We must ask whether God can be rightly described as a “Person” and in what sense God can be said to “be present” and then address the question of the attributes or qualities that belong to God as God.
I. GOD AS PERSONAL#
A. IS IT BIBLICAL? NOT A BIBLICAL TERM, BUT A BIBLICAL IDEA#
1. The Language of the Bible
The terms “person” and “personal” do not appear in the Old and the New Testaments, as a brief perusal of a biblical concordance verify. The Bible does speak of"the living God.’’ Many modem Christian thinkers, however, are persuaded that these terms in modem use signify something quite basic to the biblical understanding of God, namely, that God, who is distinguishable from man, nature, and the universe, is to be understood under the analogy of the selfhood of human beings.
The problem is similar to that connected with the term homoousios during the fourth century A D., when opponents of the Nicene position contended that homoousios was not a biblical term and hence need not be subscribed to by fourth-century Christians and the Nicene defenders in turn replied by arguing for its consonance with and representation of biblical truth about the relationship of the Son of God to God the Father.
2. The Nature of the Predication
John Macquarrie has insisted that
this adjective “personal” is predicated of God symbolically, not literally …. We can certainly assert that God is not less than per- sonal, and that the dynamic diversity-in-unity of personal life affords our best symbol of the mystery of God. But it cannot exhaustively comprehend this mystery.
According to John Kenneth Mozley, “one of the real drawbacks to speaking of God as a Person” is that it “suggests that God belongs to a class though doubtless in that class He is the greatest.” “It would be far better to say that God is the Person.”
3. The Apologetic Challenge
The use of the terms “Person” and “personal” in reference to God has been made very desirable, if not necessary, by Christian apologetical considerations during the modern era. Specifically, the denial of the personal aspects of God by idealistic pantheism and by process philosophy and the prevalence of these philosophies have caused Christians increasingly to employ and rely upon the terms “Person” and “personal”.
4. Old Testament Evidence That God is Personal
A C. Knudson identified and proposed three major evidences from the Old Testament that the God of Israel was understood to be, in modem terms, personal.
One of these is the covenant name for God, Yahweh, which conveys the qualities of personal being.
Another is Yahweh’s free and sovereign relationship to both nature and history. Israel’s faith was unlike the fertility cult and season-oriented religion of the Canaanites and unlike the cyclical view of history common among the Greeks. Yahweh was Lord of nature and of history.
A third evidence from the Old Testament of a personal God is the repeated and deliberate use of anthropomorphism, or the representation of God under the form of the human.
Adrio Konig (1936-) in a rather intensive study of biblical anthropomorphisms has classified these under three subcategories.
First, there are physical anthropomorphisms. Reference is made to the face of God, the eyes of God, the ears of God, the mouth of God, the nose of God, the lips and tongue of God, the arms of God, the hands of God, the feet of God, the heart of God, and the voice of God.
Second, there are psychological anthropomorphisms. God is said to love, to repent, to have no pleasure in, to laugh, to be glad or to rejoice, to be jealous, to be angry orwrathful, to hate, to be merciful, and to have compassion.
Third, there are actional anthropomorphisms. According to the Old Testament, God sees, hears, speaks, whistles, rests and is refreshed, descends, smells, walks or strolls, and sits on his throne.
Both inside and outside biblical thought there have been objections to anthropomorphisms.
Xenophon (c. 430 B.C. after 355 B.C.) objected to these as applied to the gods and goddesses of Greece.
Philo had difficulty with the Old Testament usage of anthropomorphisms.
Certain Church Fathers objected to anthropomorphisms on the basis that they violate the changelessness of God.
5. New Testament Evidence That God is Personal
At least three types of evidence may be cited.
First, the teaching of Jesus concerning God was filled with personal or analogical names for God; for example, “Father,” “Shepherd,” and “Lord.”
Second, Jesus’ own personal communion with God the Father and his praying to the Father were such as to indicate a personal God. Surely this is true of his High Priestly Prayer (John 17), and it may also be seen in his teaching of the Model Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4).
Third, the apostolic experience with God is highly suggestive of the modern terms “Person” and “personal.” Note especially Peter’s sermonic reference to ‘“the God of Abraham and oflsaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers’” (Acts 3: 13a, RSV), Paul’s description in Athens of the Creator who gives life as personal (Acts 17:24-25), Paul’s declaration about “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6), and the Petrine allusion to the love for and joyful trust in the ascended, invisible Christ (l Pet. 1:8).
B. GOD AS PERSONAL: THE APOLOGETIC TASK#
We have already made reference to the impact of idealistic pantheism and process philosophy on the Christian usage of terms such as “Person” and “personal” concerning God, making such usage highly desirable, if not necessary. The nature of the Christian interaction with these movements needs to be clarified.
1. Idealistic Pantheism: Spinoza, Schelling, and Hegel
a. Baruch Spinoza
An excommunicated Jew and a philosopher, Spinoza taught that God is
a being absolutely infinite, that is, substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality… God is the only substance, and substance is identified with God… God is the immanent cause of the universe but not its creator… Moreover, there is no real metaphysical distinction between God and the universe.
b. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854)
A professor of philosophy at various German universities and one who was under the influence of the philosophy of J. G. Fichte, Schelling “made no absolute separation between the subject and the object, between the ego and the non-ego.” Both subject and object are combined in the Absolute. There “is no reality in individual Beings,” for “they are merely modes of the Absolute.”
c. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Also a professor of philosophy at various German universities, Hegel developed the concept of the Absolute.
The Absolute is not the thing-in-itself; it is not a transcendent force, nor is it a subjective ego. The Absolute is the world process itself, … characterized … by activity. The Absolute represents a process which … reaches a complete expression in the Hegelian philosophy.
This is not the God of theism.
The Absolute does not stand beyond human history, nor does the Absolute change the laws of history.
Hegel served as the bridge between the earlier German idealism and the later Anglo-American process philosophy.
2. Process Philosophy: Whitehead and hartshorne
a. Alfred North Whitehead
A British-born mathematician and Harvard University professor of philosophy, Whitehead was the father of modern process philosophy. He rejected the Hebrew-Christian doctrine of divine creation in favor of the Greek idea of process. This process is continuing, and the process itself is reality. Man as cocreator partakes of divinity and thereby attains to a general immortality.
Whitehead feared anthropomorphism but attributed to God awareness, the capacities to relate, to communicate, and to influence and to be influenced, freedom of choice within consistency, and intention or purpose.
b. Charles Hartshorne
Professor of philosophy at the University of Texas in Austin, Hartshorne developed the term “bipolar” to describe the concepts of God as being and becoming, with emphasis on the latter.
In a critical evaluation of process philosophy Eric C. Rust has concluded that Whitehead’s system is “a veiled pantheism of the Spinozoistic variety” and that Hartshorne, seeking to avoid both classical theism and classical pantheism, has come ultimately to “panentheism.”
The modem Christian affirmation that God is “personal” is at least partly designed to be an apologetic response to the pantheistic tendencies in modem Western philosophy.
C. GOD AS PERSONAL: ESSENTIAL TO THE PERSONHOOD OF HUMAN BEINGS#
At least from the time of John Calvin, if not from an earlier time, Christian thinkers have seen man’s selfhood as derivative of, dependent on, and coordinate with God’s personhood. On the other hand, it is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he have previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.
Francis A Schaeffer addressed this issue in the latter twentieth century setting and with a more apologetic purpose:
Either there is a personal beginning to every thing or one has what the impersonal throws up by chance out of the time sequence. The fact that the second alternative may be veiled by connotation words makes no difference. The words used by Eastern pantheism; the new theological words such as Tillich’s “Ground of Being”; the secular shift from mass to energy or motion, all eventually come back to the impersonal, plus time, plus chance. If this is really the only answer to man’s personality, then personality is no more than an illusion, a kind of sick joke which no amount of semantic juggling will alter. Only some form of mystical jump will allow us to accept that personality comes from impersonality.
Millard Erickson has delineated some of the consequences for modern Christians of the personhood of God. The Christian’s relationship with God “has a dimension of warmth and understanding,” for “God is not a bureau or a department; he is not a machine or a computer that automatically supplies the needs of people.”
Moreover, this relationship is reciprocal. “God is to be treated as a being, not an object or force,” and hence God “is not something to be used or manipulated.” Finally, “God is an end in himself, not a means to an end,” and thus he “is of value to us for what he is in himself, not merely for what he does”.
D. GOD AS PERSONAL: DISTINCT FROM THE “PERSONS” OF THE TRINITY#
All affirmations that God is personal, which seem to be necessary to distinguish the Christian understanding of God from the pantheistic and process philosophies, must carefully and even painstakingly differentiated from the historic usage of the term “Person” (Latin, persona; Greek, hypostasis) as a Trinitarian word used to demarcate the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The latter term can be traced to its secular use as a Latin word, whereby it could mean the mask or the face which an actor wore in a drama. Seemingly, as originally applied in the third century A.D. to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the term did not mean, as the modern word “person” often means, a fully individuated being.
In reference to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, “Person” means the essential differentiation within the Godhead. In reference to the Christian doctrine of God vis-a-vis modern philosophies, “Person” and “personal” refer to the being of God as somewhat analogous to human beings as they are individually differentiable from other beings and from nature and from history. These two differing usages must be clearly and continually kept in mind.
II. GOD AS PRESENT#
Ought we to speak of the “omnipresence” of God or of the “presence” of God? The former term is derived from the Latin omnipraesentia which was used by the medieval Schoolmen.
Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), retaining the term “omnipresence,” sought the Augustinian balance between transcendence and immanence.
Emil Brunner was rather critical of the centuries-long impact of the Scholastic doctrine of omnipresence, for he saw it as very susceptible to pantheism, but he still retained the use of the term. Karl Barth also retained the term but defined it so as to avoid some of the dangers of past usage.
Erickson has treated the presence of God as subsidiary to the discussion of transcendence and immanence, and he has insisted that transcendence and immanence “should not be regarded as attributes of God,” for “they cut across the various attributes.”
A. THE BIBLICAL CONCEPT OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD#
The biblical teaching concerning the presence of God involves different aspects or degrees of the presence of God.
1. The Extensive or General Presence of God
God’s presence is sometimes described extensively in the sense that no human creature can escape the divine presence or in the sense that there is no divine absence. Expressive of this usage are the words of Ps. 139:7-10 (RSV).
The psalmist is not engaging in speculative omnipresence. Rather he is faced with his inability to commit sins and wrongs outside the presence of God. There is indeed no place where God is completely absent. Human beings, even in their desperation, can never ultimately flee from the presence of God.
2. The Intensive or Special Presence of God
God’s presence is sometimes held to be such an intimate or special presence that it can be differentiated from the general presence of God. One thinks of the divine promise to Jacob at Bethel: “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you” (Gen. 28:15, RSV).
As used in the Bible, nearness and distance can have nonspatial meanings. God’s distance and presence can be in hiddenness and in revelation, in wrath or in grace.
Three meanings of the special presence can be identified.
a. The presence of God is essential to the full revelatory and redemptive work of God in history. Specifically this means the incarnation of the Word or Son of God: “and his name shall be called Emmanuel (which means, God with us)” (Matt. 1 :23b, RSV), and “the Word became flesh and dwelt [or, tabernacled] among us” (John 1: 14a). It also means the advent of the Holy Spirit: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1 :8a).
b. The presence of God means the removal of the distance wrought by sin (or the distance from God which is sin) and the restoration of nearness (through forgiveness of sin) and communion, for Gentiles as well as for Jews, through the new covenant (Acts 2:39; Eph. 2:13, 17).
c. The presence of God, for Christians, means the indwelling of or by the Holy Spirit. This can be in the physical bodies of individual Christians (1 Cor. 6: 19), and it can be in the Christian community as “the temple of God” (Eph. 2:20b-21; 1 Cor. 3:16).
3. The Unique, Full, and Particular Presence of God
This presence is to be found only in Jesus Christ the Son of God. “For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:19)
B. ALTERNATIVE NONBIBLICAL CONCEPTS#
Two alternative concepts of divine presence can be differentiated, but these are at the same time closely related.
1. The Philosophical Concept of Omnipresence
According to this view, God’s presence consists of a neutral and almost static presence of God everywhere in the spatial order. It seems to favor the spatial distribution of God. This concept is constantly in danger of losing the relative independence of the creatures and the created order and thus of falling into pantheism.
2. The Mystical Concept of Divine Presence through the “Divine Spark” in HUman Beings
Some forms of mysticism posit the existence of a “divine spark” within human beings. By turning to this spark within, humans can realize intuitively the nearness and presence of God. The divine presence, accordingly, is not dependent upon God’s taking the initiative to reveal himself and to act savingly in the larger arena of human history. Special or biblical revelation and redemption are made unnecessary by the thoroughgoing mystical answer.
III. THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD#
A preliminary or general study of divine attributes is needed prior to the explication of particular attributes.
A. THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD#
1. Some Definitions of Divine Attributes
Christian theologians who have discussed the attributes of God normally have offered some general definition of such attributes. Three samples of such definitions will suffice to provide a clearer understanding of the term.
AH. Strong defined the attributes of God as “those distinguishing characteristics of the divine nature which are inseparable from the idea of God and which constitute the basis and ground for his various manifestations to his creatures.”
Similarly, according to Millard Erickson, God’s attributes “are [“permanent”] objective characteristics of his nature” that are “inseparable from the being or essence of God” and belong to “the entire Godhead.”
W. T. Conner defined attributes as “those qualities or characteristics of the divine Being, by virtue of which he is distinguished from all created beings and without which he would not be worthy of the worship and service ofman.”
2. Some Hesitations about Divine Attributes
Some have expressed caution and have been hesitant about divine attributes despite such definitions as have been quoted.
- Are the attributes that are ascribed to God more the product of the mental projections of theologians than they are the proper formulations of the data of revelation?
One should, of course, always acknowledge the all-too-human factor in the identifying and describing of divine attributes. The fact that there is no list of universally accepted divine attributes is suggestive of this human factor. But, on the other hand, when theologians submit to the pattern of religious authority that Christians hold to be normative and carry out their theological work accordingly, ought not the results to be seen as much more than the projections of theologians?
- Do the formulating and use of divine attributes not tend to rob Christians of the sense of mystery of God that stands behind all revelation?
Eunomius of Cyzicus, a nominalist who held that “a name either designates the essence of a thing or … is merely an empty sound,” claimed: “I know God as God knows himself.” Responsible theologians today would not make such claims for our knowledge of God and would not reckon humanly stated attributes of God as fully identifiable with the very essence of God. A touch of realism and a dose of humility help to relieve this second hesitation about divine attributes.
B. THE SOURCES OF THE ATTRIBUTE OF GOD#
From what sources do Christian theologians obtain the terms or the concepts which they affirm to be characteristics of God?
First, the most extensively used source is the Bible, including both testaments. Quite a number of the attributes ascribed to God by Christian theologians are biblical words and may be found easily in a biblical concordance. Examples of such include holiness, wrath, righteousness, love, faithfulness, mercy, and grace.
Second, some attributes ascribed to God are expressed by terms that are traceable to Greek philosophy; for example, the impassibility of God, or his inability to suffer, was likely borrowed by the Church Fathers from the legacy of Greece. Moreover, recent objections to this particular attribute have been at least partly based on the argument that impassibility is a Greek, but not a biblical concept.
Third, some attributes are traceable to the medieval Schoolmen. Particularly is this true of the three “omni” attributes: omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.
Finally, some attributes may be traceable to modern worldviews such as theism; such may be true of infinity, immensity, and aseity.
C. PATTERNS OF CLASSIFICATION OF THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD#
Several different patterns have been adopted and followed in an effort to classify meaningfully the attributes of God.
1. Negative, Positive, and Causative Attributes
This somewhat classic scheme can be traced to Clement of Alexandria.
First, there are those negative statements that can be made about God, or more specifically, about what God is not. These attributes, as stated in English, usually have the negative prefix “in” or “im” and conclude with “able” or “ible.” Hence God is said to be immutable, incomprehensible, invisible, impassible, etc. The Greek Orthodox have called this “apophatic theology,” based on the Greek word for “denial.”
Second, there are positive statements about God in which he is said to have certain attributes in a supreme or eminent way. Thus God is most holy, most wise, most loving, most compassionate, etc.
Third, there are statements about God’s contingent relations with the world; for example, God is eternal (respecting time) and immense (respecting space).
2. Incommunicable and Communicable Attributes
This pattern has been used especially by modern Reformed theologians.
Incommunicable attributes are those in which there is no divine sharing and no reflex in human beings
Communicable attributes are those in which there is divine sharing and a reflex in human beings
Herman Bavinck placed under the “incommunicable” independence, immutability, eternity, omnipresence, unity, and simplicity. Under the “communicable” he placed spirituality, invisibility, omniscience, wisdom, veracity, goodness, righteousness, holiness, will, omnipotence, perfection, blessedness, and glory.
3. Absolute and Relative Attributes
A. H. Strong advocated the twofold classification: the “absolute” or “immanent” attributes and the “relative” or “transitive” attributes.
The former are those “which respect the inner being of God, which are involved in God’s relation to Himself, and which belong to his nature independently of his connection with the universe.” Included were life, personality, self-existence, immutability, unity, truth, love, and holiness.
The latter are those “which respect the outward revelation of God’s being, which are involved in God’s relation to the creation, and which are exercised in consequence of the existence of the universe and dependence upon him.” Strong cited eternity, immensity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, veracity and faithfulness, mercy and goodness, and justice and righteousness.
While attempting to subsume holiness under this twofold pattern, Strong was so insistent that “holiness is the fundamental attribute in God” that holiness became de facto a third type of attribute.
4. Natural and Moral Attributes
E. Y. Mullins differentiated “natural” attributes, or those “pertaining to God’s nature,” and “moral” attributes, or those “pertaining to his moral character and relations.”
Under the former he placed self-existence, immutability, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, eternity, and immensity.
Under the latter he included holiness, righteousness, love, and truth.
Millard Erickson’s use of the two categories, the “greatness” and the “goodness” of God, is quite similar to Mullins’s classification.
5. Attributes of Mystery, Overwhlmingness, Dynamism, and Holiness
John Macquarrie has employed a fourfold system of classifying the attributes.
The attributes of “mystery” include God’s being incomparable, incomprehensible, suprarational, and personal.
Under “overwhelmingness” he placed immensity, infinity, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.
Faithfulness or immutability, selfhood, perfectiongoodness were grouped under “dynamism”
Wrath, righteousness, justice, grace, love, and mercy under “holiness.”
According to Macquarrie, God is “holy Being,” yet love “has a supreme place.”
6. Bipolar Attachment to Leading Attributes
Some theologians have chosen to gather the various divine attributes in clusters around those attributes that are thought to be primary. Usually the primary attributes have been two in number.
Emil Brunner chose her liness and love as the primary attributes for an informal clustering. 66 Karl Barth treated three pairs of attributes under the “perfections of the divine loving” and three pairs of attributes under the “perfections of the divine freedom.” Martin Luther and John Dillenberger (1918-2008) made “God hidden” and “God revealed” the stackpoles for other attributes.
Somewhat different was Hendrikus Berkhof s pairing of an attribute of transcendence with an attribute of condescension ad seriatum.
7. Rejection of Classifications in Favor of Stress on One Central Attribute
The Swedish Lundensian theologians elevated agape to the status of central and controlling divine attribute, as the writings of Anders Nygren, Gustav E. H. Aulen, and the American Nels F. S. Ferré make clear. Peter Taylor Forsyth tended to regard holiness as the central attribute.
D. CORRELATION OF THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD#
An awareness of the various patterns for classifying the attributes of God and some knowledge of the history of the treatment of divine attributes can lead to the recognition of the need for proper correlation of the attributes. Such correlation or the lack thereof can have a profound effect upon the rest of one’s theology. Two dangers as to correlation are worthy of brief comment.
First, one should avoid that antithetical juxtaposing of divine attributes which suggests that there is a conflict or internal warfare going on inside the being of God. Marcion (?-c. 160) posited such an antithesis between justice and love and came ultimately to believe in two gods.
Second, one should avoid emphasizing one attribute or group of attributes so as to downplay, minimize, or deny another attribute or group of attributes. Late medieval popular theology, if not the writings of the best theologians, so totally identified the justitia Dei with punishment that it could not be connected with salvation. Ferre’s absolutizing of agape seemingly led him to embrace eschatological universalism.
Every attribute may not deserve the same emphasis as every other, but a responsible correlation of divine attributes is a mark of good Christian theology.