What are the communicable and incommunicable attributes of God?
I have all the sources needed. Here is the answer, drawn directly from the texts:
The distinction between what God alone is and what He shares with His creatures is one of the most penetrating questions in Christian doctrine, and these writers address it with precision.
What Belongs to God Alone — The Incommunicable
Morrish's New and Concise Bible Dictionary lays out the framework cleanly. After identifying the two great declarations of 1 John — "God is love" and "God is light" — it enumerates the principal attributes as revealed in Scripture:
Scripture reveals what God is in Himself, 'God is love' (used absolutely), 1 John 4:8; and 'God is light' (used relatively, in opposition to darkness), 1 John 1:5; and Christ is the expression of both in a Man. The principal of God's attributes and characteristics as revealed in scripture are: 1. His Eternity. 2. Invisibility. 3. Immortality. 4. Omnipotence. 5. Omnipresence. 6. Omniscience. 7. Incorruptibility. 8. Immutability. 9. Wisdom. 10. Holiness. 11. Justice. 12. Grace and mercy. 13. Longsuffering. 14. Faithfulness.
A.J. Pollock opens his study of the divine titles with a declaration of what is absolute and unconditioned in God:
A.J. PollockThe greatest word that can pass human lips is GOD — GOD from all eternity to all eternity, uncreated, self-sustained, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, THE MIGHTY CREATOR and SUSTAINER, the One in whom we live, and move, and have our being.
Eternity, self-existence, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence — these are not qualities in degree but in kind. No creature has them. They are what the tradition calls incommunicable: they cannot be transferred or shared without the creature becoming God, which is impossible.
William Kelly names this category with admirable exactness in his exposition of 1 John:
William KellyHis love, God's love, has brought us to share all that He has, except what is absolutely divine, and therefore incommunicable. But in unjealous love, He shares with the Christian everything that He can communicate.
The Moral Nature of God — Root of the Communicable
The communicable attributes flow from what God is in His nature, expressed in the two great declarations John makes. Kelly draws out the distinction:
"Light" is a burning word, expressive of His intrinsic and absolute purity of nature; "love" of its sovereign activity to others as well as in Himself. There is no sacrifice of His light to His love; indeed if it were so conceived, it would entail the greatest loss on His children. But it is as untrue, as it is impossible. "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all."
The author of "The Blessed God" in The Christian's Friend dwells on the unchanging character of that love:
The soul that knows God — is acquainted with Him — well knows that only what is good, and worthy therefore of Himself, can ever flow from the heart of the blessed God.
And again:
His nature — love — is unchanged and unchangeable, and He delights as much in the blessing of His saints today, as He will in that day when neither evil nor enemy shall ever again be known.
J.N. Darby shows why these two attributes — holiness and love — must be held together without sacrifice of either:
J.N. DarbyIf God did not reveal Himself in a manner which reconciles His attributes of holiness and love, He would either tolerate iniquity, or have to banish those involved in it absolutely and eternally from His presence.
What God Communicates — The Shared Attributes
Pollock draws the line with great clarity. Believers are "partakers of the Divine nature" — but not in the sense of sharing the incommunicable:
We have been made partakers of the Divine nature, not as being lifted to the level of Deity, that could never be, not that we should be omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, but sharing the moral qualities of the Divine life, such as love, purity, compassion, holiness, righteousness, possessing a nature that can commune with God.
The communicable attributes, then, are precisely these moral qualities: love, holiness, righteousness, purity, compassion, goodness, justice, wisdom, grace, mercy, faithfulness, longsuffering. They are communicable because they involve character, not metaphysical infinitude. God is holy — and He calls His people to be holy. God loves — and love is shed abroad in believers' hearts by the Holy Spirit. God is just — and His children are called to righteousness.
The Prism of Christ
W.H. Westcott gives perhaps the most beautiful account of how all of God's attributes — both in their awful majesty and their gracious warmth — became legible to human perception in the face of Christ:
W.H. WestcottHis character and ways bring before us the exact delineation of God's holiness, righteousness, truth; they utter to us, in an intelligible way, His grace, goodness, longsuffering mercy; they set forth those divine perfections of obedience, dependence, humility, meekness, lowliness, which could be discerned only in circumstances of humiliation. Moreover, in the cross and death of Jesus, we find every ray converging... Never was all that God is so seen as in that wonderful moment. All the outgoings of His holy nature against sin were present in infinite degree; and yet every consideration of pity and compassion for the sinner was combined with them.
And on the declaration that is uniquely Christian:
Never, in any religion or philosophy before, has it been written "GOD IS LOVE." But the truth is out now — in Jesus. God's nature is disclosed, set before men and celestial beings, revealed in the Man who is also, and must be, eternal Son.
Synthesis
The distinction resolves into two clean categories. The incommunicable attributes are those intrinsic to His infinite, uncreated being: self-existence, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability, incorruptibility, invisibility. These are what Kelly calls "absolutely divine" — they cannot be imparted without the creature ceasing to be a creature. The communicable attributes are His moral character — holiness, love, righteousness, wisdom, grace, mercy, goodness, faithfulness — qualities that can be reflected in creatures because they are character, not infinite being. When God makes His people "partakers of the divine nature," it is precisely this moral likeness He is conferring. The incommunicable remains His alone; the communicable becomes the family resemblance of His children.