Jesus explained to the Samaritan woman why she should worship God in spirit and in truth. God is spirit (John 4:24). The noun pneuma occurs first in the sentence for emphasis. Although some theologies consider “spirit” an attribute, grammatically in Jesus’ statement it is a substantive. In the pre-Kantian, first-century world of the biblical authors, spirits were not dismissed with an a priori, skeptical assumption.
As a spirit, God is invisible. No one has ever seen God or ever will (1 Timothy 6:16). A spirit does not have flesh and bones (Luke 24:39). As spirit, furthermore, God is personal. Although some thinkers use “spirit” to designate impersonal principles or an impersonal absolute, in the biblical context, the divine Spirit has personal capacities of intelligence, emotion, and volition. However, it is important to deny of the personal in God any vestiges of the physical and moral evil associated with fallen human persons.
In transcending the physical aspects of human personhood, God thus transcends the physical aspects of both maleness and femaleness. However, since both male and female are created in God’s image, we may think of both as like God in their distinctly nonphysical, personal male and female qualities. In this context the bible’s use of masculine personal pronouns for God conveys primarily the connotation of God’s vital personal qualities and secondarily any distinctive functional responsibilities males may have.
Christ’s unique emphasis upon God as Father in the Lord’s Prayer and elsewhere becomes meaningless if God is not indeed personal. Similarly, the great doctrines of mercy, grace, forgiveness, imputation, and justification can only be meaningful if God is genuinely personal. God must be able to hear the sinner’s cry for salvation, be moved by it, and then decide and act to recover the lost. In fact, God is superpersonal, tripersonal. The classical doctrine of the Trinity coherently synthesizes the Bible’s teaching about God. To place the name of God upon a baptismal candidate is to place upon the candidate the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).
The unity of the one divine essence and being emphasized in the New Testament concept of a personal spirit implies simplicity or indivisibility. Neither the Trinitarian personal distinctions nor the multiple attributes divide the essential unity of the divine being. And that essential, ontological oneness is not torn apart by the incarnation or even the death of Jesus. Relationally or functionally (but not essentially), Jesus on the cross was separated from the Father, Who imputed to Him the guilt and punishment of our sin.
In view of the indivisibility of the divine Spirit, how then are the attributes related to the divine Being? The divine attributes are not mere names for human use with no referent in the divine Spirit (nominalism). Nor are the attributes separate from each other within the divine Being so that they could conflict with each other (realism). The attributes all equally qualify the entirety of the divine Being and each other (a modified realism). Preserving the divine simplicity or indivisibility, God’s love is always holy love, and God’s holiness is always loving holiness. Hence it is futile to argue for the superiority of one divine attribute over another. Every attribute is essential; one cannot be more essential than another in a simple, nonextended Being.
God as spirit, furthermore, is living and active. In contrast to the passive ultimates of Greek philosophies, the God of the Bible actively creates, sustains, covenants with His people, preserves Israel and the Messiah’s line of descent, calls prophet after prophet, sends His Son into the world, provides the atoning sacrifice to satisfy His own righteousness, raises Christ from the dead, builds the church, and judges all justly. Far from a passive entity like a warm house, the God of the Bible is an active architect, builder, freedom fighter, advocate of the poor and oppressed, just judge, empathetic counselor, suffering servant, and triumphant deliverer.
As an invisible, personal, living spirit, God is no mere passive object of human investigation. Such writers as Blaise Pascal, Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and Emil Brunner have helpfully reminded Christians that knowing God is not like studying soils. However, they go too far in claiming that God is merely a revealing subject in ineffable personal encounters and that no objective, propositional truth can be known of God. Members of a creative artist’s family may know him not only with passionate, personal subjectivity but also objectively through examination of his works, careful reading of his writings, and assessment of his resume’. Similarly, God may be known not only in passionate subjective commitment, but also by thought about His creative works (general revelation), His inspired Scripture (part of special revelation), and theological resumes of His nature and activity. Knowledge of God involves both objective, conceptual validity and subjective, personal fellowship.
We have considered the meaning of asserting that God is spirit: the divine Being is one, invisible, personal, and thus capable of thinking, feeling, and willing, a living and active being. There are, however, many spirits. The subsequent discussion of the divine attributes is necessary to distinguish the divine Spirit from other spirit-beings.
While considering the meaning of each attribute, it is well to be aware of the relation of the attributes to the being of God. In the Scriptures the divine attributes are not above God, beside God, or beneath God; they are predicated of God. God is holy. God is love. These characteristics do not simply describe what God does, they define what God is. To claim that recipients of revelation can know the attributes of God but not the being of God leaves the attributes un-unified and belonging to nothing. The Scriptures do not endorse worship of an unknown God, but make God known. The attributes are inseparable from the being of God, and the divine Spirit does not relate or act apart from the essential divine characteristics. In knowing the attributes, then, we know God as He has revealed Himself to be.
This is not to say that through revelation we can know God fully as God knows Himself. But it is to deny that all our knowledge of God is equivocal, something totally other than we understand by scripturally revealed concepts of holy love. Much of our knowledge of God’s attributes is analogical or figurative, where Scripture uses figures of speech. Even then, however, the point illustrated can be stated in nonfigurative language. So all our understanding of God is not exclusively analogical. The revealed, nonfigurative knowledge has at least one point of meaning the same for God’s thought and revelationally informed human thought.
Some knowledge of God, then, is called univocal, because when we assert that God is holy love, we assert what the Bible (which originated not with the will of man but with God) asserts. We may be far from fully comprehending divine holiness and divine love, but insofar as our assertions about God coherently convey relevant conceptually revealed meanings, they are true of God and conform in part to God’s understanding.
The divine attributes have been differently classified to help in relating and remembering them. There we will distinguish God’s characteristics metaphysically, intellectually, ethically, emotionally, existentially, and relationally.
By Gordon R. Lewis in The Portable Seminary
Love in Jesus, Sister Mick
