Written by Mantle A. Nance |
Saturday, March 26, 2022
“The prayers” in Acts 2:42 are likely representative of the overall worship of the early church. Still today, as the church seeks the face of the Father through the mediation of the incarnate Son with the help of the Spirit, the triune God is pleased to inhabit the praises of His people to the glory of His name, the routing of His enemies, and the edification of His church (see 2 Chron. 20:22; Ps. 8:2; Col. 3:16).

In Acts 2:42, Luke provides a summary of the ways believers in the early church grew as disciples. He writes, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” According to Luke, these Christians devoted themselves to four basic means by which they were discipled. Let us consider these means and the way in which the risen Christ still uses them today in the lives of His people.

First, Luke tells us that the early disciples devoted themselves to “the apostles’ teaching.” We should note that Luke chooses to characterize their activity in terms of devotion. In other words, they made the hearing and the study of the truth as it is revealed in Jesus Christ a priority—a regular, nonnegotiable part of their lives. Still today, most ministers will tell you that those who do this are those who, more often than not, lead the most vibrant and fruitful Christian lives. Those who faithfully attend the public teaching of the Word with a genuine hunger for it are disciples who make disciples. When the Word is preached faithfully, boldly, and winsomely in the power of the Spirit, these disciples are equipped to be faithful, bold, and winsome influencers for Christ in every sphere of their lives.
Luke also speaks of the early disciples’ devotion to “the fellowship.” Our triune God is the God of eternal fellowship, and we, as those made in His image, were made for fellowship with Him and with one another. Our lives are deficient without genuine fellowship with others, especially with others who share our love for Christ. As we proactively encourage one another, the body of Christ is built up spiritually and, very often, numerically. When we are known by our love for one another, those who have not yet tasted and seen that the Lord is good often become curious and open to hear more about the Jesus who is at the center of all our fellowship, and, by the grace of God, become genuine partakers of that fellowship as well.

Some today find divine simplicity to be a strange doctrine because it means God can not be made up of a combination of things. So how can God be Father, Son, and Spirit? I find this objection even stranger because those most known to affirm the Trinity such as Athanasius and Augustine found no such problem!

Divine simplicity is the answer to the question, “What is God made out of”? Is he like us, body and spirit? No. Jesus says God is Spirit (John 4:24). Is he matter and form? No. Genesis 1 and John 1 say God made all “matter.” He is not a creature, but the Creator. God is simple.
Despite how basic this doctrine of God is, many today question its truthfulness. Some claim that no Bible verse teaches the doctrine. Others believe simplicity means that God cannot genuinely be Father, Son, and Spirit. Still others simply think divine simplicity does not make sense.
I disagree. Divine simplicity is the second most basic doctrine in Scripture—after the fact that God exists. It is both biblical and simple to understand. And lastly, divine simplicity guarantees that God is Father, Son, and Spirit—that God is one and three.
Let me explain.
Is Divine Simplicity Biblical?
Since Divine Simplicity is the answer to the question “What is God made out of,” it is biblical insofar as the Bible tells us what God is. Everyone agrees that the Bible tells us who he is: Father, Son, and Spirit. But does it say what he is?
Straightforwardly so. Jesus tells us that God is Spirit (John 4:24). By contrast, Jesus says humans have bodies and souls (Matt 10:28). In Paul’s language, we might say we have an inner and outer man (2 Cor 4:16).
And this is why Jesus is so special. Remaining what he was (Spirit), he became what he was not (human). Or in John’s language, “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). Or as Hebrews says, Jesus partook of flesh of blood like we have (Heb 2:14). The point is that as God, Jesus has no flesh and blood. God is Spirit (John 4:24).
So by denying that God by nature has flesh and blood, we affirm that he is simple—Spirit.
From here, we can ask all sorts of questions about the revelation of God in Scripture. Is God made up of matter—material things like we are? Well, no. He has no flesh and blood. He has no human body. He has no nerves. He has no eyeballs. Those are created things. But Genesis 1 and John 1 say that all things came into being through God’s creative activity.
If God was made up of material stuff, he’d be a creature. But he is the Creator. So by denying that God has material stuff, we affirm that God is simple.
To me, this has to be one of the most simple doctrines in Scripture. Although, I can understand why some people get confused. Sometimes, divine simplicity doesn’t seem to make sense when we read about it.
Does Divine Simplicity Make Sense?
By asking the question “What is God made up of?”, we might answer: well, he is not made up of quarks and neutrons. That makes sense to us who live in the 21st century. But if you told someone living in AD 1220 that God is simple because he has no quarks and neutrons, they’d think you were out of your mind!
But here is the thing. Christians have affirmed that God is simple for 2,000 years. The combination of things that God can be made up of changes over time, given the language people use and what seems normal to them.
We think quarks and neutrons are normal. Medieval Christians thought potentiality and actuality were normal. They might say, God is pure actuality, and it would make sense like gravity, neutrons, and quarks might make sense to us. It is the language of our day.
Since the doctrine is as old as Christianity (really, it is eternal), people have used language normal in the 500s, 800s, 1200s, and 2000s to speak of God being simple.
We don’t talk about potentiality and actuality, or God being pure act today.
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On one side is the religion of man. Man is the current pinnacle of evolution and can control the planet, even its weather. No God need apply. It seems almost like a modern-day replay of the tower of Babel, only this time the planet is the tower, which they have all intentions of “building back better.” On the other side is God and everything He has created. 

The heretics were never dishonest men; they were mistaken men. They should not be thought of as men who were deliberately setting out to go wrong and to teach something that is wrong; they have been some of the most sincere men that the Church has ever known. What was the matter with them? Their trouble was this: they evolved a theory and they were rather pleased with it; then they went back with this theory to the Bible, and they seemed to find it everywhere.—Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (as quoted by Marsha West)
A new religion – if in 2022 it can still rightly be called “new” – has established itself in Western culture and seems now to be the official religion of the Federal Government of the United States, and our mainstream media, along with Wiccan and pagan groups – and popular culture. Although its government adherents do not call it a religion, it certainly carries all the earmarks of one. It is now lavishly funded by taxpayer dollars and enjoys mandated obedience through the power of Federal legislation. The priests of this mandated religion are climate change activists. We do not doubt that many of them are well-intentioned, deeply believing in the rightness of their cause, regardless of how this religion places heavy burdens upon ordinary citizens, who may or may not believe in their religion and certainly do not wish to destroy their children and grandchildren’s futures over their apocalyptic fervor. They followed a similar route to those Martyn Lloyd-Jones described concerning former religious heretics, but with a slight twist. These new religionists “evolved a theory and were rather pleased with it: they went out and seemed indeed to find it everywhere.” They have turned their theory into an iron-fisted belief system and have managed to establish authoritarian rule over entire nations and cultures that would make old-fashioned religious cults like the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Scientology, and others jealous.
Mark J. Perry might call this new religion an eco-pocalyptic religion. Its apocalyptic vision is slightly different from those of the past. Instead of preaching about God bringing judgment on humans, human beings are seen as wantonly destroying the goddess of the climate change activists – Mother Earth. The core doctrine is that humans are the thermostat that controls the climate of the planet on which we live. This strikes us as odd. When we were younger, changes in climate were normal; they were called “seasons.” We had summer, fall, winter, and spring. Some summers would be warmer or rainier than others. Some winters were much colder or snowier than others. We could sometimes witness quite a few years in a row when the climate was cooler or warmer than in past years. It varied depending on what was happening within the planet’s interior and solar activity.
Unknown to some people, there was a Mini-Ice Age from the early 14th century through the mid-19th century when “mean annual temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere declined by 0.6 °C (1.1 °F).” Part of that period was “The Year Without Summer” in 1816:
The weather in 1816 was unprecedented. Spring arrived as usual. But then the seasons seemed to turn backward, as cold temperatures returned. In some places, the sky appeared permanently overcast. The lack of sunlight became so severe that farmers lost their crops and food shortages were reported in Ireland, France, England, and the United States.
What had human beings done to cause such a catastrophic event? Was it coal-fired plants, diesel, gasoline-powered vehicles, or flatulent cattle? No, the culprit seems to have been a natural planetary occurrence:
The dust from Mount Tambora, which had erupted in early April 1815, had shrouded the globe. And with sunlight blocked, 1816 did not have a normal summer.1
There were likely many such devastating eras of climate change throughout the countless centuries. Around the 1970s, or perhaps a bit earlier, a new belief was germinating in the minds of some climatologists. The habits of human beings cause climate change! We were personally exposed to their claims in the 1970s with dire warnings of a soon coming ice age that would cover the North American continent. Virtually everything North of Florida would be covered in ice! (Now, it should be noted that those of us who live in northern Illinois may occasionally feel as though winter will last forever, but evidentially, that is not what they meant at all.) In 1971 the Washington Post published “U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming,” predicting the New Ice Age would arrive by 2020 or 2030:
The world could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts. Dr. S. I. Rasool of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia University says
Newsweek, April 28, 1975, published “The Cooling World” warning:
that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now.
As it turns out, these are but two of what are many false prophecies concerning the climate. In “50 Years of Failed Doomsday, Eco-pocalyptic Predictions; the So-called ‘experts’ Are 0-50”2 Mark J Perry notes:
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