What are some of these attributes that make God, God? Here are a few :
God is by definition a perfect being. In most theological positions in the western traditions God is a maximally great being who is perfect –having greatest consistent set of properties that add to his metaphysical value
•Necessary : God exists necessarily rather than contingently (Anselm)
•Omnipotence (maximal power, e.g. in God’s role as creator or cosmogonic divinity)
•Omniscience (maximal knowledge, including knowledge of the whole future)
•Omnipresence (the divine is present everywhere, at all times, keeping things in being)
•Eternality (God is absolutely unchanging, and hence above or outside of time)
•Impassibility (God cannot be moved or desire, since motivation implies change)
•Simplicity (God has no parts, is absolutely unified, since God is not generated)
•First cause/First mover: God is not only the cause of the existence of all contingent beings, but also their final end or natural goal (what they really seek or desire)
•Aseity: God exists absolutely from God’s self (absolute independence and originality)
•Maximal good (“omnibenevolence”): God is the ultimate standard of goodness, the source of all value; to be united with God is our ultimate happiness or blessedness.
•Holy: Completely other, and different than anything or anyone in the universe. Righteous and pure.
There is one major attribute I did not mention in this lecture.
LOVE: This is how Richard Lints puts it:
“God’s love is inseparable from these other characteristics. It is not the case that sometimes God is holy and at other times God is love, nor sometimes God is just but at other times God is merciful. God’s love runs through all that God is and does. His love is not merely an emotion. It is the enduring commitment of God to his unholy people manifest most clearly in the offering his Son as a sacrificial substitute who died on their behalf in order that they might be declared innocent and gain adoption as children of God. The love of God is active and costly. It is also strong. Nothing can separate God’s people from God because of the character of his love for them.”
- Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Baker, 2019)
- Matthew Barrett, “Don’t Domesticate God with Words”
- Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, Banner of Truth Trust, 1979
- Kevin DeYoung, “Theological Primer: Divine Infinite”
- Paul Helm, Eternal God (Oxford University Press, 2010)
- Michael S. Horton, The Christian Faith, (Zondervan, 2011) chapters 6 & 7
- Thomas Morris, Our Idea of God (InterVarsity Press, 1991)
- J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1973)
- The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 2
- Erik Raymond, “The Cross Displays the Attributes in Perfect Harmony”
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