In an age when “knowing” and “comprehending” are generally taken to be interchangeable concepts, to confess God as incomprehensible may seem odd. Yet such was nearly the universal confession of the Church prior to the Modern period.[1] Moreover, God’s incomprehensibility was not regarded as a liability, somehow stifling true worship of him, but as a truth about God to be embraced and adored.

Another curious development is the ease with which evangelicals use worldview thinking to forge political alliances unimaginable to an earlier generation of Protestants. Evangelicals and Catholics Together, now almost two decades old, drew the support of a number of evangelicals in large part because it offered a conservative approach to moral issues without the unpleasantness of substantive theological disagreement.

Anyone who pays attention to Christianity in the United States cannot help but notice the proliferation of organizations claiming to promote a Christian worldview. Sometimes called cultural apologetics and often called ministry, worldview theology found a fast market in evangelical circles the last thirty-five years or so. Variations on the theme are manifold, but a common feature is an intense commitment to defending Christian values against alleged encroachments from secularism, atheism, relativism, and, generally all things that do not support a Christian worldview.

It is a commonplace among many Christians that nothing that is not God accounts for God. He is not built up out of anything less than or prior to himself. Indeed, God’s being is not the consequent of any activity or reality that precedes him in any way. He gives to all, but receives from none (Acts 17:25-25; Rom. 11:35-36). It is these convictions concerning God’s perfect self-sufficiency and fullness of being that underlie the doctrine of divine simplicity, even if those adhering to these truths have never heard of divine simplicity.