-by Mick
Introduction
God is an invisible, personal, and living Spirit, distinguished from all other spirits by several kinds of attributes: Metaphysically God is self-existent, eternal, and unchanging; Intellectually God is omniscient, faithful, and wise; Ethically God is just, merciful, and loving; Emotionally God detests evil, is long-suffering, and is compassionate; Existentially God is free, authentic, and omnipotent; Relationally God is transcendent in being, immanent universally in providential activity, and immanent with His people in redemptive activity.
The essence of anything, simply put, equals its being (substance) plus its attributes. Since Kant’s skepticism of knowing anything in itself or in its essence, many philosophers and theologians have limited their general ways of speaking to the phenomena of Jewish or Christian religious experience. Abandoning categories of essence, substance, and attribute, they have thought exclusively in terms of person-to-person encounters, mighty acts of God, divine functions, or divine processes in history. God is indeed active in all these and other ways but is not silent. Inscripturated revelation discloses some truth about God’s essence in itself. Conceptual truth reveals not only what God does, but who God is.
Biblical revelation teaches the reality not only of physical entities but also of spiritual beings: angels, demons, Satan, and the triune God. The Bible also reveals information concerning attributes or characteristics of both material and spiritual realities. In speaking of the attributes of an entity, we refer to essential qualities that belong to or inhere in it. The being or substance is what stands under and unites the varied and multiple attributes in one unified entity. The attributes are essential to distinguish the divine Spirit from all other spirits. The divine Spirit is necessary to unite all the attributes in one being. The attributes of God, then, are essential characteristics of the divine Being. Without these qualities God would not be what He is – God.
Some have imagined that by defining the essence of God, human thinkers confine God to their concepts. That reasoning, however, confuses words conveying concepts with their referents. Does a definition of water limit the power of Niagara Falls? The word God has been used in so many diverse ways that it is incumbent upon a writer or speaker to indicate which of those uses is in mind.
By Gordon R. Lewis from The Portable Seminary
As you read about the attributes of God, please keep in mind that as there is only One God, every attribute belongs equally to each of the three Persons of the Trinity.
