Wyatt Graham

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Simplicity

God’s Simplicity Means God Is His Attributes

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Over the past while, some Christians have disagreed about how to talk about God’s nature. The disagreement centres on how to talk about God’s attributes. Everyone agrees that the Bible says God is just, merciful, and holy. 

Yet some conclude that each attribute of God can be distinguished in God because the Bible says God is each of these things.  Others say that each attribute of God cannot be distinguished in God but only in our minds. 

At the heart of the debate then is this: in God, are his attributes distinct, or is God One and we perceive his attributes as distinct things? 

I affirm that all that is in God is God because it better matches God’s revelation in Scripture and accords with reason. [Read more…] about God’s Simplicity Means God Is His Attributes

What Was God Doing before Time?

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What was God doing before time? According to Scripture, God created everything (Gen 1:1) and apart from him nothing was made (John 1:3). So God alone is uncreated. And this means God existed before creation, before the universe, and, I think we can say, before all time. He is, after all, said to “alone possess immortality” (1 Tim 6:16). And it is impossible for him to have a beginning if nothing but him existed before any created thing came into existence.  

How then can we conceive of God before all time? And how can God relate to us in time? It is an odd question but one that, I think, has an answer that leads to profound worship.  [Read more…] about What Was God Doing before Time?

Is God Identical to His Attributes?

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God is good, loving, and merciful. And while this affirmation makes good sense, it does lead to the question of how God is good, loving, and merciful. We sometimes are good. Sometimes not. But God always is and does good. So when John says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8), he means something different than the phrase “Stephanie is a loving person.”

The traditional answer is bound up in the idea of God’s simplicity. In short, God simply is who he is (Exod 3:14). So that means God is love by nature. And the two terms are basically interchangeable. To say Love is to say God because Love defines God by nature. The nature of God is identical to his properties or attributes. 

While most Christians had affirmed this answer (it appears in the Reformed confessions and early Christian thought), some have now challenged the idea that God is identical to his properties. [Read more…] about Is God Identical to His Attributes?

Some Say Divine Simplicity Is Nonbiblical and Incoherent. Is it?

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Christians across the ages have confessed God’s simplicity, and it also remains as a stalwart foundation for the reformed faith. The Belgic Confession (1561), for example, begins by affirming that God is “ single and simple spiritual being.” And Francis Turretin (1623–1687) remarks, “The orthodox have constantly taught that the essence of God is perfectly simple and free from all composition” (1992: 1:191).

Divine simplicity means that God has no parts or possibility. He is actually and always who he claims to be. 

Yet some today reject divine simplicity as being nonbiblical and incoherent. Is it? [Read more…] about Some Say Divine Simplicity Is Nonbiblical and Incoherent. Is it?