What are the communicable and incommunicable attributes of God?
The terms "communicable" and "incommunicable" mark a line drawn through everything Scripture says about God: some of what He is can be shared with His creatures, and some of it can never be shared by anyone. Writers in this collection rarely use those exact labels, but they make the same distinction constantly — usually by separating God's moral attributes from His natural ones, and both from what He is in His very being.
The Basic Division
One writer sets out the framework carefully. He argues that attributes are what we say about God in relation to what is outside Him, and he sorts them into two classes:
J. N. DarbyAttributes 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 we say, God in Himself is absolutely Love and Light... and God is righteous, holy, omniscient, omnipotent, supreme, and the like — all of which are relative terms — the former moral, the latter natural attributes.
Another writer lists the same two families side by side, adding that all of them are found in Christ: "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" (James McBroom).
What Can Never Be Shared
God's plan to reveal Himself has a fixed limit. One commentator states it directly, and gives the reason:
C. CrainGod never planned to reveal His Godhead essence. In this He is, and must forever be alone. He cannot communicate His Godhead essence to any other. If this could be, He would cease to be absolutely God alone; but created beings can never become uncreated, self-existing ones, whether they be men or angels.
The barrier is not distance but category. Even the highest creature is still a creature:
Samuel RidoutThe most glorious and excellent in wisdom, power, and every attribute of the angels who "excel in strength," has yet but a creature excellence; and, beyond that stretches just as far the infinity of distance to Godhead... God is God, and man is man, and his happiness is to know that this is eternally true.
What Is Genuinely Given
The other side of the line is just as real, and one writer insists on it with some heat against those who deny it:
J. N. DarbyNow the believer is made partaker of the divine nature, and all God's moral attributes are communicated to or conferred upon man. He is created again, and "renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him," "in righteousness and true holiness." Is holiness not one of God's attributes? Is it not conferred upon man?... The very essence of practical Christianity is our partaking of the divine nature, and having God's moral attributes conferred on us, or implanted with His nature in us.
Another writer draws the boundary of that gift with equal care, naming exactly which attributes stay on God's side:
A. J. PollockWe 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.
Light and Love
Two statements sit behind all the attributes, describing what God is rather than what He does. Commentators differ over which of the two is the more absolute: some hold that light is His essence and love His nature reaching outward, while others treat love as the one absolute description, since believers too are called light. One puts the pair like this:
The Bible TreasuryLight is the essential purity of His nature, which makes every thing and one manifest; Love is rather the energy of His nature, which goes out in active goodness. To leave out Light is to conceive a false god who can let off sin and sinners easily, not the True Self-existent One, Who is Love also.
No Attribute Against Another
Whatever the classification, the attributes are never in competition. Human character is patchy; God's is not:
Samuel RidoutThey are not, as is so often the case with men, partial or one-sided, but each attribute permeates and characterizes all the rest, so that our conception of God includes every attribute. We cannot think of Him as sacrificing one attribute for the exercise of another. His righteousness shines forth in His love, and His holiness is declared in His judgment.
Summary
- Two classes. Moral attributes — righteousness, holiness, goodness, truth — belong to God's character; natural attributes — eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence — belong to Him as God alone.
- Incommunicable. God's Godhead essence and self-existence can never be handed over; a created being can never become an uncreated one, angel or man.
- Communicable. The moral attributes are actually implanted in the believer, who is made a partaker of the divine nature and created again "in righteousness and true holiness."
- The limit of the gift. Sharing God's nature never means sharing His deity — love, purity and holiness are given; omnipotence and omniscience are not.
- Undivided. Every attribute runs through all the rest; God never trades one for another, and all of them shine out together in Christ.