The Forgotten Attributes of God: God's Nature and Why it Matters

By Peter Sammons

In this deep, biblical study of God’s nature, Peter Sammons focuses on attributes of God that are less well-known, such as aseity and impassibility, as well as those that are less understood by believers, such as spirituality and immutability. Insightful and challenging. Part of the Institute for the Christian Life series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CLC Publications
• Release date: Jun 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781619583757

Peter Sammons

Peter Sammons MCIPS is a hands-on commercial specialist with 35 years’ practical experience of project management, procurement, and technological research and development, having worked in the aviation, energy and financial services sectors. He advises on commercial issues and delivers training seminars on contract law, cost control, third-party management and supply chain intelligence. Peter’s other books include The Outsourcing R&D Toolkit, Buying Knowledge and Contract Management: Core Business Competence.

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Series Foreword

The Institute for the Christian Life Series

From the time the Lord called me to Grace Community Church, I have had two primary goals: to preach the Word of God faithfully (2 Tim. 4:2) and to entrust the truth to faithful men (2:2). In keeping with those priorities, The Master’s Seminary has played a key role in training future pastors to handle the Word accurately and to defend its truth boldly. These Master’s men have gone out to serve and shepherd churches across the nation and around the world.

Several years ago, to assist these faithful pastors in their shepherding work, the seminary created a lay-training program, comprised of online video courses. The Institute for the Christian Life (originally called the Institute for Church Leadership) is designed to train lay people in four fundamental categories: Bible Knowledge, Sound Doctrine, Christian Living, and Shepherding Care.

The ICL is designed to bring biblical training, theological instruction, and practical ministry into the pew and the living room—making these indispensable tools accessible to believers at all levels of spiritual maturity and church leadership. This book series complements those online courses, as an aid for small group discussion and individual study.

My prayer for you as you read this book and engage with the corresponding video content through the ICL, is that you would grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. As the apostle Paul expressed in Ephesians 1:18–19, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.

John MacArthur

Pastor, Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California

Chancellor, The Master’s University and Seminary

Acknowledgements

THIS BOOK IS THE FRUIT of the time I’ve spent simply trying to know God better. Specifically, it’s a product of the Lord’s providence and blessing given through generations of men who have shared their bounty with the world, all of whom have impacted me richly. Charnock in Existence and Attributes of God, Pink in The Attributes of God, and Tozer in Knowledge of the Holy have all been deep wells from which I continue to draw. In my courses at The Master’s Seminary, I have had the privilege of simplifying some of the more complicated historical sources in a hope to make these heavenly truths even more accessible to the everyday person.

With that being said, I could not have achieved this task without the sacrifice of so many others who aided me in the process. If you have any benefit from this book, you owe it to the editorial skills of Josh Niemi, who labored to read through the manuscript multiple times, spell checking and providing critical feedback to make this project possible.

I am also indebted to all my students who have sat under countless hours of instruction as I have attempted to make these thoughts useful to them. In turn, their questions have pushed me to be clearer and more precise throughout.

My appreciation also extends to several friends and colleagues. First, I want to thank Steve Meister (and his wonderful church) and Greg Raymundo, who both gave me opportunities to refine my work for lay training. Next, I want to extend many thanks to Chad Vegas, Richard Barcellos, and D. Scott Meadows, who have all been dear friends and sounding boards for this endeavor to make these things accessible to the church. Finally, I want to express my gratitude for the friendship of James Dolezal, whose work on Theology Proper helped revive interest in these vital issues in both academia and the church.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Peter Sammons

Introduction

CHRISTIANITY IS IN A crisis. In large part, believers today have forgotten about (or worse, never considered) a number of attributes of God that in former times were staples of basic Christian theism. Consider this: When you first picked up this book you may have looked at the table of contents and noticed a number of attributes you didn’t expect—in addition to a number of expected attributes that are absent. This is intentional. It’s not to say that there are more important or less important attributes to study. Rather, the scope of this book has been focused upon the attributes that are often neglected at a lay level. More specifically, this book includes a number of attributes that have been historically defined as the classical attributes of God. (Note, however, that this is not intended to be a comprehensive treatment of the classical attributes of God.)

So, what is this book about? The perfections of God. Since these are more commonly referred to as attributes, we will use the terms interchangeably. But technically, the verb attribute means to assign something to someone. For example, we see this in Scripture in Psalm 29:1–2, Ascribe to the Lord, sons of the mighty, / Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. / Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to His name; / Worship the Lord in holy array. Thus, the reason for the preferred terminology of perfections is because when we identify something as perfect pertaining to God, it is said that we are attributing it to Him—but not in the sense of granting to Him something not present. Rather, we are recognizing what is already there.

Furthermore, it’s important to note that when we talk about the perfections of God, we’re talking about those qualities that make God, God. And so all of these attributes, though individually considered, are identical to the divine essence. They are also, therefore, true of each person of the Trinity— the Father, Son, and Spirit each possess the fullness of deity (and thus the fullness of these attributes). For example, when considering the omniscience of God, we must recognize that the Father is omniscient, the Son is omniscient, and the Spirit is omniscient. Each of the divine persons is not merely one-third omniscient, and must somehow combine their knowledge in order to exist as a collectively omniscient divine being.

The attributes are ascriptions to God that God’s self-revelation in Holy Scripture declares are true of Him. And there are two ways to do this. The first is via negativa: This is by way of negation. This occurs when we describe God by saying what He is not. God’s infinity (not finite), immutability (not changing), incorruptibility (not corruptible), impassibility (not subject to passions), and impeccability (not capable of sinning) are examples of this. These are descriptions of God by way of negation.

A second way is via eminentiae: This means the way of eminence. This occurs when we describe God by elevating perceived qualities to the infinite degree—to perfection. We describe God by thinking of what is good and then attributing that trait to Him to an immeasurable degree. God’s omniscience (all-knowing), omnibenevolence (all-good), and omnipresence (present everywhere) are examples of this.

When we study God, we must also recognize that God is better than we can explain; He is better than the best we know. His love, compassion, righteousness, justice, and mercy are all better than we have ever understood. As a result, we end up calling these perfections. Perfections, then, are the virtues or excellencies that describe the being of God.

When it comes to categorizing God’s attributes, the most common way to do this is to divide them into incommunicable and communicable. The incommunicable attributes are those that have no attribute analogous in the creature. Under this heading we would put the attributes associated with classical theism (traditional Christianity). These would be: aseity, simplicity, pure actuality, immutability, incomprehensibility, etc. Most of these attributes are covered in this book.

Under the second heading, communicable attributes, are those attributes that have an analogous characteristic in the creature (particularly in light of the fact that we are made in the image of God). The key word here is analogous. These are qualities that men and/or angels possess in a finite degree. These would include power, goodness, mercy, love, and others.

Now, it is important to make a few clarifications concerning these two categories. First, none of God’s communicable attributes are completely communicable. Secondly, none of the incommunicable attributes are too abstract for humanity to understand.

With these things in mind, remember that this is not an academic book aimed at correcting errors in higher academia. The goal of this book is to consider attributes of God—especially those that were staples of basic Christian theism from long ago but haven’t received the same attention in Christianity as other attributes merely because they seem less practical— and reintroduce them to the average Christian.

To that end, this book is geared for the local church—for both personal and group study. Ideally, each chapter will be studied individually by those in the group (looking up each passage reference and answering the questions), followed by a weekly gathering for review and discussion.

While some of the terms introduced here may seem foreign, I hope and intend to write in such a way that the average reader can be introduced to, and edified by, a number of the lesser-known attributes of God. Of course, as with any introductory material, much has been left unsaid. Hopefully, the time and effort invested here can be leveraged for greater reflection and study upon these attributes, bringing them back into the regular dialogue and prayer life of the modern Christian church.

1

Spirituality

God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

John 4:24

GOD IS NOT WHAT YOU think He is. God is not equivalent to your original thoughts of Him. In fact, when it comes to studying God, that notion is an important place to begin.

We live in a time when cavalier thoughts about God have far fewer consequences than other times in history. Today, you can be wrong about something so vital and yet suffer little fallout for it. What is misleading about this flippant approach to God that characterizes our modern age is that the weighty gravity of wrong conceptions about God can have eternal ramifications. So, when we approach studying God, we should not follow the same method we would use for other subject matter.

For example, when you have a hobby, such as supporting a favorite sports team, you spend time learning about the mechanics, statistics, and history of the team. You learn the ke y players of the franchise, and you familiarize yourself with their strengths and weaknesses. For example, approaching the study of the St. Louis Cardinals (a baseball team) will give you a rich appreciation for the winning heritage of that team, providing not only personal enjoyment but also a feeling of kinship with fellow fans (both past and present). However, studying God is different from studying a sports team. When it comes to the team, you can smudge statistics, ignore shortcomings, and focus on past crowning championships without any eternal ramifications.

In contrast with leisurely entertainment, if you get even one concept of God wrong, you may inadvertently be worshiping an entirely different god—one that is a figment of your imagination, an idol, the rottenness of a misinformed mind—rather than the God of reality. And that, dear reader, does have eternal ramifications. So, we must approach the task, even at a personal or practical level, with that weighty reality. God is not what we imagine Him to be or wish Him to be; He is who He is. As a result, we must only study God as He has revealed Himself to be—even if it is difficult or stretches our minds beyond their limits—and trust that God will grow us as we seek to know Him.

So, where do we begin? First, I want to address what is known as the spirituality of God. If I asked you to make a list of attributes, what would be in the top five? One of the most neglected and overlooked attributes of God is spirituality. I have surveyed hundreds of theologically-minded individuals—from students to laymen to professors—and hardly any of them, when asked to list attributes of God, included Spirit. People naturally default to the communicable attributes like love, righteousness, veracity, sovereignty, or so on. Rarely do they lead with spirituality.

Perhaps one reason this attribute is relatively unknown in modern churches is because the term itself has been so misused and misapplied by spiritual hucksters and charlatans who use it as a watered-down substitute for religiosity (or even more sinister—Charismaticism). Even New Age religions aren’t afraid of appropriating the term.

As a result of post-modernism, the term spirituality has taken a drastic turn from its theological aspect. You hear it all the time: People say, Well I’m spiritual but I’m not religious.

The word religion is often used in a negative connotation for all of the garb and tradition of a more formal, dogmatic, and ritualistic faith, whereas spiritual is meant to imply an authentic, non-hypocritical, open-minded belief system. Let me be clear: That use of the word spiritual has nothing to do with the theological use here.

So, you have to be willing to ignore its modern use and look at how it is defined historically and biblically. Truth be told, of all the incommunicable attributes (those not shared in image bearers), it is certainly the easiest to understand. Therefore, this attribute is an ideal starting point.

In fact, it doesn’t take any special exegetical skills, knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, or Latin, advanced theological degrees, nor academic training to understand what spirituality means. Thomas Watson defined it in the following way: By a Spirit I mean, God is an immaterial substance, of pure, subtle, unmixed essence, not compounded of body and soul, without all extension of parts. The body is a dreggish thing. The more spiritual God’s essence, the more noble and excellent it is.¹

The Westminster Shorter Catechism Question 4 says this:

Question: What is God?

Answer: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

As a point of clarification, we must distinguish God’s essence as spirit from created spirits. He is not just a spirit, like angels or demons, or the souls of men. Rather, He is spirit—pure spirit—in a way no other being is. However, what He does share in common with those other lower classes of spirit is that He does not have a tangible visible or corporeal body. He is pure, transcendent spirit.

On the other hand, one way in which the spirituality of God is distinct from those of creaturely beings is due to His omnipresence. That’s because God as spirit is omnipresent while created spirits are temporal and spatially limited. Even angels are not omnipresent. Yet, we see God’s omnipresence all over Scripture, as in Psalm 139:7 for example: Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?

The Importance of God’s Spirituality

So, how important is spirituality to understanding God’s nature? In John 4:24, Jesus said, God is Spirit, These are the words Jesus chose to use to define the Father to the woman at the well. God’s essence is pure spirit. Also associated with spirituality, Scripture says that God is invisible. John 1:18 says, No one has seen God at any time. Conceiving of God in an image is how pagan religions defile God.

Furthermore, He is invisible to human senses because He is not comprised of matter: First Timothy 1:17 says Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

If He were not spirit, He could not be infinite. Bodies are, by definition, finite. For the same reason, if He were not infinite, He could not be omnipresent. Bodies, by definition, occupy a definite body of space. Two bodies cannot occupy the same space. That concept is basic to physics. Yet, the Bible says God fills the heavens and the earth.

Consider Jeremiah 23:24: ‘Can a man hide himself in hiding places / So I do not see him?’ declares the Lord. / ‘Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?’ declares the Lord. The only way to make sense of statements like these in Scripture is to understand that God exists in a unique way. He transcends physical space and even time itself. His infinitude and all His essence depend on the truth that He is spirit.

Thus, the spirituality of God refers to the unique nature of God’s essence, in that He does not consist of