What are the attributes of God?

These, as I have said, are not attributes. Attributes are ideas which we attach to God in connection with what is outside Himself, though belonging necessarily to Him as God. He is omnipotent, omniscient, supreme; even righteous, holy; these, though more connected with His nature, are relative terms. I must think of God's dealings and claims to call Him righteous. He judges of something when He is righteous, only it affirms He always judges right. To call Him holy, I must think of evil which He rejects. Hence He is not called righteousness and holiness, but righteous and holy. What He says is truth, but He is not truth. Truth is what is rightly affirmed of something else. But God is not affirmed of something else. We can say Christ is the Truth, because He does tell exactly what everything is - what God is, perfect man is, and by contrast what evil man is, what the world is, who is its prince. Through Him all is exactly brought out in its true character. Hence we say, God in Himself is absolutely Love and Light - the last expressing perfect purity (invisible in itself), and manifesting everything as it is before God, and shewing the way before us: and God is righteous, holy, omniscient, omnipotent, supreme, and the like - all of which are relative terms - the former moral, the latter natural attributes.

Needless to say, both lines are called for, and the explanation lies in the distinction between what Deity is, in its own essential and impersonal excellence, and what it is as revealed in the holy intimacies of triune delight, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the former, it is the veiled Majesty of essential Godhead, to which attaches the great awe-inspiring attributes of eternity, Omnipotence, etc., which stand in relation to creation, time and space. In the latter, it is the deeper features of Holiness and Justice, which embrace all His dealings with the moral order of creation, and which are descriptive of the character of God. The former of these have been termed the natural, and the latter the moral, attributes of God. The one connects with Deity in its unrevealed excellence, and does not necessarily raise a moral question; the other with the honour and integrity of Godhead, which spreads itself out over every part of Its activity in the moral creation. It shews the Holy Trinity at work, each glorious Person distinct as to willing and working, yet all in the one will of Godhead, — the Persons distinct, and distinguishable from each other, but the attributes the same, as characteristic of one God.

God is a Spirit, infinite, Eternal and unchangeable in His Being; full of power, holiness, justice, mercy, goodness and truth. In His natural attributes there is first His eternity. " Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God?" Hab. 1:12; Inscrutability. "Even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God." Ps. 90:2; Omnipotence. "With God all things are possible." Matt. 19:26. "The blessed and only Potentate." 1 Tim. 6:15; Omnipresence. "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall Thy hand lead me and Thy right hand shall hold me." Ps. 139:7-10.

The moral attributes are descriptive of His nature and character and come out fully in the working out of purpose in His time ways among men. Thus Righteousness and Holiness describe His character and spring from His nature which is love. 1 John 4:8-14. This last is absolute and exists eternally as constantly reciprocated within the Godhead. He is also Light, but this is relative as standing in relation to darkness and is the exposure of sin, lawlessness and moral disorder.

God inhabits eternity. He fills all things. He is everywhere. He is the uncreated, self-existent source of all things, yet knowing no source for Himself. He created all things out of nothing. Such a conception satisfies because it is beyond conception. We bow before this glorious Being with holy joy. Our hearts trust Him, for He is utterly beyond the littleness and frailty and sinfulness of men. He is in one sense unmoved by any impulse, save that which springs from Himself. He is all goodness, all love, all righteousness, all holiness, all faithfulness. Every attribute and quality that we can admire is absolute in its fulness in Him. In short, a Being who is love, who is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, satisfies the cry of our hungry hearts for omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, all serve His love, and therefore serve us. This could not be known without revelation, nor fully known apart from the Cross, where God manifested Himself fully in Christ.

I have already said, the nature of the proof demonstrates that I cannot form an idea of the thing proved in itself. But there is clearly seen eternal power and godhead. And here note that creative power involves eternal power, for all begins by creation, and all creation begins. But what creatures must be, that is, exist absolutely without a beginning. "I am," therefore, or absolute existence, is the one just revelation of God as such.

We have thus one personal God - "I am," supreme, absolutely free, omniscient, omnipotent, wise, the Creator. These are, so to speak, natural attributes; moral ones are righteous, holy, good; known to man not by ideas or thinking, which is impossible, for then man's mind would be at least the equal of God, that is, He would not be God at all; but by conscience, or the knowledge of good and evil, the proofs in the creation around us of creative power and wisdom, and in spite of the undeniable, utter degradation of man, in corruption and violence, and the monstrous deities into which he had merged it, the idea of God, the abiding sense of unity, supremacy, absolute godhead, everywhere found.

12 If we take Scripture, we find there the attributes of God - the one true and only God - shine out, and in every page, with unclouded lustre. He is one, supreme, the Creator of heaven and earth, of all things; knows all things. If we go to heaven, He is there; to hades, He is there (Jer. 23:24); can do all things. His eye and presence are everywhere; He is the eternal God; He is righteous and holy ; His goodness is over all His works. The cravings of the heart of man are met with the clearest and fullest revelation of God. I refer to the Old Testament, because there God, as such - the one true God - is fully and specially revealed in contrast with idols and man's imaginations. It is its special, direct revelation, with the law of His mouth - though promises and prophecies accompany it.

It may be affirmed that whatever way God has been pleased to set Himself before us in the Holy Scriptures, whether in nature or character, or even in the great and glorious attributes of His Being, all can be found in one way or another in the glorious Immanuel of the holy Gospels. There is love and light, then holiness and righteousness; the last two being the moral attributes of the divine nature. Then there are the other great attributes such as Eternity, Immensity, Omnipotence and Omnipresence, etc., all of which remind us of Him who is a great God and terrible (Deut. 7:21; Deut. 10:17).

What is fundamental in speaking of attributes, is inherent in the very term itself. It is not the being in its essential nature, even though always found there, but what is rightly attributed to the being as such; and in speaking of God this is not without importance; and the difference will be found very simple. Attributes are relative; hence God, who is absolute, cannot be spoken of as being the attribute itself. It is only a character which belongs to Him. God is something in Himself. But He is also something in relationship to other things when they exist or are supposed to exist. The attributes may be a necessary consequence of what He is, and I suppose in God always are, but they are not what He is Himself.

In God, as in man, I have: 1st. Being; and this being has a nature (in the sense to be hereafter defined), a nature inherent in His being, predicated of it, and therefore (though inseparable from it as a fact) capable of being viewed and treated apart. 2nd. The word condition, which I have found useful when treating of man, I hesitate to carry up to the present subject; but mode, which I have employed along with it, seems a sufficiently admissible expression for that in reference to the divine being, which corresponds, so far as correspondence is possible, to what I have termed the conditions or modes of being in man. I shall therefore say that I find, in connection with the divine being, certain modes of that being, inseparable from it, though neither to be considered as parts of the being itself, nor of the nature which inheres in it. It is one of the modes of the divine being to have neither beginning nor end, or, as commonly expressed, to be eternal. It is another of the modes of the divine being to be subject to no mutation, or, to be unchangeable. These modes of the divine existence, though inseparable from it, do not constitute parts of the divine being or of His nature, but are expressive of the manner or degree in which that Being enjoys His nature. 3rd. In the being of God certain qualities inhere, inseparable from that being, but characteristic of it; which qualities have characterized that being so long as it has existed; i.e. from eternity. These qualities, being attributed to Him, I call attributes, and the sum of these inherent attributes I call His nature, as the best term at my disposal to express that which corresponds to nature in man, as nearly as correspondence is possible in the case.

When I speak therefore of the divine nature, I understand by it the sum of the attributes inherent in God, or in the being of God, as distinguished alike from that being itself, and from its modes of existence.

"God is light;" and "God is love." These two are His essential qualities — His very being. We know that power, dominion and authority, wisdom and riches belong to Him. But it is nowhere said in scripture, that "God is power," or that "God is wisdom," etc. We know that God is holy, righteous, and just, and that He is good, gracious, and merciful. But these divine qualities are only the manifest results of what God is in Himself, i.e., "Light," and "Love."