Incommunicable Attributes Pt 1

The Purpose in this study is to heighten and strengthen our communion with God and comfortable dependance on Him.

Several reminders and principles to our study of God

We are finite creatures

a. We are finite creatures speaking about the infinite God( can’t comprehend )

“Before we proceed to consider the divine perfections… let it be premised, 1. That it is impossible for anyone to give a perfect description of God, since he is incomprehensible; therefore no words can fully express, or fully set forth his perfections…. 2. Though God cannot be perfectly described, yet there is something of him that we may know, and ought to make the matter of our study and diligent inquiries….When we thus order our thoughts concerning the great God, though we are far from comprehending his infinite perfections, yet our conceptions are not to be concluded erroneous, when directed by his word; which leads us to consider how we may conceive aright of the divine perfections.” -Thomas Ridgley

b. God has accommodated himself to our capacity in the Scriptures. And they are sufficient:

“The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith and obedience,” ~2LCF 1:1

c. It is a revealed practice. Nobody rips God down to examine him. He must reveal, we must pray that he reveal himself to us.

It is practical and theoretical ( we want to live godly lives and we want to do it according to God’s Word)

Tozer says, “What you think about God is the most important thing about you” .....Geisler “Our concept of God will have a marked affect on our lives.”

Tozer again,

“The essence of idolatry is the entertaining thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.”

Psalm 50:21 ““These things you have done and I kept silent; You thought that I was just like you; I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes.”

They thought that God would not take account of sin just like themselves.

This seems like quite an extreme case but where do we see this in the church today?

3. This is a praiseworthy, doxological endeavor. We should be left in adoration often-especially considering these first attributes.

Ps 145:3 “ Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;

And His greatness is unsearchable.”

Incommunicable Attributes

What are they?

Attributes that don’t carry any similitude to creatures. There is no analogy between infiniteness and finiteness.

I. The Oneness/Simplicity/Spirituality and Incomparability of “Our” God

We start by acknowledging that God is “our” God, He is “your” God. We are not taking up a study of some abstract being with whom we have nothing to do with. We are discussing our Savior God. And desire to know rightly more about Him.

How we approach this topic is various. As many Systematic Theologies have been written, that’s how many different approaches there are. I have chosen what I believe one that somewhat shows the logic of how all of these attributes overlap and penetrate each other.

Oneness. ‘The One, True, and Living God.’

We classify things according to genus and species. A dog, for example, falls under the genus category of animal, and it’s species would be canine.

With God, however, there is no genus or species titled “Godness” by which we might classify Him. He alone is God and there is no other. To say that He exists in a category His own doesn’t quite say enough as He is even beyond categorical limitations. He doesn’t even belong to all that exists. His existence is of another sort from all that exists. There is a quidditative distinction between God and all that exists. That is, a distinction in how we talk about the essence or existence of something. We need to take the Bibles lead on this and hold on tightly to it, as anything other than this radical otherness of God is idolatry. Which is why so many times in Scripture God’s Oneness is in the context of idolatry.

Scripture proofs

God Alone is God.

Is 43:10-12 “You are My witnesses,” says the Lord,

“And My servant whom I have chosen,

That you may know and believe Me,

And understand that I am He.

Before Me there was no God formed,

Nor shall there be after Me.

11 I, even I, am the Lord,

And besides Me there is no savior.

12 I have declared and saved,

I have proclaimed,

And there was no foreign god among you;

Therefore you are My witnesses,”

Says the Lord, “that I am God.

God is One and He alone is God.

Earliest Creed called the “Shema”

Deuteronomy 6:4 ““Hear, O Israel! Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!”

Excursus on Creeds: To depart from this is to depart from the Christian religion. This is why they cited it daily as a reminder to keep them from falling into the idolatry of their polytheistic neighbors. Creedal citation both individual and corporate is an important thing. It reminds us of what is fundamental to our faith.

There is a distortion in much thinking today that says that all creedal recitation, or recitation of the Lords prayer inevitably becomes rote and cold formalism. This is a great error that needs to be avoided. Confession is always to be joined to the heart. God’s chastisement against his people wasn’t always about the form with which they worshiped him it was more often a problem with the heart.

Romans 10:9 “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;”

b. 1 Corinthians 8:5,6 “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.”

Emphasis on the Unity of His being

Psalm 89:35 “Once I have sworn by My holiness;

I will not lie to David:”

Listen to George Swinnock commenting on this verse:

“When God swears by His holiness, He swears by Himself. The power of God is the powerful God. The truth of God is the true God. The wisdom of God is the wise God. All His attributes are His essence. In humans and angels, wisdom, power, and justice are properties. These properties differ from their substances.

…….. But in God, His attributes are His very essence. They are Him; therefore, they can no more be separated from Him than He can be separated from Himself. God could not be God if He were not most wise, most holy, most just, and so on. God's attributes make up[are His] one pure essence which is made manifest to us in many ways. God's punishment of the wicked is His justice. God's performance of His promises is His faithfulness. God's salvation of the miserable is His mercy. God's forbearance of the guilty is His patience. All of these are His essence—Himself.”

Notice the language of manifest. We are unable to grasp God’s ontological Oneness(How can they all be one and identical in Him?) , but God has given us many ways by which we might come to know something truly about himself.

Listen to Swinnock again on God’s Oneness:

Third, these attributes are all one in God. For example, His justice is His mercy, His wisdom is His patience, and His knowledge is His faithfulness. These attributes are distinguished in regard to their objects and effects, but they are all one in Him. They are His essence, and His essence is a pure undivided being. In humans and angels,……….Our righteousness is one thing, our power a second thing, and our patience a third thing……But in God, they are all one and the same. When sunbeams shine through a yellow glass, they are yellow; when through a green glass, they are green; when through a red glass, they are red; yet all the while the sunbeams are the same. When the sun shines on clay, it hardens it; on wax, it softens it; on flowers, it draws out fragrant smells; on ditches, it draws out repugnant odors; yet it is the same sun. The difference lies in the objects and effects.”

Simplicity

Swinnocks comments have essentially moved us over into Gods simplicity. Because God is One singular Divine esssence, He is not made up of parts. The attributes don’t add up to make God God. He is His attributes. He is His existence Exodus 3:14 “And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God just is. His essence and His existence are identical. God exists necessarily. We don’t have a category for this kind of existence. This is awe inspiring. But when we come to this reality this radical otherness of God, we don’t turn into skeptics, rather we are left in wonder and awe that this One is known by us and knows us. He has made himself known to us. He has bound himself to us as our covenant LORD.

Additional note: To be made up of parts would mean that the parts would have to preexist God! This is not the case. As we learned from Swinnock, everything in God is God. There is nothing in him that is not identical with His essence.

Spirituality

If God is One and Simple he must be Spiritual.

John 4:24 ““God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.””

Ps 139:7-12

7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?

Or where can I flee from Your presence?

8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;

If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning,

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,

And Your right hand shall hold me.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”

Even the night shall be light about me;

12 Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,

But the night shines as the day;

The darkness and the light are both alike to You.

Our worship is according to the nature of who God is. Considering this truth, all hypocritical worship is unthinkable. He doesn’t dwell in temples made by hands. Think about the OT. It was never about the ceremonies. They were important insofar as they pointed beyond themselves. But God wanted their hearts. Same with our worship today. Is the content true, is it according to Scripture? It must be true. But where is our heart when we worship? God is looking for sincere worshippers.

He is incomparably One

Exodus 15:11 ““Who is like You among the gods, O Yahweh? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, Fearsome in praises, working wonders?” Sammons “No one and no thing is like the LORD God”

Isaiah 40:18 “To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him?”

The context here is idolatry. To try to compare God to anything or anyone is idolatry.

Use 1.

We avoid idolatry. As Tozer has mentioned. Calvin in his institutes says similar. We need to think of God rightly or we will have some random thought of God flitting about in our brains.

Use 2.

We find repose in the midst of a world full of all sorts of idols, distractions, turmoil. Our God is One LORD. He has no rival. No equal. No one to compare to.

And the glory and majesty of the One God heightens as it’s filled out in the NT. We’ll close by considering the development of Trinitarian Monotheism in the NT and early church.

The importance of Unity of essence in God

Deut 6:4  “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!

Here is the tension. How do we account for Jesus? If God is one and Jesus is God and the Father is God, how do we keep “Jewish Monotheism” in tact? It’s not really Jewish Monotheism though, it’s the Christian Bible and the Christians God.

Answer: the unity remains, while distinct relations and peculiar properties are what distinguish them. So we can say about Deut 6:4 that it is true of the Son and True of the Father and true of the Spirit.

1 Cor 8:6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.

Do you see Paul’s use of the God/LORD construct of Deut 6:4 ?

Yet the Father and Son and Spirit are distinguished.

Eph 4:3-6  “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

Same thing here. According to the NT, there is no violence brought upon God’s unity when considering the doctrine of the Trinity.

Nicene Creed 381

We believe in one God,

the Father almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

begotten from the Father before all ages,

God from God,

Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made;

of the same essence as the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven;

he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,

and was made human.

He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered and was buried.

The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.

He ascended to heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again with glory

to judge the living and the dead.

His kingdom will never end.

And we believe in the Holy Spirit,

the Lord, the giver of life.

He proceeds from the Father and the Son,

and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.

He spoke through the prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.

We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look forward to the resurrection of the dead,

and to life in the world to come. Amen.

Our creation, our salvation,, the creating and sustaining of the church is Trinitarian from beginning to end.