Christian theologians embrace divine simplicity because it is biblical. It also invites us to trust in His unity, share His sufficiency, and love all of Him. We cannot rank the divine persons; they are distinct from each other but not divided from each other. They are not three parts that add up to a single godhead. John Calvin understood the name God to be “the one simple essence, comprehending three persons.” In our chaos we can come to a God in whom, as the Athanasian Creed puts it, “the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.” Such as the one is, so are the three. “None in this Trinity is before or after, none is greater or smaller” (arts. 6, 7, 25). We can trust one God in three equal, co-eternal persons.

One of the best questions we can ask is also the most challenging: “What is God?”[1] As the Church has searched Scripture for answers it has consistently used a surprising word to describe the divine Being: simplicity. God is simple—not in the sense of “easily understood” but as “being free from division into parts, and therefore from compositeness.”[2] God is one (Deut. 6:4); He is both unique and indivisible.
The word simplicity, like trinity, is not found in the Bible, but reformed confessions affirm that the doctrine is biblical. The Lutheran Augsburg Confession states that “there is one Divine Essence…which is God: eternal, without body, without parts” (art. 1). Dutch Reformed believers confess the same thing: “There is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God” (Belgic Confession, art. 1). In the Church of England divine simplicity is taught in the Thirty-nine Articles, “There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions” (art. 1). The Westminster Assembly—which convened to modify these articles but then chose to replace them—retained the exact language of Anglicanism (Westminster Shorter Catechism 2.1), as did English Baptists (London Baptist Confession, 2.1). These confessions draw on the testimony of church fathers like Augustine, medieval theologians like Aquinas, and reformers like Calvin, Melanchthon, and Zwingli.
Divine simplicity is firmly embedded in the reformed confessional tradition. If we understand simplicity, we may come to join the doctors of the church in treasuring this doctrine.
What Is Divine Simplicity?
When God revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush He identified Himself as being—the “I am” (Ex. 3:14). Unlike everyone else, He is not from somewhere or the fruit of ancestors. He is not even a species within a genus. Instead, He is the God who is, “the ultimate principle and …category of all things.”[3] Herman Bavinck wrote, “God is the real, the true being, the fullness of being, the sum total of all reality and perfection, the totality of being, from which all other being owes its existence.”[4] God is truly “all and in all” (Col. 3:11). Drawing from texts like these, divine simplicity maintains that in God there is “no composition, no contradiction, no tension, no process.”[5]
No Composition
God is not a sum of parts, as we are, made up of body and soul, atoms and neurons, past, present, and future. God’s attributes do not add up to what He is. As a child I wore out a book that described a little boy’s attributes—quickness, loudness, bravery—that made him who he was. Here is the climax of the book: “Put it all together and you’ve got me!” That’s true for us. It is untrue for God. Each of God’s attributes is identical with Himself and His other perfections because each is infinite.
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The primary catalysts driving the gender industry are rooted in technological developments entwined with an unfettered market. Medical-sex identities, along with technological reproduction, are at the forefront of attempts to advance our species beyond our current human borders. The strategic linking of an agenda aimed at deconstructing reproductive sex with a civil rights movement centered on same-sex attraction was pure genius—a metaphorical fox in the henhouse, but dressed as a hen. We are on the brink of breakthroughs in genetic engineering, artificial intelligence (AI), and artificial reproduction, each comprising significant industries. The convergence of these fields indicates a trajectory towards a future that transcends our current human state. 

I first came across investigative journalist Jennifer Bilek’s work in 2020, when her essay “The Billionaires Behind the LGBT Movement” was published in First Things. It was a stunning piece—there are several journalists committed to exposing the transgender ‘movement’ (or industry, as Bilek calls it), but nobody has peeled away the façade of civil rights, pink-and-blue flags, and ‘trans kids’ like Bilek. If we had a mainstream press truly committed to uncovering and reporting the truth about the forces driving our culture today, her work would be cited by them across the board.
Bilek is an artist, activist, and investigative journalist based out of New York City, and her work has been published in Tablet Magazine, The Federalist, The Post Millennial, and elsewhere. Bilek spent her life on the Left, but now she says that she is in the “political wilderness,” reporting on the biggest cultural story of our day while progressives ignore it or cover it up. Bilek also runs the Substack Jennifer’s Newsletter and the blog The 11th Hour, where she explains her focus:
I write at the intersection of humanity, technology, and runaway capitalism. At this intersection stands transgenderism, what I believe is a glamorous ad campaign generated by elites, invested in tech and pharma, to normalize the changing of human biology.
Bilek is doing something that journalists used to do instinctively: following the money. What she has uncovered is a bombshell that reveals the extent to which the transgender phenomenon has been created by super-wealthy LGBT donors who have a dark and sinister agenda. Her journalism supplies the missing pieces needed to complete the picture of how and why the transgender movement so swiftly achieved cultural dominance. Bilek kindly agreed to an interview in which she shared what she has uncovered thus far.
You’ve done groundbreaking reporting on the extent to which billionaires have been quietly backing the LGBT movement behind the scenes. To what extent are the cultural shifts we’ve seen in the past few years astroturfed by big donors?
The cultural shifts we see today regarding gender identity are largely influenced by huge capital inflows from governments, philanthropists, corporations, and investment management and accounting firms like Blackrock and Ernst & Young. While some believe that the ideology originated in universities, funding is directed to these institutions to promote the idea of synthetic sex identities as progressive, which students then carry into the world.
To comprehend the motivations of governments, philanthropists, and big business in this ideology, we must examine its implications. Gender ideology deconstructs human reproductive sex legally, linguistically, socially, and is also attacking mostly young people’s reproductive organs by sterilizing them. It is marketing disassociation from sexed reality presented as progressive, which is especially confusing to young people in using their naturally rebellious youthfulness as a corporate trap.
Both the money and the ideology come out of the medical-tech sector, which is itself being integrated into culture through a philanthropic structure that has been attached to the LGBT civil rights political apparatus. The Arcus Foundation, one of the largest LGBT NGOs, plays a central role in this regard, not only by providing extensive funding to a plethora of institutions but also by introducing a tracking apparatus called MAP and encouraging wealthy philanthropists to invest in the LGBT constituency. Jon Stryker, the founder of Arcus, has a background in banking and is the heir to the corporate fortune that is Stryker Medical. Stryker Medical, with its ventures into the facial feminization surgery market, exemplifies the interconnection between the LGBT political apparatus and the medical-tech industry.
The Pritzker family in Chicago is one of the richest families in America. Though their fortune evolved out of the Hyatt Hotel industry, their predominant investments now are in the medical-tech sector. Their massive philanthropic efforts have made them some of the biggest drivers/funders of the gender industry. Tim Gill of the Gill Foundation—the second largest LGBT NGO in America and connected to Jon Stryker and his family—contributes significantly as well, originally coming from the tech sector and now involved in a home AI platform business. The tech giants—Google, Intel, Microsoft, Facebook, Salesforce, Hewlett Packard, and Amazon—leverage their financial power both to fund this industry in body dissociation and also to browbeat entire states to accept the ideology by threatening the withdrawal of their capital. They did this in 2016, when they signed an amicus brief against North Carolina. After that the state insisted on bathroom privacy for boys and girls in schools.
The rapid proliferation of this ideology is attributed to tremendous financial pressure and mainstream media censorship of critics, which aligns with the media’s ownership by the medical-tech industry. The intertwining of conglomerates like Hearst, Conde’ Nast, and Disney with prominent pharma platforms contributes to the pervasive influence of the techno-medical complex in America.
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If elders and ministers are to rule the church in the name and with the authority of Christ, treating their fellow sheep as divine image-bearers, then it should be perfectly clear that their primary job is to ensure that God’s word is properly preached, that God’s sacraments are properly administered, and that in everything they seek the blessing and power of God through prayer. When elders and ministers are focusing upon these things, disciples will be made, and God’s people will grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Mars Hill/Mark Driscoll debacle is well known. Many have listened to Christianity Today’s excellent podcast series, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. The fall of Mars Hill is but another incident in a long series of scandals plaguing American evangelicalism. Why do such things happen over and over again?
My response . . . A bad or non-existent ecclesiology. Throughout contemporary American Christianity there is little if any regard paid to the biblical model of church government (Presbyterian/Reformed), which is rule by a plurality of elders, approved by the congregation, whose role is, in part, to keep watch upon the life and doctrine of the pastor and their fellow elders.
I wonder if there was ever a moment in the early days of these entrepreneurial churches when the founding members asked themselves, “how did the church in the New Testament govern itself?” Probably not, or else the subject was quickly dismissed as an appeal to mere tradition, something too cumbersome or unnecessarily inefficient. Start-up church groups like this often view its charismatic leader as taking on (even if indirectly) the role of an apostle. He leads, they follow, so there’s no real discussion of church governance. No one sees the need.
The leader appears to have a direct link to God, which allows the group members (better—“followers”) to let the leader unquestionably assume the role of arbiter of the group’s doctrine, the gifted one who determines the group’s mission and “casts its vision,” as well as the primary decision maker should there be differences of opinion. Without a biblical ecclesiology in place, the visionary leader is able to get his way through manipulation and guilt, and if necessary, will remove any and all who oppose him. Yet nobody blinks. In the end, the once loyal followers are left embittered and wonder, “how did God let this happen?” Many leave the church. We have seen this story play out over and over again, often in the media.
As the Mars Hill series demonstrates, Mark Driscoll did indeed appoint “elders,” (who really didn’t function as biblical elders) but then fired them whenever it suited him. Many of these Driscoll appointed elders were sincere and godly men, committed to an exciting new vision for a church effectively reaching the largely un-churched Seattle area. They didn’t sign up for what they got in the end. The wide-eyed energy of youth often comes without the experience, wisdom, and battle-scars that older men and established churches possess. After what they went though at Mars Hill, they now have the wisdom and scars of grizzled veterans, and Lord willing, without the cynicism such an ordeal often produces.
While listening to the series, a comparison to life in Stalin’s politburo came to mind—the continual purges of anyone who crossed or disappointed him, or who no longer had value in achieving Driscoll’s vision. No, Driscoll did not send people to their death or the Gulag. Rather, I’m referring to what political philosopher Hannah Arendt described as the fate of many opponents of a totalitarian regime, they become “non-people.” Not only is their dignity stolen (in the prison or the Gulag), but what happens to them (their loss of humanity and purpose) serves as a frightening example to others of what happens if you do not wholly embrace the leader’s agenda. The cruelty recounted by Mars Hill survivors of continual removal, shaming, and bullying of worship leaders, fellow pastors now seen as rivals, and the removal of hand picked-elders who decided they could no longer tow Driscoll’s line or further his own personal aims, reflects a level of authoritarian abuse much like the politburo. His narcissism should have kept Driscoll out of the pastoral office from the get-go. But narcissists are quick to size people up. They are skilled manipulators. Not long after one of these followers first entertains the thought of being unwilling to go along with his agenda, Driscoll was on to them, and callously pushed them off his stage as a “non-person.” And the purges kept coming. No one would stand in his way.
For some time it looked as though Driscoll humbly sought the wise council of noted church leaders. But those highly respected evangelical and Reformed leaders whom Mark Driscoll brought to Mars Hill, ended up being unwittingly used by Driscoll to give him respectability, along with an open door to the Reformed-evangelical publishing and conference circuit. It looked as though the young buck was genuine in his willingness to follow the better path of church government explained to him. But only as long as it suited him. His subsequent actions demonstrate he never learned (if he even listened). Public perception of credibility through rubbing elbows with respected evangelicals is what mattered.
In rejecting a biblical ecclesiology, Driscoll was free to “make it up as he went along”—until his sheep and co-laborers had nothing left to offer him. Then he went too far, abused too many, and he was out, for a time. Several years of self-imposed exile later, he was able to swing a move to Scottsdale, Arizona, and start all over again, this time with a revised vision (Calvinism was now out) and he found a new group of followers who were all-too willing to ignore his well-known track record. Caveat emptor.
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