Chapter VII. On the Simplicity of Nature and Trinity of Persons in God

What is God ? That than Which nothing more excellent can be conceived. If this definition be acceptable to thee, thou oughtest not, consequently, to admit that there is anything by which God exists and which itself is not God. For more excellent than God that certainly would be. How could it be otherwise than more excellent than God since as we suppose it is not God and yet gives to God His existence ? It is better for us therefore to confess that the Divinity whereby God is said to exist, is Itself nothing distinct from God. There is then in God nothing that is not God. " What ? " the heretics * will exclaim ; " dost thou deny that God has a Divine Nature ? " Surely not : but I maintain that what He has that He is. " Dost thou deny that He is God by reason of His Divinity ? " No, but only that He is God by anything distinct from Himself. But if you make pretence to have discovered something such, I will invoke my Triune God, and assisted by His grace, I will rise up with all boldness against this novel deity. We have quaternity presented to us in the fourfold division of the globe : but it is not the seal of the Godhead. God is Three in Person, and Each of the Three Persons is God. But if some are pleased to represent the Divinity as a fourth Something, distinct from the Persons, I for my part feel persuaded that I ought by no means to adore that which, as I am told, is not God. And I think that thou art of the same mind. For is it not written, " Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and Him only thou shalt serve " (Luke iv. 8) ? A glorious divinity is that indeed, which dares not claim for itself divine honours ! But surely it is more becoming to deny such a distinct divinity than, whilst acknowledging it, to leave it without honour. We say that there are many perfections in God, but this is to be understood in the true and Catholic sense, according to which what is virtually manifold is really one. Were we to think otherwise, we should not have a quaternity, but an infinite multiplicity. Thus, for instance, we say that God is great, good, just, and so on without end. But obviously, unless thou considerest all such perfections to be one and the same in God and with God, thou wilt be forced to acknowledge a multiplied deity.

But as for me, I can easily conceive of something more excellent than such a manifold god. Dost thou ask what it is ? It is a God Who is absolutely simple. A sound judgment prefers a simple nature to one that is composite. I know the answer which is usually made to this. "It is not our contention," I shall be told, " that God owes His existence to a multitude of distinct perfections, but only that He exists in virtue of His Divinity." God therefore is asserted to consist, if not of many, at least of two distinct elements ; and so we have not yet attained to the absolutely simple, or to that than which nothing more excellent can be conceived. For that which is composite by reason of even a single form can no more becalled simple than the wife of one husband can becalled a virgin. I say, then, without fear, that even this two-i ON CONSIDERATION fold deity shall not be my God : because I have One better. A god that is constituted of only two parts is preferable, I allow, to one that is multiplex, but altogether worthy of scorn as compared with a simple. This simple Deity of mine is the only God Whom a Catholic may worship. He has in Himself no more this and that than He has these and those. He is Who is, not the things which are. Pure, simple, integral, perfect, always the same, He borrows nothing from time, nothing from place, nothing from external objects ; neither does He lose to them anything of His own. There is in Him nothing capable of division into elements, nor are there any elements capable of being combined into a unity. That is to say, He is one simply, not one by composition. He is not composed of parts like a body, He has no variety of affections like a soul, He admits of no plurality of forms, as does everything that is made, nor even of a single form, as some moderns imagine. As if, forsooth, it were a great glory for God that He requires no more than one form to preserve Himself from indetermination — that whereas all other beings owe their existence to a multitude of forms, God alone can exist with one ! What ? Shall He by Whose benefit all that is exists, shall He have to depend for His own existence on the benefit of something distinct from Himself ? Praise, such as this, as the proverb says, is equivalent to blasphemy. Is it not higher perfection to stand in need of no form than to stand in need of one ? Let us therefore have so much reverence for God as to credit Him with that which is the more perfect. For if our thought can ascend to this height of perfection why should we place our God on a lower level ?

Let us acknowledge then that He is both form and essence to Himself. In this degree I will contemplate Him until I discover another more elevated — if such there be — to which I am prepared to raise Him immediately. Perhaps I ought to fear lest my thought should fly above Him ? No, to whatever height it may lift itself, He shall be always higher still. To seek the Most High beneath the highest that man can conceive were surely absurd, whilst to place Him so low would be impious. We must look for Him not below but above our loftiest flights of thought.

Ascend still higher, if thou canst, to a '* higher heart, and God shall be exalted " (Ps. lxiii. 7). God is rather a Form, pure and subsisting, than something possessing form. Similarly, He is more properly described as a subsisting Affection than as something modified by affection. There is no composition in God : He is absolute Simplicity. And that thou mayest - clearly understand what I mean by simplicity, I take it here as identical with unity, f God is as simple as He is one. But He is one in a manner in which nothing else is one. He is uniquely one (unissimus) if I may be allowed the expression. The sun is one in the sense that there is no second sun ; the moon is one in the same way ; because there is no other moon. God also is one in this way ; but He is one in another sense as well. What is that ? He is one with Himself. Dost thou desire me to explain myself further ? He is always the same, always abiding unchangeably in one and the - t The simple alone is perfectly one as being both actually and potentially undivided in itself. That which is compound is manifold in its parts and is rather a union than a unity. Cf. St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., q. xii. a. 4. — (Translator.)

same state. Not so is the sun one, not so the moon. Both of these proclaim in the clearest manner, the former by its motions, the latter by its phases, that they are not one with themselves. But God is not alone one with Himself : He is likewise one in Himself. He has nothing in Him which is not Himself. He suffers no change from the passage of time, neither does He experience any modification of His Substance. Hence Boethius says of Him, " That is truly one in Which there is nothing capable of being numbered, in Which there is nothing save That Which It is. For being Itself a pure Form, It cannot become the subject of a form.v Compare with this Unity everything else that can becalled one, and it will appear no longer worthy of the name. Nevertheless God is Three in Person. What then ? Do we contradict what has been said about the Unity of God by asserting the Trinity ? No, but we establish the unity. We say the Father is God, and we say the Son is God, and we say the Holy Spirit is God. But we say They are one God, not three Gods. What means this number without number, if I may so speak ? If there are three, how is there not number ? If there is only one, what can we find to number ? " But," thou wilt say, " I perceive in God something which can be numbered and also something which cannot. For there is only one Substance whilst the Persons are three. Is there anything mysterious or even obscure in this ? " Nothing, I allow, provided the Persons are conceived apart from the Substance. But since, as a matter of fact, the three Persons are really the one Substance, and the one "Substance the three Persons : how can it be denied that there is number in God, for the Persons are undoubtedly three ? And, on the other hand, how can number be admitted, seeing that the Persons are as undoubtedly one ? But if thou considerest this to be easy of explanation, tell me what thou hast numbered when thou sayest that God is three ? Is it natures ? There is but one Nature in God. Or essences ? He has only one Essence. Or substances ? There is no more than one. Or deities ? One again. " It is not any of these that I number," thou wilt perhaps say, " but the Persons." Yes, but dost thou think that these Persons are not All and Each identical with the one Nature, and with the one Substance, and with the one Essence, and with the one Divinity ? Thou canst not believe so, because thou art a Catholic