​Scripture’s Moral Approach to Divine Simplicity: A Forgotten Element in Christian Tradition

T​his paper constructively argues for a method of rooting divine simplicity in Scripture that builds on pro-Nicene approaches to the doctrine, and which has been almost entirely overlooked in the modern history of the doctrine. In the 4th and 5th centuries, pro-Nicene theologians defended the doctrine of the Trinity on the basis of divine simplicity. But for them, simplicity was also a virtue. Hence, Fulgentius of Ruspe can suggest that one needs to be simple to worship the simple God. Later scholastics ​commonly distinguish​ the moral ​and metaphysical sense​s of ​divine simplicity. ​This paper argues that ​t​his distinction is not a difference between simplicities, ​but two ways of considering one and the same simplicity of God, thereby giving us an evangelical path into this much-contested doctrine. Following the fathers and scholastics, we should understand evangelical virtues as created likenesses in the soul to the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). So too with simplicity (2 Cor. 1:12). Therefore, Scripture’s exhortations to wholeheartedness, simplicity, and sincerity ​are vectors pointing us to ​G​od’s simplicity​. ​The paper concludes by reframing contemporary discussion of this attribute along exegetical and moral lines, and suggesting reasons why the attribute has become distorted from its Nicene form.