Others vigorously oppose it, especially on the following two grounds: it is a metaphysical
abstraction and inconsistent with the doctrine of the Trinity.114
This simplicity is of great importance, nevertheless, for our understanding of God. It is not only
taught in Scripture (where God is called “light,” “life,” and “love”) but also automatically follows
from the idea of God and is necessarily implied in the other attributes. Simplicity here is the
antonym of “compounded.” If God is composed of parts, like a body, or composed of genus (class)
and differentiae (attributes of differing species belonging to the same genus), substance and
accidents, matter and form, potentiality and actuality, essence and existence, then his perfection,
oneness, independence, and immutability cannot be maintained. On that basis he is not the
highest love, for then there is in him a subject who loves—which is one thing—as well as a love
by which he loves—which is another. The same dualism would apply to all the other attributes.
In that case God is not the One “than whom nothing better can be thought.” Instead, God is
uniquely his own, having nothing above him. Accordingly, he is completely identical with the
attributes of wisdom, grace, and love, and so on. He is absolutely perfect, the One “than whom
nothing higher can be thought.”115
In the case of creatures all this is very different. In their case there is a difference between existing,
being, living, knowing, willing, acting, and so on. “All that is compounded is created.” No creature
can be completely simple, for every creature is finite. God, however, is infinite and all that is in
him is infinite. All his attributes are divine, hence infinite and one with his being. For that reason
he is and can only be all-sufficient, fully blessed, and glorious within himself.116 From this alone
it is already evident that the simplicity of God is absolutely not a metaphysical abstraction. It is
essentially distinct from the philosophical idea of absolute being, the One, the only One, the
Absolute, or substance, terms by which Xenophanes, Plato, Philo, Plotinus, and later Spinoza and
Hegel designated God. It is not found by abstraction, that is, by eliminating all the contrast and
distinctions that characterize creatures and describing him as the being who transcends all such
contrasts. On the contrary: God’s simplicity is the end result of ascribing to God all the perfections
of creatures to the ultimate divine degree. By describing God as “utterly simple essence,” we state
that he is the perfect and infinite fullness of being, an “unbounded ocean of being.” Far from
fostering pantheism, as Bauer thinks,117 this doctrine of the “utterly simple essence of God” is
diametrically opposed to it. For in pantheism God has no existence and life of his own apart from
the world. In the thought of Hegel, for example, the Absolute, pure Being, Thought, Idea, does not
exist before the creation of the world, but is only logically and potentially prior to the world. All
the qualifications of the Absolute are devoid of content—nothing but abstract logical
categories.118
In describing God as “utterly simple essence,” however, Christian theology above all maintains
that God has a distinct and infinite life of his own within himself, even though it is true that we
can only describe that divine being with creaturely names. Pantheistic philosophy’s Absolute,
