power. God is not “somewhere,” yet he fills heaven and earth; he is uniquely a place of his own to
himself. Here again, we need to remind ourselves that in each attribute we speak of God in human
terms. God relates to space as the infinite One who, existing within himself, also fills to repletion
every point of space and sustains it by his immensity.
The last of God’s incommunicable attributes, his oneness, is differentiated into the unity of
singularity and the unity of simplicity. God is numerically and quantitatively one, absolutely and
exclusively. Evolutionist views of development from polytheism to monotheism in the Old
Testament are untenable. Scripture is monotheistic from beginning to end. Polytheism fails to
satisfy the human spirit; only confession about the one true God sustains religion, truth, and
morality.
The unity of simplicity insists that God is not only truthful and righteous, loving and wise, but
the truth, righteousness, love, and wisdom. On account of its absolute perfection, every attribute
of God is identical with his essence. Though sometimes opposed on philosophical grounds, the
doctrine of divine simplicity is of great importance for our understanding of God. If God is in any
sense composite, then it is impossible to maintain the perfection of his oneness, independence,
and immutability. Simplicity is not a philosophic abstraction but the end result of ascribing to
God all the perfections of creatures to the ultimate divine degree. It is necessary as a way of
affirming that God has a distinct and infinite life of his own within himself. Nor is simplicity
inconsistent with the doctrine of the Trinity, for the term “simple” is not an antonym of “twofold”
or “threefold” but of “composite.” God is not composed of three persons, nor is each person
composed of the being and personal attributes of that person, but the one uncompounded
(simple) being of God exists in three persons.
[192] In the work of some theologians the locus of the Trinity precedes that of the attributes of
God; and Frank even has serious objections to the reverse order.1 If treating the attributes of God
before the doctrine of the Trinity implied a desire to gradually proceed from “natural” to “revealed”
theology, from a natural to the Christian concept of God, then this procedure would undoubtedly
be objectionable. But this is by no means the case. In the doctrine of the attributes of God the
tradition includes the treatment of the divine nature as it is revealed to us in Scripture, is confessed
by the Christian faith, and exists—as will be evident in the locus of the Trinity—in a threefold
manner. In order for us to understand in the locus of the Trinity that Father, Son, and Spirit share
in the same divine nature, it is necessary for us to know what that divine nature comprises and in
what ways it differs from every created nature.
In this matter of order, too, Scripture is our model. In Scripture the nature of God is shown us
earlier and more clearly than his trinitarian existence. The Trinity is not clearly revealed until we
get to the New Testament. The names yhwh and Elohim precede those of Father, Son, and Spirit.
