Incommunicable Traits
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What is an Incommunicable Trait?
What is an Incommunicable Trait?
Attributes of God that is not shared (communicated) to others by us, compared to communicable traits (those God shares or communicates with us and are shared by us).
Incommunicable (Gods traits we do not share)
God’s eternity
Inability to Change (Immutable)
Omnipresence
Communicable (Traits of God that we share)
God’s love
Knowledge
Mercy
Just
HOWEVER, there is no attribute of God that is completely communicable OR incommunicable. We can never fully know the traits of God because we are not and cannot be like God. So when we look at these communicable traits, Grudem says it is best to say they are “more shared” by us, while the incommunicable traits are those “less shared” by us.
So, when we look at the definition, these are traits that God shares or does not share with us and we share or do not share with others. (We cannot share what we do not know).
Names of God
Names of God
In the Bible a person’s name is a description of his or her character. Likewise, the names of God in Scripture are various descriptions of his character. So, God’s “name” is equal to all the Bible and creation tells us about God.
God should be honored
hallowed be thy name
shall not take name of Lord your God in vain
no other god’s before you
There are also individual names of God give in scripture.
Abba - Father
Adonai - Lord
Alpha and Omega - beginning and end
Ancient of Days
El Roi - God who sees me
Elohim
El Elyon - God Most High
Jehovah
Jireh - provider
Rapha - healer
Nissi - banner
etc
All address the attributes of God, who He is, what He shows to us, and how He interacts with us. We also find descriptions that are familiar to us: lion, eagle, lamb, sun, morning star, light, fountain, rock, hiding place, tower, refuge, shield, temple.
He is known as the bridegroom, father, judge and king, man of war, shepherd, physician. He is knowing, remembering, seeing, hearing, rising, wiper of tears. He is joy, grief, anger, love, hatred, wrath, and the list continues on. In one sense or another all of creation reveals something about God to us and that the higher creation—especially human beings, who are made in God’s image—reveals him more fully.
The incommunicable attributes of God are perhaps the most easily misunderstood, probably because they represent aspects of God’s character that are least familiar to our experience.
God’s Independence
God’s Independence
God does not need us or the rest of creation for anything, yet we and the rest of creation can glorify him and bring him joy. This attribute of God is sometimes called his self-existence. We must understand God does not need creation in order to exist. We exist simply because He wanted us. God is absolutely independent and self-sufficient and needs nothing from us in return.
People have sometimes thought that God created human beings because he was lonely and needed fellowship with other persons. If this were true, it would mean that God is not completely independent of creation. Yet there are some specific indications in Jesus’ words that show this idea to be inaccurate. In John 17:5, Jesus prays, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” Then in John 17:24, Jesus speaks to the Father of “my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” There was love and communication between the Father and the Son before creation. The fact that God is three persons yet one God means that there was no loneliness or lack of personal fellowship on God’s part before creation.
With regard to God’s existence, this doctrine also reminds us that only God exists by virtue of his very nature and that he was never created and never came into being. He always was.
God’s independence is also seen in his self-designation in Exodus 3:14: “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’
God’s being is also something totally unique. It is not just that God does not need the creation for anything; God could not need the creation for anything. The difference between the creature and the Creator is immense, for God exists in a fundamentally different order of being.
The balancing consideration with respect to this doctrine is the fact that we and the rest of creation can glorify God and bring him joy. This must be stated in order to guard against any idea that God’s independence makes us meaningless. Someone might wonder, if God does not need us for anything, then are we important at all? Is there any significance to our existence or to the existence of the rest of creation? In response it must be said that we are in fact very meaningful because God has created us and has determined that we would be meaningful to him. He decided that he would create us to glorify him.
11 “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”
Unchangeable
Unchangeable
We can define the unchangeableness of God as follows: God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.
God existed before the heavens and earth were made, and he will exist long after they are permanently changed. God causes the universe to change, but in contrast to this change he is “the same.”
6 “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
The definition given above specifies that God is unchanging—not in every way that we might imagine, but only in ways that Scripture itself affirms.
Furthermore, God is unchanging in his purpose and promises.
11 The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.
All plans and purposes have been put into place and have existed for all eternity.
Once he has promised something, he will not be unfaithful to that promise.
Yet when we talk about God being unchanging in his purposes, we may wonder about places in Scripture where God said he would judge his people and then because of prayer or the people’s repentance (or both) God relented and did not bring judgment as he had said he would. Examples of such withdrawing from threatened judgment include the successful intervention of Moses in prayer to prevent the destruction of the people of Israel (Ex. 32:9–14), the adding of another fifteen years to the life of Hezekiah (Isa. 38:1–6), or the failure to bring promised judgment upon Nineveh when the people repented (Jonah 3:4, 10). Are these not cases where God’s purposes in fact did change? Then there are other passages where God is said to be sorry that he had carried out some previous action. One thinks of the time before the flood, where “the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen. 6:6), or the time when God told Samuel, “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me” (1 Sam. 15:11). Did not God’s purposes change in these cases?
These instances should all be understood as true expressions of God’s present attitude or intention with respect to the situation as it exists at that moment. If the situation changes, then of course God’s attitude or expression of intention will also change. This is just saying that God responds differently to different situations.
The example of Jonah preaching to Nineveh is helpful here. God sees the wickedness of Nineveh and sends Jonah to proclaim, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4). The possibility that God would withhold judgment if the people repented is not explicitly mentioned in Jonah’s proclamation as recorded in Scripture, but it is of course implicit in that warning: the purpose for proclaiming a warning is to bring about repentance. Once the people repented, the situation was different, and God responded differently to that changed situation: “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:10).
In the cases of God regretting that he had made man or that he had made Saul king, these should be understood to mean that (a) God felt sorrow when considering the sinful results that had come after his earlier actions, but this is still consistent with the idea that (b) God knew that these events that caused him grief would still fulfill his long-term purpose of showing his justice and holiness when he brought judgment on sinful behavior.
So, does God then change his mind? It depends on what we mean by that. When a situation changes (such as when people repent or pray or both) God often in Scripture changes his present attitude toward the specific situation. But God’s long-term purposes never change.
Impassibility
Impassible can mean, “immunity to suffering,” or “incapable of suffering harm.” God’s being cannot be changed or harmed by anything outside of himself.8 When God does feel grief or sorrow over the sinfulness of people he created, this sorrow does not surprise him, nor is it forced on him by external circumstances somehow outside his control, but it is his genuine response to events that he ordained would come to pass. In this sense, God is impassible.
Process theology denies unchangeability. Charles Hartshorne, the father of process theology, would say that God is continually adding to himself all the experiences that happen anywhere in the universe, and thus God is continually changing.9 The real appeal of process theology comes from the fact that all people have a deep longing to mean something, to feel significant in the universe. Process theologians dislike the doctrine of God’s immutability because they think it implies that nothing we do can really matter to God. If God is really unchangeable, process theologians will say, then nothing we do—in fact, nothing that happens in the universe—has any real effect on God because God can never change. So what difference do we make?
Advocates of process theology often mistakenly accuse evangelical Christians (or the biblical writers themselves) of believing in a God who does not act in the world or who cannot respond differently to different situations (errors we have discussed above). With regard to the idea that we must be able to influence the very being of God in order to be significant, we must respond that this is an incorrect assumption imported into the discussion, and that it is not consistent with Scripture. Scripture is clear that our ultimate significance comes not from being able to change the being of God, but from the fact that God has created us for his glory and that he counts us as significant.11 God alone gives the ultimate definition of what is significant and what is not significant in the universe, and if he counts us significant, then we are!
The discussion of process theology illustrates a common difference between biblical Christianity and all other systems of theology. In the teaching of the Bible, God is both infinite and personal. He is infinite in that he is not subject to any of the limitations of humanity or of creation in general. He is far greater than everything he has made, far greater than anything else that exists. But he is also personal. He interacts with us as a person, and we can relate to him as persons. We can pray to him, worship him, obey him, and love him, and he can speak to us, rejoice in us, and love us.
Apart from the true religion found in the Bible, no system of religion has a God who is both infinite and personal.
Eternity
Eternity
God’s eternity may be defined as follows: God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time, and he acts in time.
Remember Buzz Lightyear, “To infinity and beyond”??? How do you describe infinity??? How do you you beyond it?
To be infinite is to be unlimited, and this doctrine teaches that time does not limit God. God never learns new things or forgets things, for that would mean a change in his perfect knowledge. This implies also that the passing of time does not add to or detract from God’s knowledge. He knows all things past, present, and future and knows them all equally vividly.
God is timeless.
26 Behold, God is great, and we know him not; the number of his years is unsearchable.
God’s eternity is also suggested by passages that talk about the fact that God always is or always exists. Alpha & Omega
The fact that God never began to exist can also be concluded from the fact that God created all things, and that he himself is an immaterial spirit. Before God made the universe, there was no matter, but then he created all things (Gen. 1:1; John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2). The study of physics tells us that matter and time and space must all occur together: if there is no matter, there can be no space or time either. This would mean that, before God created the universe, there was no “time,” at least not in the sense of a succession of moments one after another. Therefore, when God created the universe, he also created time.
In the beginning simply points the beginning of the physical time of the world God created. When God began to create the universe, time began, and there began to be a succession of moments and events one after another.
Omnipresence
Omnipresence
Just as God is unlimited or infinite with respect to time, so God is unlimited with respect to space. This characteristic of God’s nature is called God’s omnipresence (the Latin prefix omni- means “all”). God’s omnipresence may be defined as follows: God does not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with his whole being, yet God acts differently in different places.
There are specific passages that speak of God’s presence in every part of space. We read in Jeremiah, “Am I a God at hand, declares the LORD, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the LORD” (Jer. 23:23–24). Here God is rebuking the prophets who think their words or thoughts are hidden from God. He is everywhere and fills heaven and earth.
There is nowhere in the entire universe, on land or sea, in heaven or in hell, where one can flee from God’s presence.
While it seems necessary for us to say that God’s whole being is present in every part of space or at every point in space, it is also necessary to say that God cannot be contained by any space, no matter how large. In fact, before God created the universe, there was no matter or material so there was no space either. Yet God still existed.
Unity
Unity
The unity of God may be defined as follows: God is not divided into parts, yet we see different attributes of God emphasized at different times. This attribute of God has also been called God’s simplicity, using simple in the less common sense of “not complex” or “not composed of parts.” But since the word simple today has the more common sense of “easy to understand” and “unintelligent or foolish,” it is more helpful now to speak of God’s “unity” rather than his “simplicity.”
When Scripture speaks about God’s attributes it never singles out one attribute of God as more important than all the rest. There is an assumption that every attribute is completely true of God and is true of all of God’s character.
In terms of practical application, this means that we should never think, for example, that God is a loving God at one point in history and a just or wrathful God at another point in history. He is the same God always, and everything he says or does is fully consistent with all his attributes.
Moreover, the doctrine of the unity of God should caution us against attempting to single out any one attribute of God as more important than all the others.
Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Second Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020. Print.