Of the Doctrine of God's "Simplicity" Being of Pagan Rather than of Christian Origin.
The next step in my argument is to prove that this doctrine of God being "most simple," "not compound," "pure being"—without body (i. e., not material), parts or passions—hence, without attributes, is not a doctrine of the Christian scriptures, but comes from the old Pagan philosophies.
Clearly the data for this doctrine of God's absolute "simplicity" did not come from the Old Testament, for that teaches the plainest anthropomorphic ideas respecting God. It ascribes to him a human form, and many qualities and attributes possessed by man, which, in the minds of philosophers of Mr. V.'s school, limit him who must be, to their thinking, without any limit whatsoever; and ascribes relativity to him who must not be relative but absolute.
The data for the doctrine of God's absolute "simplicity"—contended for by Mr. V.—does not come from the New Testament, for the writers of that volume of scripture accept the doctrine of the Old Testament respecting God, and even emphasize its anthropomorphic ideas, by representing that the man Christ Jesus was in the "express image" of God, the Father's, person; was, in fact, God manifest in the flesh (I Tim. 3:16); "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:5); "God, the Word, who was made flesh, and dwelt among men, who beheld his glory" (St. John 1:1-14). Hence Mr. Van Der Donckt's doctrine of God's "simplicity" cannot claim the warrant of New Testament authority.
Plato, in his Timaeus, (Jowett's translation, page 530,) incidentally referring to God, in connection with the creation of the universe, says:
We say indeed that "he was," "he is," "he will be;" but the truth is that "he is" alone truly expresses him, and that "was" and "will be" are only to be spoken of generation in time.
Here, then, is Mr. V.'s "pure being," "most simple," "not compound." Again:
We must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from without, nor itself giving out to any other, but invisible and imperceptible by any sense, and of which the sight is granted to intelligence only (Ibid. p. 454).
Here Mr. V. may find his God, "who cannot change with regard to his existence, nor with regard to his mode of existence." Also his God who can only be seen with the "soul's intellectual perception, elevated by a supernatural influx from God." Dr. Mosheim, in his account of Plato's idea of God, says: "He considered the Deity, to whom he gave the supreme governance of the universe, as a being of the highest wisdom and power, and totally unconnected with any material substance."[A]
[Footnote A: Mosheim's "Historical Commentaries on the State of Christianity, During the First Three Hundred Years", vol. 1. p. 37.]