many insights about how this can be understood with clarity and comprehension. I’d like to share those insights and observations with you here today.
Intro to Divine Simplicity
Divine simplicity is a very abstract concept. It brings with it many implications—and those implications are why there’s a value in us learning about it—but, being so abstract, it’s very difficult to wrap one’s mind around. Its premise is that God is simple. This means two things, primarily: 1) He doesn’t have any parts; and 2) His entire existence consists of one, simple, act. Above all else, the implication of the doctrine of divine simplicity that is most relevant for us is going to be that it accounts for precisely why God is unchanging—why He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This is a huge deal when it comes to understanding- and believing in- God. If God changes, then we have no stable ground to anchor ourselves to. If His morals change, or His plans change, then we’re out here floating through an abyss, mired in chaos. If God changes—how could we even be saved? We might be saved one moment, but not the next…
Add to that that it’s an unchangeable article of our Catholic faith and we have more than sufficient reason to try and really understand this often-enigmatic concept well.
For all these reasons, the doctrine of divine simplicity is profoundly important.
God’s One, Simple, Act
The central principle to understand in God’s simplicity is how His existence consists of one, simple, act. It’s clear that God does many things—and He does different things at one time from another. How, then, can it be said that God is one, simple, act?? How can we reconcile these two seeming contradictions?
(Pure) Intellect vs. Rational Intellect
We humans have what’s called a rational intellect. Intellects understand immaterial things (or essences of material things, which are themselves immaterial). To have a rational intellect, then, simply means that your intellect is mediated by your senses; that you gain immaterial knowledge through a process of perceiving and interpreting material (sense) data, and extrapolating essences from material things.
Humans all have this type of intellect.
Angels (and God) do not. They have what are called pure intellects. They do not move from imperfect knowledge to perfect knowledge, they merely possess perfect knowledge of the things their intellects know.
For angels, what they “know” is determined by, and given to them by, God. They have “infused” concepts of all the things they know.
For God, He knows all things perfectly as the progenitor of all things, both real and possible. His intellect has knowledge of every essence that will ever exist, or could ever exist. In that way we refer to him as “omniscient” (knowing all things).
Difference Between Knowledge of Rational & Pure Intellects
With my sixth graders, we do a whole unit on the Human Mind, and constantly refer back to the contrast between Angels and Humans as a means of helping us understand what it means to know a thing, how we know it, and why that’s relevant for us.
In this article, you’re getting a crash course on all the above.
The main takeaway for us, however, is that the rational intellect operates in a radically different way than a pure intellect does. We understand things piece by piece. We inch toward a fuller understanding of a thing slowly, imperfectly, and often never arriving anywhere near a perfect understanding of a thing. In fact, technically speaking, we never even arrive at understanding any material essences perfectly—we are only able to gain what is called an “accidental” understanding of an essence. That is, we understand an essence by approximation—by seeing the accidents of a thing and thereby distinguishing one thing from another. This is not the case for a pure intellect. For a pure intellect—there is no division in the knowledge; there is no acquisition of knowledge; there is no pursuit of truth bit-by-bit, from imperfect to more perfect understanding. For a pure intellect, everything related to the essence of a thing is seen simultaneously and perfectly as a whole.
Mastery of Rational Knowledge
We approach the way in which a pure intellect operates when we gain mastery over a subject. Properly speaking, we are said to possess mastery of a topic when we understand all of the topics elements, exhaustively, and how those elements relate to one another and interact with one another. Once we know that, we are considered a master of that subject, and we approach seeing that thing as a whole.
Thomas Aquinas uses a great analogy for understanding how the act of a pure intellect is one and simple while still consisting of differentiated parts. He says that the act of a pure intellect is like that of a master builder of homes. When someone has acquired extensive skill and knowledge in building a home, they know everything that goes into constructing a good home: preparing its foundation and building its infrastructure; applying walling and roofing; in the case of homes built in the 21st century, accounting for its plumbing, electricity, gas, and heating/cooling; adorning the house with structural detailing. The person that has that knowledge and skill is then able to understand all the different parts of building a home under the single primary act of desiring/choosing to build a home. For them, they set their mind on building a home in a new spot, and everything they do from there proceeds as a consequence of that single choice.
The same thing goes when we decide we want to go somewhere for a vacation. We set our mind’s on a specific location, and then we fill in whatever we need to fill in to get ourselves there and allow us to experience that intended vacation. Whether we choose this or that airline, or stay at this or that hotel/resort, is indifferent to the foundational act of going on a vacation to our already-determined-location.
Kobe!
A third and final example I always use when teaching/talking about divine simplicity is one drawn from a comment I once learned Kobe Bryant was reputed for having made. A reporter was asking him how many different moves he thought he had and Kobe responded by saying, “I have two moves.” After a pause he elaborated: “I go right, or I go left.” The reporter was caught off guard hearing this, but Kobe knew what he was saying. Kobe was obviously aware that he does any number of almost infinite moves—spinning one way, then back; crossing over; between-the-legs, behind-the-back; jab-fake-jab-jab-go; etc. etc.. But Kobe saw all that he did with clarity and simplicity. Ultimately, the defender in front of him had to be beaten to the right or to the left. Everything else he did was in service of getting to one of those two spots—and in that way, he not only didn’t lie to the reporter, but he also offered profound insight into his level of mastery that he had over the sport he played.
All of this serves to furnish us with robust examples for how the operation of divine simplicity actually works in God.
Certainly, God does many things—certainly, He does different things distended across time, each of these different things beginning and ending at different times. But not only is it not false to say that it all boils down to one, simple, act; it’s actually, and technically, precisely the reality that in God—being a pure intellect—there is only one act occurring, utterly undifferentiated in Him, with all its parts perfectly included in that one single act.
The One Simple Act of God
The one act of God is His desiring of His own goodness. That is the only act that God does—He does it perfectly; and He does it eternally. He never defects from that act; He never does anything but that act; He never stops doing that act. Everything else He does is perfectly contained within that one simple act. Like the house builder building a house, where every part of the house’s construction is contained under the principle of the act of building a house, so everything that is ever done by God is perfectly contained under the principle of the act of desiring His own goodness. All things will come to that one, final, ultimate end.
Act & Sub-Acts
When describing the relationship of God’s one simple act of desiring Himself to all His other acts, I like to use the terminology of “Act” and “sub-act”. Every action He does of creation, all the different ways He acts in time, are sub-acts of the one single act of desiring His own goodness. In the same way, every differentiated act that goes into building a house is a sub-act of the act of desiring to build a house; every move that Kobe Bryant used to beat his defender was a sub-act of his simple acts of either going right or left. This helps my students see how God’s divine simplicity is reconciled with the multiplicity of things done. For a rational intellect like we have, our actions are done discursively, one-after-another, separated from each other, and often without clarity of the end. In many cases the acts we are doing are helping us to reveal the purpose of what we are doing to ourselves. “The purpose in a man’s mind is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.” (Prov. 20:5) For God—for the pure intellect—this is not the case.
First Tier vs. Second Tier Sub-Acts
The next layer of understanding I lay out for my students, then, is the distinction between what I call “first-tier” and “second-tier” sub-acts. That is, there are more primary sub-acts that God is evidently concerned with than less primary sub-acts. There are things that more directly conduce to the desiring of His goodness, and things that indirectly serve the end of desiring His goodness. Some have tried to enumerate this distinction with the terms “perfect will” (first-tier sub-acts) and “permissive will” (second-tier sub-acts), but I think that first-tier / second-tier distinction more profoundly symbolizes the divine ordination of all things. What we’re really concerned with here is answering the question: why does God allow evil to happen? And more specifically, why does God allow man to fall in the first place? Why did God allow some of the angels to fall and become demons? If God orders all things to the end of His one simple act of desiring His goodness, and no merits of ours can precede His providential direction of all things to that end, as Paul says in Romans—lest his grace no longer be grace (Rom. 11:6), then we ultimately yearn to know why evil is permitted at all?
The Saints have always emphasized the unshakeable principle that every single evil that ever occurs is ordained to the good of at least one of God’s saints. Now sometimes an evil is ordained to the good of more than one of God’s saints, but at bare minimum, every evil conduces to the good of at least one of God’s saints.
It doesn’t necessarily conduce to the good of the one who is the victim of an evil; nor certainly to the one who does the evil—but every evil conduces to the good of at least one of God’s saints.
My students always recoil for a second upon considering this… “Wait, so that means an entire war could be permitted by God for the sake of one person’s conversion to God?” They’re in disbelief, but I assure them, “Yes, absolutely.” And I continue, “you’re only confused by this because you’re not yet accounting for how infinitely great the raising to glory even one person is… If God allowed all the evil that ever occurred to conduce to only one person’s true repentance and conversion to God, the glory that would come of it would be infinitely greater than all the evil ever committed combined, because no number of finite things (evil) can ever add up to the infinity of an infinite thing (glory). To do evil is possible; to be raised to glory is utterly impossible.”
God’s Three First-Tier Acts
From here we can still get more specific, however. The good that God is communicating in His simple act of desiring himself amounts to three particular things: 1) creation; 2) His incarnation; and 3) the transformation of all creation at the end of time.
God, desiring His own goodness, could’ve done no sub-acts whatsoever—but He did. This means the sub-acts he does are going to more perfectly serve the desiring of His goodness—and for this, we are benefitted by seeing how some of these sub-acts more directly do that.
Creation
Creation infinitely manifests His goodness precisely because it wasn’t necessary. It was an entirely free gift of love that God created at all. For Him to create anything, then, is going to be one of His first-tier sub-acts.
Incarnation
Amidst that choice to create, God went a step further, and decided to insert Himself directly into that creation, as the absolute perfection of anything created. This is what took place in His incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth. God entered into creation, took on human form, fashioned in the likeness of man (Phil. 2:7-8), and perfectly revealed Himself to His creation. This is going to be the second of his first-tier sub-acts.
Consummation
The third and final first-tier sub-act is then the work that God has promised to do at the end of all time, when he transforms all matter from perishable to imperishable. (1 Cor. 15:53-54) This will be an inconceivably perfect action, and He has guaranteed to us that it will occur.
The Symphony of Our Lord
It’s only from the view of the incomparable goodness of those three first-tiered acts that we can even begin to understand every other act. Our Church at Easter says “O happy fault” to Adam’s sin and fall, because it meant that we would get to behold the glory of the Son of God. O truly necessary sin of Adam | destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! | O happy fault | that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer! (ref: Exultet) …We can consider it a great fortune that Adam fell precisely because it became the occasion for God’s incarnation.
So too we can see how the fall of the demons, by which the just are strengthened, and the glory won by the saints is the greater, is profound as well.
What comes of all the second-tier sub-acts is the beholding of an artist making the most profound artistic decisions in the history of all existence. The three main plot points are there—Creation, incarnation, consummation—and the Master Artist tells the most gripping, the most eloquent, the most riveting, the most profound, the most subtle, the most inspiring, the most beautiful story that could ever be told. Like a great composer adding the perfect flare at the right time are all the works of God in the symphony of His creation. We no longer have to wonder why God not only allowed it, but directed all of everything to its ultimate end of communicating His goodness. He did not cause anyone to sin, but He brought the greatest and most perfect goods out of all the sin that ever was or could be—and His good was the cause of every move and every flourish…
I was told that it was too ambitious to teach such a concept to boys as young as sixth grade—but I’ve witnessed myself how they get it, how it clicks, and how they begin to intuit the faith (and especially those counterintuitive insights of the great saints) with greater ease after learning it. What they don’t know is how striving to teach them such a concept proved that I had much more to learn, and only upon persisting to try and do so, humbled me to see the truth more clearly. In teaching them I ended up teaching myself. +
“Unless you change and become like a child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt. 18:3)
Fantastic you know 100 years ago a sixth grade education was a college education today
Haha, right! 🙏🙏