Bible Studies

THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD

by GLENN PEASE
01/07/22
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 The attributes of God are those qualities and characteristics of His being that enable us to know Him. You cannot know anyone if you have no idea about their attributes. If you do not know if a person is tall or short, male or female, light or dark, old or young, handsome or homely, or any other characteristic, in what sense can you say you know them? You cannot, for you can only know anyone in so far as you know their attributes, and so it is with God. Knowing God is a matter of knowing His attributes. It is knowing the qualities of anything or anyone that differentiates it or them from all else and all others. The more we know of the attributes of God the more we know how God is unique and distinct from all others.

Knowing is distinguishing. What you cannot distinguish from other things or persons you cannot know. If you cannot distinguish an orange from an apple, you do not know what a orange is. An attribute is our way of conceiving of God, and how he is distinguished from all others. Right away this eliminates pantheism, which is the idea that God is all. All that is, is God. Nature worshippers are pantheists, and all that is, is the God they worship. But such a God cannot be known, for He is not distinguished from His creation. Everything is God without distinction, and so He cannot be personal. If God is everything, then God is nothing that can be distinguished from anything else. The Bible clearly reveals a God who made all that is, and who is clearly distinguished from all He has made.

There are absolute and relative attributes. The absolute are what God is in Himself, and the relative are what He is in relationship to the world. God would still be God even if He never created the world. He was God before He created, and so creation is a relative attribute. He did not need to create the world to be God. He does have to be wise however, to be God. If He were not wise he would not be God, and so wisdom is an absolute attribute of God. If man did not have intellect, he would cease to be man, and so the intellect is an absolute attribute of man, for the essence of his very being depends upon it. If he had no hair on his head he would not cease to be man, and so hair is a relative attribute. So, an absolute attribute of God is one that if he ceased to possess, He would cease to be God.

The Bible no where deals with God's being apart from His attributes, for God can only be known by His attributes. Strong was critical of Kant and all philosophers who strive to know God in the abstract. This is seeking to know without fulfilling the conditions for knowing, or seeking to know without knowing. You can't have verbs without nouns. In other words, all actions have to have an actor. You cannot conceive of running without someone or something running. I ran, the river ran, the team ran, but to say ran with no subject doing it is to say nothing capable of being known. The actions of God and the nature of God are one, and must always be united as one to know God. You cannot study any of His attributes in isolation as if they had any reality apart from His being. The study of theology, therefore, is not abstract philosophy looking at ideas and concepts, but it looks at God as a Personal Being with distinguishable characteristics.

How do we know the attributes of God? Some try to learn them by the study of nature, and they do learn much as God said they could in Romans 1. Many have come to marvelous ideas about God from the study of His creation. They impute to God all that is necessary to explain how He could make all that He has made. This leads to a very high concept of God. But it cannot tell us that God is a trinity, or that He loves us enough to send His Son to die for us. The only adequate way of knowing God is by revelation-God telling us who and what He is.

I. INDEPENDENCE

Herman Bavinck in The Doctrine Of God writes, "The first thing Scripture teaches us concerning God is that He has a distinct, free, and independent existence and life." All else that exists is dependent upon God for its existence. God is dependent upon nothing. He is self-existent, and thus the foundation and cause of all else that exists. Gen. 1:1 says, "In the beginning." God clearly was before the beginning, and this means God in His essence has no relation to time. He is eternal and only began to relate to time at the beginning of creation. Psa. 90:2 and Rev. 4:11 indicate that God cannot be dependent on anything, for He existed before it did, and did not need it. He is self-sufficient and needs nothing, but all else needs Him-Acts 17:25.

All theologians agree on this, and even the pagan philosophers agree, for anyone worthy of the name God has to be an independent being, for to be less than this would be not to be God. This is the first of the attributes, and the starting point for all else. The total freedom and independence of God is connected with His infinity. It is hard for us to grasp infinity, for all we know is finite. If we take one drop of water out of the ocean, it has been diminished by that one drop. It is not detectable and so it is near the infinite that we are dealing with from our perspective, but not so from God's perspective. God is not diminished by anything He gives. His creation did not take anything away from Him so that He was less after creation than before. He is always infinite, and so always independent of all that can be. Try to think of the highest number possible. No matter what you come to you can always add another zero, and so it is impossible to think of the highest number, and so it is with the infinity of God.

God's freedom is that which makes Him God. If He were in anyway the slave of fate, or any other power, He would not be God, for that power would be God. He is not bound by any system of theology so that He has to do what men say He does. If God was so limited, man could fully know Him and have Him in their power. God's independence and freedom means that men cannot make Him conform to any system. He is by nature beyond our grasp, and is always free to do what He chooses.

If God were bound by the laws of necessity, and He does all that He does by necessity, than He is more like a machine or computer than a person, and the whole universe is what it is by necessity. All would be under the laws of determinism, and there would be no freedom for God or man, and nothing can be other than it is. Necessary truth is that which is without an alternative. Two plus Two equals four is a necessity, for there can be no other answer. If all reality is necessary, and there can be no alternative, then all freedom is an illusion, and all is determined. But if God is free and can chose between alternatives, and if He can chose to create or not to create, and if He can chose to make birds or not, and if He can chose to make man free or not, then we live in an universe where there are things that might, or might not, be. It will be a universe where there is freedom.

Because God is free He is not bound by any of His attributes. He is omnipotent, but He does not choose to do all that is possible for Him to do. He could make spiders as strong as lions, but He does not want to. He can do millions of things, but He chooses not to do them. He is free to choose how He uses His power. He could have made creation even more marvelous than it is. No doubt we will see this in the new heaven and earth. He does not do it because He lacks the strength to do it, but because He does not choose to do it. His power is limited by His will. If we apply this to His omniscience it means God can know everything, but He is free to not know something if He so chooses. If He chooses, to not hear the prayer of some of His rebellious children, that is His privilege. He is not forced by His attribute of omniscience to know what He would rather not know at any one time.

How we see the universe depends on how we see God. If He is not in control, but is a slave of forces He cannot be free from, and He does all He does by necessity rather than choice, we live in a determined world. If He is free to choose to do as He pleases, and is not bound by necessity, than we live in a free world where all intelligent beings are responsible for their choices. C.S. Lewis said that some cynics tell us that no woman ever married a man because he proposed to her. She always elicits the proposal because she has determined to marry him. But we know that a woman can be determined to make it happen, but not succeed because the man is free to say no, and they do.

Jesus could have done what He did not do. In Matt. 26:53 it was a real option open to Him, but He chose to do what had to be done to fulfill God's plan, as we see in verse 54. Here we see freedom and necessity side by side. Jesus in His independence and freedom could have escaped, but in His relationship to the world as Savior He could not escape and still be the Savior, and so He did not choose the way out that He had as an alternative, but chose the way of necessity for the sake of man. He was not a victim of fate, but He chose to do what was necessary, but He could have chosen not to.

God's independence does not mean that He has no obligations and is never committed. He is very committed to the keeping of His word and the fulfilling of His promises. Deut. 7:7-9 makes clear that God is faithful. But the point is, He is free to judge and condemn those who do not obey Him even if they are part of the covenant people; He is free to forgive and work out reconciliation. He is bound to keep His promises, but not according to man's claims, but according to His own will.

Freedom is a great paradox, for it is both the most precious gift we can have and at the same time the most fearful possession we have. Those who believe in theological determinism do so because they fear freedom. If God is not in total control of all that is, then it is possible for man to have some control and do what God does not will, and what is destructive of God’s will. It is too fearful to think that God has an opponent that can sometimes win. What does this do to God’s sovereignty? It is unthinkable that man can be more powerful than God in any way. To escape the reality of freedom there have been whole systems of theology designed to protect us from the fearful reality of it. If freedom is real, then God is not in total control, and other wills but His own are able to make choices that determine what will happen in any specific setting in history. This is too scary, and so freedom is ruled out as unacceptable.

I agree that it is scary, but the issue is, is it true that God gave man the freedom to choose that which is not his will? Does anything happen in life and history that is not God's will. If it does, then God has chosen to make freedom real, and given up some of his absolute control. Why would Jesus teach us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” if, in fact, all is God’s will, and cannot be anything but God’s will? This is like praying that the grass would be green this year, and that the sun would rise in the East. We do not pray for what is predetermined to be, and for that which is certain and unchangeable. We pray for what may or may not be, because it is open ended and can go either way depending on the free choices of people. Prayer is meaningless in a predetermined system of thinking. It is only relevant if it can make a difference in God and in man. Freedom is the essential foundation that gives meaning to all of life, and to our thinking and action. Without freedom there is little meaning to anything. Determinism leads to despair for it means that nothing we do can make any difference, but freedom leads to joy, for it means that everything we do can make a difference.

God’s freedom becomes the foundation for all true thinking about reality. If he is not free, but is the captive himself of some force called fate or destiny, then all is hopeless as far as us having any role in the scheme of things. If he and all he does is determined, then we are living in a closed system of absolute determinism, and what ever will be will be, and there is not one iota of a chance to do, think, or say anything other than what we do. People who believe this should have no objection to those of us who believe otherwise, for if all is just as it has to be, then we too are determined to be those who disagree with determinism and fight for the reality of freedom. If God has determined all, then he has also determined that we fight against determinism. This means the determinist should have no logical reason to object to our opposition, for their own system of thinking supports that such opposition not only has a right to be, but that it is determined to be. Why object to what you agree has to be, and was meant to be?

We see God pleading with man in Ezek. 20:35f. Why would he do this if the future was not open for change, but was already determined? God is free to change his mind on what the future will be as we see in Josh. 3:10, Judges 3:4-5. and Isa. 38:1-5. God is not locked in to any fate. God repents and changes his plan when men respond differently. I Sam. 15:11 shows he is free to change when he chooses.