Following our study of God as love, it is proper to investigate those attributes of God which can appropriately be gathered or clustered around the love of God. The purpose is not to fuse attributes or to force attributes to become synonyms; rather, it is to pursue the meaning of each and to identify its relation to love. The attributes we will consider are the patienceforbearance of God, the faithfulness of God, the mercy-compassion-kindness of God, the grace of God, and the passibility of God.
I. THE PATIENCE OR FORBEARANCE OF GOD#
A. OLD TESTAMENT#
In the Old Testament one finds the recurring assertion that God is “slow to anger” (ʾereḵ ʾap), which literally means “long of face or of anger.” The deferral of divine anger in specific human situations has the effect of describing God as forbearing or patient.
These affirmations about God can be found in various segments of Old Testament literature; often Yahweh’s being “slow to anger” formed a part of a mosaic or cluster of attributes being ascribed to the God of the covenant. He is said to have been “slow to anger” in the giving of the two new stone tablets (Exod. 34:6b) and in response to the cowardly unbelief at Kadesh-barnea (Num. 14:18).
Joel (2:13c), Jonah (4:2c), and Nahum (l:3a) acknowledged this characteristic of Yahweh, and it is also found in the Psalms (86:15b; 103:Sb; 145:Sb) and in Nehemiah (9:17c).
B. NEW TESTAMENT#
The most frequently used New Testament word for divine patience is the noun makrothymia which literally and picturesquely means “distance of wrath,” but which is most often translated “forbearance” or “patience.” In the conversion of Paul, Christ is said to have displayed “his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life” (1 Tim. l:16b, NIV).
God’s patience was expressed “in the days of Noah while the ark was being built” (1 Pet. 3:20a), and Christians were assured that “our Lord’s patience means salvation” (2 Pet. 3: 15a). But the noun could also be used of God’s bearing “with great patience the objects of his wrath-prepared for destruction” (Rom. 9:22).
The verb makrothymeo, “to be longsuffering, patient,” was used in juxtaposition with God’s “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9b).
Twice in the New Testament Paul used of God the word anoche, which was derived from the verb anecho, “to hold up, sustain, bear with, or endure,” and which means “tolerance” or “forbearance.” Unbelieving Jews ought not to “show contempt for the riches” of God’s “forbearance” (Rom. 2:4, NIV), and Jesus’ death was intended “to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins” (Rom. 3:25b, RSV).
Paul expressed a similar idea in other words in his Athenian sermon (Acts 17:30, RSV): “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent.”
C. THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION#
The patience or forbearance of God means that he does not forthwith destroy his people (Num. 14:18; Rom. 9:22), that for a time God “passed over” the sins of human beings (Rom. 3:25), and that he desires that all sinners should repent (2 Pet. 3:9).
According to Karl Barth, the patience of God is
… His will, deep-rooted in His essence and constituting His divine being and action, to allow to another… space and time for the development of its own existence, thus conceding to this existence a reality side by side with His own, and fulfilling His will towards this other in such a way that He does not suspend and destroy it as this other but accompanies and sustains it and allows it to develop in freedom.
Emil Brunner declared that “the longsuffering of God is nothing less than the possibility of history. " Hence the very extension of the temporal order, in contradistinction from the immediate exercise of full and final punitive judgment, depends upon the patience or forbearance of God.
This divine patience, Barth asserted, is, “like His mercy,” “a specific form of the divine majesty.”
II. THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD#
A. OLD TESTAMENT#
The principal Hebrew word expressive of the faithfulness of God is the noun ʾmûnāh, meaning “faithfulness” or “stability” and derived from the verb ʾāman, “to be faithful, to be steady.”
In Ps. 89 ʾmûnāh is a recurring emphasis. “Faithfulness” surrounds Yahweh (v. 5), is firmly “established … in heaven itself’ (v. 2b, NN), and is coupled with his “steadfast love” in behalf of David (v 24a, RSV). Hence the psalmist desires to “proclaim” Yahweh’s “faithfulness to all generations” (v. lb) and is confident that Yahweh will never “be false” to his “faithfulness” (v. 33b).
Elsewhere in the Psalms Yahweh’s faithfulness is proclaimed (40: l0b; 92:2b) and its enduring celebrated (l l 9:90a); his faithfulness is the basis for a prayerful plea for mercy (143: lb). Israel was betrothed to Yahweh “in faithfulness” (Hos. 2:20a), and even in the literature of distress that faithfulness is said to be “great” (Lam. 3:23).
The substantive form of ʾāman translated “the faithful,” is used of God (Deut. 7:9; Isa. 49:7).
B. NEW TESTAMENT#
The Greek adjective pistos, meaning “faithful” or “steady,” was used of God in the New Testament epistles.
God as “faithful” will keep believers (1 Thess. 5:24), and “the Lord,” in what may be a reference to Jesus Christ, “will strengthen and protect you from the evil one” (2 Thess. 3:3, NN).
God is “faithful” in giving spiritual gifts as well as in keeping “to the end” (1 Cor. 1 :7-9, NIV) and in not letting believers be tempted beyond their strength (1 Cor. 10:13b).
God as “faithful” will forgive the sins of those who confess them (1 John 1 :9) and will keep his promises and confirm hope (Heb. 10:23b).
C. THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION#
God’s faithfulness is the reliability of his nature and purpose as made known by historical revelation and especially through the keeping of his promises. “For those who trust in this faithfulness, deliverance, not deserved ruin, not the righteous judgment of condemnation, is certain.”
Millard Erickson has differentiated but correlated:
The genuineness of God (against the nonexistence of false gods)
The veracity of God (His not lying)
The faithfulness of God (His promise-keeping)
II. THE MERCY OR COMPASSION AND KINDNESS OF GOD#
A. OLD TESTAMENT#
The Old Testament word ḥeseḏ, which in the older English translations was normally rendered “lovingkindness” or “mercy,” is, as was noted above, probably better translated as “steadfast love,” “covenant love,” or “loyalty love.” Hence it has been treated in connection with the love of God.
Another family of Hebrew words conveyed more precisely the concept of God’s mercy or compassion. The verb rāḥam, which generally meant “to glow” or “to feel warm” and which came from the same root as the Hebrew word for “womb,” suggested a maternal or fraternal feeling. In the Old Testament it normally was used to mean “to show or have mercy on” another.
Yahweh assured Moses: “I… will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exod. 33:19c, RSV).
Hosea declared that Yahweh would “have pity on the house of Judah” (1:7a)
Isaiah that he would “have compassion on Jacob” after the Babylonian captivity (Isa. 14:1a).
That same mercy or compassion was promised in regard to future restoration (Isa. 54:8b; Jer. 33:26d).
The noun for “compassion, mercy,” raḥămîm, was used of God in connection with the killing of the inhabitants and the destruction of the plunder of Canaanite towns (Deut. 13:17 c).
The adjective, raḥûm, meaning “compassionate, merciful,” appears in the Psalms in relation to forgiveness of sins (78:38a), protection from enemies (86:15a), remembrance of Yahweh’s great deeds (111:4b), and praise of Yahweh (145:8a).
Although rāḥam had associations with the womb, it and its cognates were used to express the divine or fatherly compassion or mercy of Yahweh.
Related to, but distinct from the terms for mercy were the Hebrew noun, ṭôḇ, meaning “goodness,” and its cognates. Sometimes the emphasis was on “the goodness” of Yahweh (Exod. 33:19a; Ps. 27:13b; 31:19a; 145:7a; 2 Chr. 6:41c; and Neh. 9:25d, 35). At other times, especially in the Psalms, Yahweh is said to be “good” (Ps. 25:7c, 8a; 34:Sa; 73:1; 86:5; 100:5a; 119:68a; 135:3a; 145:9a; Nah. l:7a).
B. NEW TESTAMENT#
Paul used the Greek verb eleeō meaning “to be merciful to,” when quoting Exod. 33:19c,d (Rom. 9:15) and when interpreting the same theme of sovereign mercy (Rom. 9:18). The noun eleos, “mercy,” was utilized to express divine mercy in the salvation (Tit. 3:5), the making alive (Eph. 2:4), and the being born again (1 Pet. l:3b) of believers.
Divine mercy was also expressed in the New Testament through two terms for the human bowels. Paul used a noun meaning “bowels, pity, or merciful compassion,” when he appealed to the Christians at Rome “by the mercies of God” (Rom. 12:1, RSV) and when he referred to God as “the Father of mercies” (2 Cor. 1:3).
The verb splagchnizomai meaning “to have the bowels yearning” and also “to be moved with compassion toward” or “to have compassion on,” was repeatedly used in the Synoptic Gospels: of Jesus’ healing of a leper (Mark 1:41), of his raising of the son of the widow of N ain (Luke 7:13), of crowds without a shepherd (Matt. 9:36), of the crowds before the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:34; par. Matt. 14:14) and of the four thousand (Mark 8:2; par. Matt. 15:32), of the healing of a boy with an evil spirit (Mark 9:22), and of the healing of two blind men at Jericho (Matt. 20:34).
The noun chrēstotēs meaning “kindness” or “goodness,” having been used as the normal Septuagint translation for the Hebrew was utilized by Paul; he coupled it with “forbearance and patience” (Rom. 2:4, RSV), with the “severity” (apotomia)of God (Rom. 11:22), with the grace of God (Eph. 2:7), and with the “lovingkindness” (philanthropia) God (Tit. 3:4).
C. THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION#
The biblical terms for divine mercy or compassion convey the warmth and emotion of God’s very nature in the forgiving, healing, and restoring of human beings, especially sinful human beings.
For Karl Barth, God’s mercy was best understood as his sympathetic sharing of our human “distress.”
The mercy of God lies in His readiness to share in sympathy the distress of another, a readiness which springs from His inmost nature and stamps all His being and doing. It lies, therefore, in his will, springing from the depths of His nature and characterizing it, to take the initiative Himself for the removal of this distress …. In concrete the mercy of God means … His compassion at the sight of the suffering which man brings upon himself, His concern to remove it, His will to console man in this pain and to help him to overcome it.
IV. THE GRACE OF GOD#
A. OLD TESTAMENT#
The Hebrew noun ḥēn, meaning “grace” or “favor,” stood for the unmerited favor of a superior toward an inferior. The characteristic or prevailing usage of ḥēn in the Old Testament, however, was with respect to a person’s finding or obtaining favor with God or with another human being, and only rarely did it mean God’s bestowal of favor upon human beings (Ps. 84:1 lb).
The verb ḥānan, “to be gracious,” was used in reference to God about 13 times in the Old Testament (Gen. 33:5c, 1 lb; 43:29c; Exod. 33:19c; Num. 6:25; 2 Sam. 12:22; 2 Kings 13:23a; Amos 5:13b; Isa. 30:18a, 19b; 33:2a; Ps. 77:9a; Mal. l:9a).
The adjective ḥannûn, meaning “gracious,” was used 11 times to refer to God, and always it was coupled with the adjective “compassionate” or its cognate (Exod. 34:6b; Joel 2:13b; Jon. 4:2c; Ps. 86:15a; 103:8a; 111:4b; 116:5; 145:8a; 2 Chr. 30:9b; and Neh. 9:17c, 31b).
B. NEW TESTAMENT#
1. Synoptic Gospels
Luke knows only the Old Testament sense of “favor” (1:30; 2:40, 52).
2. Pauline Epistles
The noun charis, translated “grace,” is principally, though not exclusively, a Pauline term. Its most central meaning seems to have been unmerited favor. This grace is the grace of God and of Jesus Christ (2 Thess. 1: 12) that “has appeared for the salvation of all men” (Tit. 2: 11, RSV).
Even the promise to Abraham rested “on grace” (Rom. 4:16). Human beings are justified by grace (Rom. 3:24; Tit. 3:7); they are saved by grace, not by works of which they can boast (Eph. 2:8). There is “a remnant, chosen by grace” (Rom. 11:5). Through Jesus Christ human beings have “access to this grace” (Rom. 5:2).
It is “glorious grace” (Eph. 1 :6), grace that extends to more and more people (2 Cor. 4:15), surpassing grace (2 Cor. 9: 14), and grace describable in terms of “riches” (Eph. 1 :8). The grace of the preexistent Christ was demonstrated in his becoming poor (2 Cor. 8:9) and is the supreme motive for Christian giving.
Through grace human beings are given” eternal comfort and good hope” (2 Thess. 2:16), and such grace abounds more than does sin and reigns to “eternal life” (Rom. 5:20-21). Paul frequently attributed his apostolic ministry to the grace of God (Gal. 1:15; 2:9; 1 Cor. 15:10; Rom. 15:15; Eph. 3:2, 7;Acts 20:24). God’s grace was sufficient amid Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7, 9, KJV, JB).
3. Acts of the Apostles
In Acts, there are various allusions to the grace of God (13:43, 14:26) and to the grace of Christ (15:11, 40).
4. Gospel of John
Grace is both the characteristic (1:14) and the gift (1:16-17) of the Word that “became flesh”.
5. Epistle to the Hebrews
It was by God’s grace that Jesus died for every human being (2:9). Hence believers should come boldly in prayer to “the throne of grace” to “find grace to help in time of need” (4:16, KJV, RSV). No one should fail to obtain the grace of God (12:15), and deliberate sinning leads to outraging “the Spirit of grace” (10:29).
6. Epistles of Peter
The coming of grace was prophesied (1 Pet. 1:10). Christians are to be “good stewards of God’s varied grace” respecting gifts (4:10, RSV), for indeed this grace has been given “to the humble,” not “to the proud” (5:5). The “God of all grace” will restore believers after their persecution (5: 10), for their hope is set “upon the grace that is coming… at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:13). Christians should “grow in the grace and knowledge” of Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 3:18).
From the preceding explication of the concept of grace in the New Testament it should be clear that grace, like righteousness and like love, is presented both as an attribute of God and as the gift of God to human beings.
C. HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE#
The doctrine of grace has been a major issue in certain noteworthy theological controversies during the postbiblical history of Christianity. In such controversies, it has been grace as gift more than grace as attribute that has been at issue, though obviously there have been implications in such controversies concerning grace as attribute.
1. Augustine of Hippo versus Pelagius and the Pelagians (Fift Century)
Augustine taught that the grace of God is absolutely necessary for sinful human beings both for the forgiveness of their sins and for their enablement to salvation. Under pressure of controversy he insisted that divine grace is irresistible. Augustine’s doctrine of God’s grace is closely related to other doctrines taught by Augustine: divine sovereignty, the predestination of the elect, original sin, the loss of human libertas (freedom), though not of the liberum arbitrium (free will), and the gift of perseverance.
Pelagius (c.354-?), Caelestius (?-430s?), and Julian of Eclanum (c.386-454) gave a diversified or unfocused interpretation to grace. It was identified as human free will, as the natural law, as the law of Moses, and as the teachings of Jesus. Grace was reckoned as supplemental to human freedom and ability. The Pelagian view was condemned by the Council of Carthage (418) and by the Second Council of Orange (529).
Reaching beyond the controversy with the Pelagians, Albert Cook Outler (1908-89) summarized Augustine’s entire doctrine of grace as follows:
The central theme in all Augustine’s writings is the sovereign God of grace and the sovereign grace of God. Grace, for Augustine, is God’s freedom to act without any external necessity whatsoever to act in love beyond human understanding or control; to act in creation, judgment, and redemption; to give his Son freely as Mediator and Redeemer; to endue the Church with the indwelling power and guidance of the Holy Spirit; to shape the destinies of all creation and the ends of the two human societies, the ‘city of earth’ and the ‘city of God.’ Grace is God’s unmerited love and favor, prevenient and occurrent. It touches man’s inmost heart and will. It guides and impels the pilgrimage of those called to be faithful. It draws and raises the soul to repentance, faith, and praise. It transforms the human will so that it is capable of doing good. It relieves man’s religious anxiety by forgiveness and the gift of hope. It establishes the ground of humility by abolishing the ground of human pride. God’s grace became incarnate in Jesus Christ, and it remains immanent in the Holy Spirit in the Church.
Western medieval Catholicism tended to distort the meaning of grace by interpreting it as a quasi-substantial and supernatural reality, a thing to be obtained by means of the sacraments and also by merits gained through good works.
2. High Calvinists of the Synod of Dort versus Arminians or Remonstrants (Early Seventeenth Century)
The High Calvinists taught predestination as the eternal divine predetermination of the elect humans and the non-elect humans apart from any prescience of the human responses; particular atonement, or the doctrine that Christ’s death intended to and actually did provide atonement only for the sins of the elect; the irresistibility of grace; faith and repentance as the gifts of God; and the gift of perseverance to the elect only.
On the contrary, the Arminians taught election as God’s prescience of which human beings would repent and believe and hence the divine choice of them; general atonement, or the doctrine that Christ’s death intended to and does make available atonement for the sins of all humankind; the resistibility of grace; faith as a human response to the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit; and the possibility of lapse from the grace of God by true believers.
The Calvinist-Arminian controversy was not decisively settled during the seventeenth century but produced differing theological traditions that have survived to the present.
3. Jansenists versus Jesuits (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries)
Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), together with associates, taught in the Roman Catholic Church a new Augustinianism that was similar to the position of the High Calvinists but different from the then prevailing teaching in his own church. The Jesuits resisted J ansenism, especially its doctrines of predestination and perseverance, magnified human faith and works, and prevailed over the J ansenists, although some Jansenist teachings have been upheld by the Dominicans.
Not as an extension or a renewal of these controversies, although his sympathies with Augustine and the High Calvinists would likely not be disputed, Karl Barth magnified the doctrine of the grace of God, particularly in respect to the divine condescension.
Grace is the distinctive mode of God’s being in so far as it seeks and creates fellowship by its own free inclination and favour, unconditioned by any merit or claim in the beloved, but also unhindered by any unworthiness or opposition in the latterable, on the contrary, to overcome all unworthiness and opposition… But grace means a turning, not in equality, but in condescension. The fact that God is gracious means that He condescends, He, the only One who is really in a position to condescend, because He alone is truly transcendent, and stands on an equality with nothing outside Himself. His inmost being in grace is that He wills not to remain in this position… His condescension is free, i. e., conditioned only by His own will… It is thus a gift in this strictest sense of the term.
V. THE PASSIBILITY OF GOD#
By “passibility” is meant the ability or capacity of God to suffer or to experience pain or sorrow. If there is such a thing as the passion or suffering of God, then obviously God has the ability or capacity to suffer. The crucial question, therefore, is: Does God suffer?
For many centuries orthodox Christian theology has asserted the impassibility of God. The inability of God to suffer was a Hellenistic idea that first penetrated Christian thought during the patristic age, during which time various Church Fathers embraced and defended it. It was repeated and widely accepted as being essential to the transcendence of God. The suffering of Jesus, especially in the crucifixion, was resetved for his human nature, and conversely it was denied that he suffered in his divine nature. Impassibility has its advocates today.
During the twentieth century various Christian thinkers have critically reassessed impassibility and insisted that God has suffered or does suffer.
Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy (1883-1929), a British army chaplain, and Bertrand Rippington Brasnett (1893-?), an Episcopal theologian in Scotland, posed the question after World War I
Kazoh Kitamori ( 1916-), a Japanese Christian theologian who perhaps was influenced by the Buddhist concept of Dukka (suffering), explicated the pain of God after World War II.
The passion of God has become a significant theme in Protestant theology. But does passibility have any basis in the Bible? Kitamori cited Jer. 31:20c (NIV), “Therefore my heart yearns for him [Ephraim]; I have great compassion for him,” and 1 Pet. 2:24c, “By his wounds you have been healed.” But is not Christ’s suffering the focus of the latter text?
At least two questions about the passion of God need to be raised.
First, can the passion of God the Father be postulated and defended apart from and in addition to the suffering of Jesus Christ as the Son of God? To establish the passion of God, one must do more than assert that Jesus suffered on the cross.
Second, can a modern Christian doctrine of God’s suffering escape the pitfall of second-century Patripassianism, also called Modalism, which said that God the Father suffered and died on the cross? Can modern exponents of God’s passion avoid saying or implying that the Father was crucified? To say with Paul that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor. 5:19, NASV) does not mean that God the Father was Christ or that Christ was God the Father.
Despite the attendant problems and questions, it seems to be necessary to affirm that God has the capacity to suffer, for he has participated in suffering.
SUMMARY#
Patience or forbearance is the persistence of God’s love. Faithfulness is the reliability of God’s love. Mercy-kindness is the deep compassion of God’s love. Grace is the free and undeserved condescension of God’s love. Suffering is the assumed and endured pain of God’s love.