Let's turn then to Psalm 145. I'm going to read this psalm in an emphatic way, and I want you to listen to what I'm emphasizing. I think you'll get the feel of why I read this psalm as we lecture. I will extol Thee, my God, O King, and I will bless Thy name forever and ever. Every day will I bless thee, and I will praise thy name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. I will speak of the glorious honor of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works. And men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts, and I will declare thy greatness. They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness and shall sing of thy righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and of great mercy. The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works. All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord, and thy saints shall bless thee. They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom and talk of thy power to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. and so on. You don't find much more of a God-centered chapter in the Bible than that one. It's a beautiful thing that we can live in the shadow of such glory and rejoice in it, such God-centered glory. I had a couple once who came to me and said, will you perform our wedding from Psalm 145, verse 7? So I did. They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness and shall sing of thy righteousness. Not many couples come to you with a text like that. focused on the attributes of God. Let's pray together. Glorious and ever faithful God, we thank Thee so much for Thy tremendous attributes, Thy essential being, Thy worthy praise, And we ask, Lord, that our lives might also be filled with the kind of praise the psalmist here expresses. Oh, Lord, that from the bottom of our hearts we would praise Thee, Thy goodness, Thy mercy, Thy holiness, Thy sovereignty. And as we begin our study of Thy attributes this morning, We pray that that Spirit may move us and may lay hold of us and may impact us for good. That these attributes might not just be a list of things, but that they might be exquisitely dear to us. Oh, that we would love Thee, Lord, just as Thou art. that we would be able to say with Charles Spurgeon, when I came to experience God, I found that he was just as he revealed himself in the Bible. Lord, let thy biblical special revelation of thyself be our biblical special experience. Bless us in this hour. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, today we come to the fourth topic on your outline, the attributes of God. Actually, the longest topic by far of this course, because to talk about God and who he is, is to talk about his attributes. This morning's lecture really is an introduction to the attributes. And then God willing, next time we will begin a discussion of individual attributes. We'll begin with the incommunicable attributes. But the goal today is just to cover this introductory lesson on the attributes of God. And then we'll be spending several weeks looking at individual attributes. And as we do so, even this morning's lecture, bear in mind that much of this material, if you brought it down a couple notches in terms of language, is actually quite preachable. It would be very good to bring to your congregation a series of sermons on the attributes of God. It's a neglected subject today. but God's people should want to learn about God more than anything else in the world. So this is, I think, a very important subject. So first I want to say a few words about the terms, the language involved in expressing the idea of attributes. First of all, you have, of course, the most common term, which is called attributes. The word attribute, can be used of what we grant or bestow, in the sense that we attribute something to someone, to a quality or to a thing. But you shouldn't confuse that with the idea that we have in mind when we speak of the attributes of God. We do not bestow characteristics on God. In fact, from God's perspective, how we decide to describe him doesn't really impact who he is whatsoever, does it? We don't create God after our image or our imagination. but God reveals himself to us. So the idea of attribute is not the idea of assigning qualities to God. Rather, it involves ascribing to God What he reveals to us belongs to him. It involves ascribing to God what he reveals belongs to him. In this sense, we do ascribe attributes to God. That's the sense of Psalm 68, verse 34. Ascribe ye strength unto God. His excellency is over Israel, and His strength is in the clouds. Or Psalm 29, verses 1 and 2 says that we ascribe unto God the glory which is due unto His name. You see, that doesn't mean that we change it whatsoever, but we just recognize it and we ascribe it, we declare it. So an attribute is really a description or an ascription of what God has already revealed. We're just recognizing it and reflecting it back to God. Now there are two other words that have the exact same meaning, really, in essence, that you'll sometimes see particularly the first one, the word qualities. Qualities really essentially means attributes, the qualities of God. That will be used in more recent dogmatics from time to time. And the word characteristics is used just on occasion. But really, an attribute is a characteristic, although the weakness of the word characteristic is that it gives you the feeling that there's a whole bunch of little different parts of God. And this is just one aspect of His characteristic, instead of seeing each attribute as really reflecting the whole God. So probably the word attributes is better than characteristics, attributes or qualities. The second term I'd want to mention to you is the term perfections. You'll find this term, especially in older theological books. And from one perspective, this term can be thought of as indicative of the way of eminence. the way of eminence, that is, the idea that men ascribe to God his attributes, but they're ascribed to him in the highest degree, hence they're called the perfections of God, they're eminent compared to the attributes of men. So the idea behind this term is that, or at least one way of looking at it, is that since the attributes are found perfectly in God, we speak of his perfections. But I think there's a better way of understanding this term. The problem with that, you see, That sort of allows this comparison model. It's just comparing God with man, but God stands independent. God is a lone God. And so when he reveals his attributes, it's not just, well, they're a higher degree than they are in man or in other false gods, but God is a unique God. He's what sounds like awkward English, but he's an only God. So I think we need to look deeper for the meaning of perfections here. We might get a hint at that from 1 Peter 2, verse 9. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. You should show forth the praises, sometimes translated as the excellency, of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Now the KJV calls these excellencies, or these perfections, praises. But the Greek word here, erotos, or in the plural erote, means intrinsic eminence, intrinsic moral excellence or virtue. And so you have this idea of perfection morally, perfect excellence from within God. Even if there never was a creation, God would have the same essential internal perfections. Now that word virtue is interesting too because some theologians actually alternate back and forth between perfections and virtues. They're actually very similar. And the Latin equivalent for virtues is vettutasa, which means that the virtues or the excellencies of God are his perfections. They're all perfect in him. And then thirdly, there is the term of properties. Properties. The word properties can actually be understood in two ways. One way is to understand it as those qualities or those things that are proper or peculiar to God. Those things that are distinctly His own. You could call them His properties. But more recently in theology, systematic theology, the word properties has another meaning. It most commonly means today, those characteristics of the individual persons of the Trinity, those characteristics of the individual persons of the Trinity that separate one person from another person. So for example, the sonship is a property of Which person of the Trinity? Second person of the Trinity. Not the first, not the third. So that sonship is a property that distinguishes. And so that brings us to this conclusion, that the attributes of God are really what distinguish God from men, but the properties distinguish the persons of the Trinity from one another. And that leads us to a last term, final term I want to mention, the term predicate. When we speak of the predicates of God, These have reference to God in relation to his creation. The attributes or the perfections of God belong to God as God. Without them, he would not be God. But the predicates belong to God by virtue of his relation to the creation. For example, God is creator. If he hadn't created, he wouldn't have been creator. So this is a predicate. He is redeemer. If man hadn't fallen to sin, he would not have been redeemer. He's the preserver, the governor. over men. But again, if he hadn't created, there'd be no need for that. Now some attributes of God seem to fall in both categories. They seem to be an attribute and in some ways a predicate. It can be looked at from both sides of the coin, so to speak. If you think of omniscience, for example, In a way, we say, well, that's an attribute of God because God knows all things from eternity. That's right. But it's also predicate because he has exhaustive knowledge of his creation. I'm going to be talking later this morning in more detail about the relationship between attributes and predicates, but what I just wanted to do in this introductory moment is just get the terminology in front of you. Actually, most commonly, the term is attributes. Perfections, virtues, qualities, probably are the next most common. And then properties, we're going to use in this course as things that separate one person from the next. Predicates is simply a term to understand in terms of God's relation to creation. Now there's nothing sacred about this terminology. It's just simply technical language used for convenience. but it's not sacrosanct. When you bring it to your congregation, I think the most common thing to do is explain the word attributes and say, these describe the perfections or the virtues or the qualities of God, and use that as your most common word, attributes. That's what people will understand best. But it doesn't mean in preaching you can't say, after you've explained to your congregation, Well, these perfections of God congregation are wonderful or something like that. And they should be able to understand that. Perfections is used there as a synonym for attributes after you explain it. Well, that brings us then to discuss the being and the attributes of God and how they relate to each other. First of all, are there any questions on the terminology? All right, the being and the attributes of God. Charles Hodge says, page 367, God therefore is in his nature a substance or essence which is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. And then he has comma, the common subject of all divine perfections and a common agent of all divine acts." Now that sounds very confusing to our mind, because we don't think in Greek philosophical distinctions between substance and accident, which is what Hodge is really doing here. By accidents we mean qualities which are not in the nature or the essence of the thing, but which kind of fall to it, which are attributed to it. But Hodge is saying it's possible to read into this biblical doctrine of the attributes of God a kind of distinction between what God is in Himself, that's the substance, that's the being of God, and then over here you've got the attributes of God, the things that are associated with Him, the things that kind of fall to Him, accrue to Him, because He is really and substantively God. Well, there's a danger with this kind of thinking when we divide God into substance and accidents. It's better to think of God not in terms of substance and accidents, but to think of God as a God of being and attributes in such a way that the two are one. His attributes are his being. And his being consists of attributes. So that when we discuss the being of God and the knowability of God, we are already discussing the attributes of God. And so far in this course, we haven't used the word attributes, just simply because I'm trying to divide things up into categories for you and approach one aspect at a time. But really, in a sense, we've already been talking about the attributes of God when we talked about the being of God. So, you can't know God in his substance and not know his attributes. And that's the problem with Hodge's approach, I think. Nor do we know the attributes of God without knowing God. So the theological way of saying this is to say the being and the attributes of God are co-extensive. Now, you can see this hinted at If you unpack the Westminster Shorter Catechism in its definition of God in question four, what is God? Answer, God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. So when you think of the being and attributes of God, You would think the catechism would have said something like this, God is a being, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in the spirituality, and so on. Instead of saying that God is a being, it says God is spirit. And then he's described as infinite, eternal, unchangeable, and so on. So that the being of God is ranged alongside of the other attributes of God. Did you notice that? That the being is just contained in the whole series of attributes. Speaking about who God is, let me read it again. God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. That's a clever way of saying we don't want to think of the being of God as the essence of God and then the attributes of God as something that is independent of God, alongside of God, outside of God, apart from God. No, the attributes of God are the being of God. God is a kind of composite not of individual attributes, but these attributes are God himself. So you don't take these things, you don't take goodness and then attribute it to God and say, well, that's part of God and beauty, that's part of God and truth is part of God. Actually, Because the attributes may not be thought of apart from God, they may not be thought of as prior to God. Another way of saying that is the attributes may not be thought of in such a way that the ultimacy of God is called into question. Rather, their existence, the attributes' existence, is the existence of God. So what is at stake here is the doctrine of the aseity of God. This radical, total, ultimate independence of God. The attributes of God therefore can never be regarded as accidents, which can be added to God or subtracted from God without disturbing the being of God. You see, I could have got in an accident last night, lost my arm, and I would, I mean, you'd feel sorry for me this morning. but I'd still be my same person. I'd just be minus an arm. But you can't do that with God. You can't subtract an attribute from God and still have God. For scripture, for example, God is love. And if you take away love, you don't have God. So this relationship, this coextensive relationship between the being and the attributes of God is not simply a theological invention. It's not a dry doctrine. It's really a defense of the very nature, the very being of God. And actually you find God speaking this way about himself repeatedly in scripture. Let me just give you three examples. 1 John 4. I'm sorry, no, it's not. It's John 4. John 4. John 4, verse 24. God is spirit. Then 1 John 1, verse 5. God is light. 1 John 4, it's repeated in verses 8 and 16, God is love. Now in all three of these cases, you can't turn them around, that's what some people have said, that's what something like the New Age Movement would say, and say light is God, spirit is God, love is God. In other words, the attribute does not have the priority. It does not have existence over God or apart from God. It's not to be conceived of in independence from God. God is ultimate. But being ultimate, He is these things. from the stillness of eternity past. He is spirit. He's always been spirit. He is light. He's always been light. He is love. He's always been love. I was talking with a lady in the airport last week, and basically what she was saying to me is, since God is love, love is God. So she saw God in everything, wherever she sees love. Well, this is not a scriptural way of speaking. This is how she could bring all religions together. She said every religion is really looking for the same thing. They're just looking for love. So there's really no difference between Christianity and other religions. But I try to point out to her, God is not simply spiritual, but he is spirit. He's not simply loving, but he is love. So there's this pattern that develops in scripture. The pattern is that there's no identity of God. You can't begin to describe God apart from his attributes. The attributes and the being of God are coextensive. Now what about the relationship of the attributes to each other? That leads me to point C on the outline, relation of attributes to one another. Well, there's three main things I want to say here. The first is that God is not a composite of attributes. You don't get to God by adding together a series of attributes. You don't say God is 10% love and God is 10% grace. Actually, God is not derived at all. You can't derive God from any language. That's what's involved in the aseity or the self-existence of God. God is never derivative. His existence is not derived either in our minds It's not derived by adding attributes to each other, but we must safeguard what our forefathers have called the simplicity of God. Now bear in mind simplicity does not mean that God isn't very intelligent like we think of someone today, he's a simple person. Simplicity of God simply means that there's a unity, a oneness in God such that he's not a composite of parts or attributes. God consists uncompounded, that is, he's without parts. You can never say he's partly this and he's partly that. Can I say that to the extent that God is this, He is not that? To the extent that He is loving, He is not wrathful? To the extent that He is spirit, He is not life? To the extent that He is life, He is not light? No. The simplicity of God means that God is uncompounded. for purposes of our puny little minds. When we speak of God, we speak of God in different attributes and different qualities. So it almost seems like God is made up of different things, but that's just our way of speaking about one thing at a time. Even wrath and love, for example, are not mutually exclusive as many think they are. They coexist in God. God is love and God is a consuming fire. And those two things exist side by side in God, do not exist side by side in the sense that here's one and here's the other, but in God everything is one. Secondly, the attributes of God are not interchangeable. not interchangeable. The co-existence and the co-extensiveness of God's attributes might lead us to a different conclusion on the opposite end of the scale. So that we say, well, okay, God is not compounded of a series of attributes. Therefore, There really isn't much difference. If he's both love and a God of anger at the same time, then there's not much difference between the attributes. After all, since they're uncompounded, we could reduce them perhaps ultimately to a single attribute. No, can't do that either. God's attributes do differ from one another. For example, infinity in time, which is his attribute of eternity, does differ from infinity in space, which we speak of as his attribute of immensity. God is infinitely eternal, and he's infinitely immense, and that's saying two different things. Even though God is both love and God is wrath, His wrath is different from His love. So, distinctions must be made. In fact, that's why we use different words, because we are describing different things. Cornelius Ventile says in his work on systematic theology, each attribute of God is coterminate with God. God is light, God is love, God is righteousness, God is holiness. Yet God in himself has in his own revelation instructed us to make distinctions with respect to his being. These distinctions are there to help us to understand something of the wealth and the richness of his being. to help us, you see, understand the wealth and the richness of his being. Now, let me try this. This is going to be on a human level. And so it's not going to work in terms of the infinitude of God, but it will help you grasp the idea of what I'm trying to say. when you are very close to someone. Let's say you're married and you've got a wonderful marriage and you just love your wife. Now, when you live with your wife and you know your wife, you don't really know your wife perfectly, but let's say close. You know her so well that when you think of her, you don't have to think of certain qualities. this quality, that quality, the other quality, and say, that's descriptive of her. I don't have to write a 10-page essay on the 47 best qualities of my wife to understand my wife. I know my wife, and I have this kind of global feeling about her inside of me, who she is. But now you come along and you've never met her, and you say to me, you're in a plane and you're sitting beside me, and you say, well, what is your wife like? Hmm, now I've got to describe it. I can't just give you that global feeling all at once. You haven't lived with her, you don't really know her. So what's the best thing I can do? The best thing I can do is start telling you different qualities about her. Oh, she's kind and she's thoughtful and she's consistent and she's a person of integrity. So I begin to describe her, begin to build a picture. Now, on a human level, of course, these are all parts, I suppose, of her, but there is also a composite thing. In God, there's no part, so the parallel doesn't work completely. But the idea I want to get across to you is this. In the Trinity, when the three persons of the Trinity know each other perfectly, see, I don't think the son thinks of the father as goodness and truth and love all brought together. but he has this composite picture, feeling in his mind of who the father is. He knows the father so well, perfectly, that there's not all this division into all these different things that help describe, but for us to understand the richness and the wisdom and the magnitude of the being of God, God says, okay, I want to show you who I am. Here, here is something of my love. Here is something about my grace. Here is something about my mercy. I'm all these things. So God is introducing himself to us in this way. To accommodate, because of our ignorance, our lowly level of knowledge. So when you think of attributes, think of it as Something God reveals in the Bible as a gift to us, to help unveil for us, bit by bit, something of who he is. Maybe another, maybe a better example would be a rainbow. You've got all these different colors in a rainbow and you've got one rainbow. Again, this is imperfect as well because each attribute is fully God. But you see, If I describe a rainbow to you, I've got to talk about each color, don't I, for you to really understand what a rainbow is, so it helps you understand it. But if a person is blind, you particularly have to do that, because he's got all these impediments, he can't see the rainbow. And yet, I could talk to you for an hour about the rainbow and all these different colors, but if you actually see it yourself, and you're acquainted with it yourself, well, all my description pales in significance. You actually know more by seeing it yourself. So, as we talk about the attributes of God, to really know God, you need to see Him by faith yourself, and then you'll get even more out of the description of the attributes. So the Bible teaches us to think in terms of both the absoluteness of God and the personality of God. The absoluteness of God and the personality of God. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, absoluteness teaches us that he is the transcendent God. There are no attributes in and of themselves which are brought together to describe God perfectly. No, God is his attributes. They're coextensive with his being. But at the same time, the scriptures teach us of the personality of God. And to understand his personality at our level, we need to make distinctions. between love and wrath and grace, so that we, as we look at all these different qualities in God, can understand something of its inexhaustible richness and fullness. Now, that brings us to a third point. The attributes do say something about God. That's a point that Hodge and Francis Turretin both make in their dogmatics, albeit using scholastic language. Turretin argues that the attributes of God do differ from one another. They're not simply names or words. They do not differ as things in and of themselves, because God has no parts, but nor are we to think of the distinctions as simply a matter of mere words or semantics. Turjan says, there are distinctions in God. At the same time, those attributes are not to be understood as things in and of themselves out of which God is compounded. So the point he's making is there's a real foundation in the divine nature for the various attributes that are ascribed to God. So to say that the divine attributes differ only in name, or only in our conception, according to Charles Hodge, would be to destroy all true knowledge of God. Because then we wouldn't know God at all, we'd only know words, words about God. But as a matter of fact, thank God, we do know more than words. We know that God is Spirit. The Bible tells us that. So it's not simply that we have a conception of God as spirit, or that we think of God as spirit, but God is spirit. God is life. God is light. God is love. These attributes, each one, say things about God, real things. And they teach us to make distinctions in our speaking about God. And they have a foundation, therefore, in the reality of God. So here's the tension, and you'll never be able to grasp this fully in your mind because God is ultimately incomprehensible. Here's the tension. You've got to preserve the absoluteness of God on the one hand, so that you don't say God is made up of a whole bunch of different parts. You've got to maintain his absoluteness, his simplicity. At the same time, you can't allow that absoluteness to conflict with God's personality, in which we receive, through the revealed Word of God and Scriptures, concrete truths about God. He is love, He is light, and so on. Now, non-Christian philosophers often kind of poke fun of Christians at this point, kind of mock with us and say, what a contradiction, you're caught on the horns of a dilemma you can't resolve. How can both of these things be true? You can't have both the absoluteness of God and yet have a personality in God. We respond to that by saying, Yes, we can't grasp both the absoluteness and personality of God coming together. But this is how God has revealed Himself in Scripture. And since we're in covenant relationship with the living, transcending God, who is a person, and yet has simplicity and absoluteness, we simply bow before what Scripture reveals to us about our God. And we remember He's the Creator, we're the creature. And we will never be able to fully comprehend it. If we could fully comprehend this, ultimately we would be God. We'd be on His level. And so, though the non-Christian philosopher would think we're copying out, we say, in a very real way, we're living by faith. We bow in faith before Scripture's revelation of God. All right, any questions about that? Okay, let's look then at the classification of attributes. That's really our last major topic this morning, classification of God's attributes. First thing we need to do is look at the question, do we need to classify God's attributes at all? Why bother? If God is one, isn't any kind of classification problematic? Well, in some ways it is, and we'll look at that under the disadvantages, but what are the advantages of classifying the attributes of God? Well, first of all, One advantage is that this is the way our minds tick. We classify things. We break things down in our mind so that we can understand. So, in a certain sense, we almost cannot avoid classifying the attributes of God. Even in the structure of a class like this, we talk about the unity of God. Later on, we're going to talk about the trinity of God. Well, already we're almost automatically classifying things in different categories. And since the subject of the attributes of God is very, very broad, The human mind can only take in so much at once. So it's just natural that you want to divide things at least in a couple of categories to grasp the whole. So when we talk about the attributes, for example, usually we refer mostly to God in his unity. But I said to you, there are also properties that distinguish one person in the Trinity from another. Then we're talking about Trinity. So there's so much to talk about here that it's almost irreversible. You've got to break this down. It's huge. How do you break it down? Well, what theologians have said is, let's go ahead and break it down into two categories, but let's be very, very careful to insist always that this breakdown is just man-made to help us get a handle on things a bit. Know where there's a scripture, give us a logical breakdown. We must never think of the two, if we break it down into two groups of attributes, we must never think of those two groups as somehow separated from each other. That would be disastrous. That would break down the absoluteness of God, the unity of God, the simplicity of God, the aseity of God. It would impact them all. So how do we break them down? Well, the most common thing that scholars have said as they've studied this is to say, it seems to us that there are some attributes that God has that we to some degree, never to his degree, but we to some degree also have. God is merciful. I can show you mercy. So we can identify on our human level with that attribute of mercy to some degree. We don't have any attributes of God to the degree that God has them, but to some degree. And even the quality of our attribute, It's not only the quantity, the quality of it is not as pure as it is in God. So when there's attributes of God reflected in us, remember, we don't have them perfectly and we don't have them infinitely. That's important to remember. But then there are these other attributes of God of which we don't have at all. Is Kyle Borg infinite? No, he's finite. So these attributes of God often need longer explanation. They're often more difficult to grasp because we can't identify them with them in our human level. They are completely other. They belong to God and they're not even reflected in us. So that is the most common way of looking at the attributes of God. And what has come down to us in terms of language is that those attributes that have some reflection in us are called communicable. and those that don't are called incommunicable now sometimes we say well communicable you can see the word here able to be communicated God is able to communicate them to us that's the meaning of the word incommunicable and incommunicable God is not able to communicate them to us but actually Technically, that's not quite right. The word communicable, communica, actually comes from the Latin, communis, which means to have in common. To have in common. So the communicable attributes, put simply, are those which God and man have in common. Now, the incommunicable attributes then are those which we do not have in common. Those are ways in which we are totally diverse from God. Another way of putting this is to distinguish between positive theology and negative theology. Positive theology is the way of affirmation. What we affirm about God that yields communicable attributes. God is righteous, God is true, God is holy, God is just. We understand all those things to some degree because there's righteousness, truth, holiness, and justice among men. The other aspect, of course, is a negative theology. That is, using the way of negation will yield us the incommunicable attributes. So this is how the way of negation works. God is not finite, but infinite. God is not temporal, like us, but eternal. God is not changeable, like us, but unchangeable. So we come to the incommunicable attributes more through the route of negation. Now you will find a great number of different scholars who use different categories to distinguish the attributes of God, and I debated whether I should go through a whole bunch of those categories with you, and then I decided, well, you can discover those on your own, and I would just stick with explaining to you the whole idea of classification by just using the most common one, which I think is the best one, into communicable and incommunicable attributes. I really believe that also for the pulpit and for reaching out to people, this is the easiest distinction to make to classify the attributes of God. People can get hold of this quite readily and I think it can be helpful in the minds of people. So you tell people something like this. There are certain things that God and man have in common, maybe not in degree, certainly not in degree, not in quantity or quality necessarily, but God is holy and there can be holiness in men. Paul calls the saints, the people of God, saints. They are holy. They are holy in Christ. They are holy through the infusion of the Holy Spirit. God is true, men can be truthful, but God is eternal and men are not eternal, at least not in themselves. God is omniscient, but no man can say he knows all things. So, the great advantage of using this distinction is because you're actually putting flesh and bone on the idea that man is created in the image of God. God is the original, the creator, and man is made in his image. Because we're made in his image, you see, it's quite understandable that there would be such a thing as communicable attributes. and that we actually look in the Bible to see these communicable attributes and then know what we should be like, what we should strive to be like. God is faithful. God is just. We look into the Bible, we see his faithfulness, we see his justice, and we Don't need scholars to tell us, we have to emulate that. We have to be like that. Lord, help me to be faithful. Help me to be just. Help me to have in common with thee these attributes. So, we are to be righteous as God is righteous. We are to reflect the image of God in knowledge, in righteousness, in holiness. And though God is far above us and has these qualities far beyond us, we still are to be like him. So those are the advantages, I think, of the communicable-incommunicable distinction. Now, in terms of disadvantages, well, I've hinted at a few of them already. First, the scriptures make no direct attempt to classify God's attributes. So, at the very least, we need to add, even as we teach this doctrine, that no division, artificial division of the attributes, should bind our conscience or bind our intellect. Second disadvantage is that A classification of attributes sometimes, if you're not careful, can fragment our understanding of the character of God. Almost conveying the impression that the communicable attributes make God somehow imminent to us, and the incommunicable make Him transcendent, above and beyond us. Almost as if there's two parts to God. Well, that certainly is not true. We must maintain, even when we make a classification, that it's perfectly our right to make no classification at all. This is, I recognize that this is still man-made. Number three, we need to also understand there's a disadvantage here because the communicable, even the communicable attributes are not identical. in God and man. I've said something about that already, but we need to keep maintaining that. If we don't maintain that, we break down the creator-creature distinction. We are the image of the original, but we are not identical with the original. We as man are like our maker, but we are not of one piece with our maker. That's false mysticism. So at very bottom, the communicable attributes in a sense are not communicable after all, because we are not holy as God is holy. And we're not speaking here simply about a difference of God being a little bit more holy and we being a little bit less holy. But we're speaking about the difference between the holiness of the creator and the holiness of the creature. So when we speak of the communicable attributes, we must never do so in a way to break down the distinction. between the creator and the creature. Now, a final point of disadvantage is that sometimes this classification gets a bit muddled. I hope this isn't too confusing, but in some ways the communicable attributes are incommunicable. And there are ways even in which the incommunicable attributes are communicable. So we don't want to use this terminology in any way that enables us to break down this creator-creature relation. So when we speak of incommunicable attributes, we don't speak of them in such a way either as to take away all sense of relationship between the creator and the creature. Let me give you just an example here. We say God is omnipresent. He's present everywhere. Men are not omnipresent, and therefore we rightly speak of the omnipresence of God as an incommunicable attribute. But even though we as men are not omnipresent, we are present. We have a place. Right now we're right here. We are present somewhere. We are not repletively present throughout the whole creation, nor do we have immensity, but we still are present. And God also is present. So even in the incommunicable attributes, even though we don't have it like God, there are faint traces of the incommunicable attributes in us. We don't have eternity. We haven't lived from eternity past or eternity future. But we are living and our soul will never die. So there's a trace of eternity of God, in a sense, in us. So in a sense, the incommunicable attributes have a little bit of communicableness to them. And on the other hand, the communicable attributes are ultimately incommunicable because we're not holy as God is holy. If you remember all these limitations and disadvantages, you can still use this classification, but be careful how you use it and keep these thoughts in mind. Now, you may say at this point, why bother to have this classification at all since there's all these troubles and problems? But try to remember this. Theology often is simply using language to try to grapple with the great things revealed in the scriptures. And this language is there to help us understand, help us understand by faith, but also to help us understand intellectually. And so, as Christians, we're always struggling, aren't we, to be faithful to the total representation of the scriptures. And we do that as creatures, as creatures. And therefore, whatever we say about God, that's what makes this course challenging. Whatever we say about God is ultimately incomprehensible to us. And so every attribute we're about to discuss, we're just stammering a few things about it. Every attribute is also incomprehensible because every attribute is God and who can comprehend God. So always we're bumping up against this as creatures, talking about our creator. We're always bumping up against this, that God is the knowable, unknowable one. The knowable yet incomprehensible one. So we have to expect that, we have to accept that. Wherever we go in theology proper, we're going to have creaturely limitations. Now, I find it encouraging that even in the Westminster definition of God, which by the way is the most famous definition of God in Reformed confessional theology, you actually see the implicit framework of this communicable-incommunicable distinction. God is spirit. That's the basic metaphysical affirmation that is made about God. God is not physical, God is spirit. And then that spirit is qualified by a series of incommunicable attributes. You see that God is a spirit, infinite, that's incommunicable, eternal, incommunicable, and unchangeable, incommunicable. And then follows a series of communicable attributes. He's all this, He's all these incommunicable attributes in His being, power, communicable. Wisdom, communicable. Holiness, communicable. Justice, communicable. Goodness, communicable. And truth, communicable. So the thing you want to notice here is that when the Westminster Divines wrote their definition of God, the communicable attributes are not set up before us as identical in God and man, but they did recognize that they are in man. God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, in his wisdom, power, holiness, and so on. So the incommunicable attributes, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, qualify every one of the communicable attributes. Did you notice that? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, in His wisdom. He's infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His power. He's infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His holiness, and so on. So that teaches us, right there, that all these communicable attributes, though they're communicable, they still belong to God in a distinctive way, because He's all these things infinitely, and eternally, and unchangeably. And that's the proper balance I think we want to aim for when we study the communicable attributes of God. Yes, they're communicable at one level, But remember, God in his communicable attributes has these things always from the perspective of the incommunicable attributes, because he's infinite in all of these communicable attributes. He's eternal in all these communicable attributes. He's unchangeable in all these communicable attributes. So we never have any of the attributes of God. the way God has done, because he is God and we are the creature. All right, that brings me to the end of section D. Any questions on that? Yes, Scott? Can we think about a little bit like in biology, there's all kinds of classifications, and we're classified as mammals, too. There's all kinds of other mammals, and humans are very distinct from them. But there's some things that are similar, too. Don't we do this in all sciences? I know this theology is the study of God, but that's how our mind and how God has given us the facilities to understand. Yeah, I think you can use that kind of thing to help grasp it. Always bearing in mind, however, that even when it comes comparing man to animal, in a sense, we're much closer. than God to us, in a way, because God has everything in infinite capacity. And yet, we're made in the image of God. So there's that tension there as well. I think we can use things in nature to just help us in our understanding, perhaps, but then we have got to distance ourselves from that and say, this is only comparison that breaks down, just like we can't use anything from nature to describe the Trinity. We can use it to maybe give us some thoughts, help our understanding, but then we have to say ultimately it breaks down because God is infinite. Any other questions? All right, let's see if we can pick up this last section. I'm going to not speak about Kuiper's classification. I'll let you look at that, because there are many others we could look at as well. So we just have one more point to do in the lecture today. Distinction between attributes and predicates. I'll say just a tad bit more about that. Some theologians speak of this distinction in terms of absolute and relative attributes. Absolute and relative attributes. This distinction says that there are attributes that we must ascribe to God. Without them, or apart from them, God is not God. These are the absolute attributes. So, there are many of them, of course. You can think of spirituality of God, infinity of God, the eternity of God, so on, goodness, truth. Without any of these attributes, God would not be God. They're essential to his being. The predicates are attributes which are predicated of God by virtue of his relationship to the creation. When I give definitions like this, make sure you all get them down, because these are the kinds of things that you should not only know, but they might reappear on exams. That was a polite hint. The predicates are attributes that are predicated of God by virtue of his relationship to the creation. So these are the relative attributes. For example, that God is creator, and preserver, and governor, and redeemer. These are all things that he is in relationship to man. God doesn't have to have these things. He didn't have to create to be God. He didn't have to redeem sinners to be God. Now, a distinction of this kind can actually be quite helpful because it is biblical. Take, for example, that God is love. He's necessarily and inherently love. He is love. But He's not necessarily merciful. He wills to be merciful. He wills to show mercy. He's not compelled to show mercy. He wills to bring His love to expression in the way of mercy. Our election, for example, arises out of the depths of His love. Ephesians 1, 4 and 5, according as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy without blame before him in love having predestinated us into the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. So we are loved in the beloved son from the foundation of the world and in love God is determined to redeem us. So that demonstration of mercy is an expression of the love which God inherently is. God who is love and who, if he were not love, would not be God. This God wills to be our Savior in Jesus Christ. So you have a distinction then between the attributes of God, per se, God as he is in himself, and the predicates, the predicates of God, that is, God in his relationship to his creation. Now in non-Christian thought, this distinction is vigorously attacked. People say, how can God both be absolute and have these inherent qualities and then yet have personality and have these predicates? If God is unchangeable, for example, how can he have any predicates at all? How can he become the creator? How can he become something he was not? How can he become the Savior? Or, as we heard someone raise the question the other day, how can God repent if he's immutable? Or, if he's immutable, how can he become angry? How can he show emotion? Well, the answer to these questions lies in the fact that the absolute attributes of God, immutability, infinity, eternity, unchangeability, those things, come to expression in various ways in relationship to the creation. So God is omnipotent, he's all-powerful. That's his infinite, absolute attribute. In relationship to the creation, that attribute is exercised by him becoming the creator. God is inherently love. And that love comes to expression in his predicate relationship to his creation in a way by which he becomes redeemer. And that doesn't signify that God is changing and becoming something other than God because He becomes Redeemer. Actually, it's simply acknowledging that God has created and does something with His creation which is consistent with His absolute character. Now, logically, we may not find this altogether satisfactory. But, again, we're dealing with things very deep here that are beyond us. And so, it can be very helpful, even though we don't fully grasp it, but it can be very helpful to say something like this. God does not change. God is absolute. All therefore that transpires is an expression of his immutability. But that immutability is not separated from his will. So we can say the immutability of God or the unchangeableness of God, comes to expression in the expression of His will. Or to put it another way, history is but the expression of the will of God. God wills, He decrees, and history comes to pass according to that decree. Therefore, since the attributes of God are coextensive with His being, the will of God is His being. Since the being of God is immutable, therefore the will of God is what it is, because God is what He is. So logically God's will could not be otherwise than it is without God denying himself. Now that doesn't mean we turn God into a mechanical robot and that we freeze history. Let's say it's all like a roll of film that's already been determined and fall into a kind of cold, rationalistic determinism, reasoning everything out of the absoluteness and immutability of God, so that we sacrifice a dynamic, covenantal, vital, living relationship with God. No, God is a fatherly sovereign. And yet we maintain that everything that happens is rooted in the eternal being of God. Now this is the reformed answer to this whole dilemma. There are other answers, of course, from other Christians. There's another whole group of people, usually we call them liberals, And they say this, don't begin with the immutability of God and the unchangeability of God, but begin with God's involvement in our history. Begin not from the top down, but begin from the bottom up. Begin with where we're at. God is part and parcel of our history. So God cannot be immutable. God changes in the course of time. When the Bible says he repents, he really does repent. The Bible says he gets angry, he really does get angry. That's all involved in the temporal process. So you have a very personal God, the liberals say, who enters into relationships. You talk with him, you walk with him. This is all good and wonderful. Much of this is true. But in the process, The problem is the liberals reduce their God to the level of human experience. And God becomes just another changeable being like us. And that leads us to things like open theism, where God himself doesn't know everything that's going to happen. So what we do, what we need to do is we need to maintain that God is not a robot, but God's will is involved with all that comes to pass from eternity, but that will is an active personal will that reflects the character of God. And only when we maintain that, you see, does history become meaningful interaction with God and not just a plain out of a film that's already set up. And because God interacts with us in history, He does reflect His character. When we rebel, He does become angry. He really does. And we repent of our sin and we seek refuge in Christ. God does receive us. He's a consuming fire and He's a God of love at the same time. His holiness reacts to sin as wrath. His holiness reacts to repentance as love. And you'll find these things to be Very practical in the ministry. Seven years from now, you're going to be probably sitting in the consistory room somewhere, and there's going to be a case of discipline that comes in front of you. Somebody's fallen into adultery. And there's going to be some elder that stands up and says, you know what? God is love. He shouldn't discipline this brother at all. See, a mistaken notion about the love of God. God is holy. He's a consuming fire. There are times we must, for the sake of the honor of Christ, engage in the processes of discipline. The discipline which the Church practices is a reminder to us of that great discipline which God will practice on the Day of Judgment. Jesus Christ will come to judge the living and the dead. So whatever the church does in anticipation of that is but a shadow and a foretaste for the benefit of the people of God that they might be warned. Now obviously the church can't cast anyone into hell, but God himself will when he punishes the young God there on the Day of Judgment. So here the ministry of the church is for the sake of bringing the wandering sons back to the fold. But we are to discipline. We are to remember the whole character of God. We are to rebuke. We are to admonish. Our judgment may indeed be God's strange work and mercy is familiar work, but we've got to exemplify the whole character of God as we rule in the church of God, especially the character of his communicable attributes. So on the one side, we've got to punish sin. On the other side, we've got to stress to people, God does not delight in the death of the wicked, far be it for us. So we discipline not to destroy, but we discipline as medicine to heal. Our goal is that people return, turn and repent. Some city police departments, I think you know that, they're required to get a certain quota of traffic tickets. Give them out every week. You, Mr. Policeman, you've got to give out 200 tickets this week. You see, if you meet the quota, you're doing your job. If you don't meet the quota, you're not doing the job. Well, the church isn't like that. God doesn't say to you, you've got to discipline four people this year. The work of discipline is the strange, unfamiliar work. The normal work is to build up the congregation in the Lord Jesus Christ in love, but it's a necessary work. So you do it with sorrow and pain, but you do it because you are to reflect the character of God. Thomas Watson said, God is like a bee Most of the time the bee is making honey. It stings only when it is provoked. And so in normal church life, you see, most people will be walking an outwardly decent life and you don't need to use discipline. But sometimes you need to be like a bee. It needs to sting as you seek to bring people back to the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, that's just one area of application of this doctrine. So this has been maybe a bit of a difficult lecture, kind of heady stuff, but it sets the foundation for our discussion of the attributes to come. Those attributes have a lot of practical applications, as we'll see. Okay, any questions? All right, whose turn is it to close in prayer?