Johnson, S Lewis: Systematic Theology-087 - God Attributes Defined, Classi

Father, we are grateful to thee for the privilege of the study of the scriptures, and we thank thee for the way in which they speak to us of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are thankful to thee for him. We are thankful to thee because thou art our great God, and thou art known to us through the Son, and the perfections and glories and virtues of our God we have seen in him. And we pray, Lord, that as we reflect upon thy nature, thy attributes, that our thoughts may rise in purity to thee, in such a way that thou art glorified in the things that we think of thee and in the actions in which we serve thee. We commit this hour, the succeeding hours to thee, in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. This is the first of our series of studies on the attributes of God, and the subject for tonight is introductory, and it is what can we know about God or the attributes defined and classified. And I want to read three verses, one from the Old Testament, one from the Gospel of John, and one from First Peter, as a basis of some of the things that I want to say tonight. So will you turn with me first of all, to Isaiah chapter forty, forty and verse twenty five. Isaiah chapter forty and verse twenty five. And Isaiah asks a question in this text, which is really the question that we will seek to answer in this series of fifteen or sixteen studies. Verse twenty five, Isaiah chapter forty, To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal, saith the Holy One? The obvious answer to that, of course, is no one. No one is like God. Now let's turn over to John chapter one and verse eighteen. John one eighteen. And here the Apostle John says, in his introduction, the last verse of his prologue, No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. And John affirms that if we want to know God, then we have the perfect revelation of God in Jesus Christ. As I have often said, it was absolutely imperative that Jesus Christ be God if he is to truly reveal God. No prophet, no matter how great a prophet he might be, if he were not God, can really reveal God, can really give us an assurance that his words are God's words. Now we listen to the prophets of the Old Testament when we read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the others, and particularly Moses, who is the one to whom our Lord, uh, to whom our Lord is likened. And we hear what we believe to be the voice of God, but it was absolutely essential that our Lord should come as God and affirm the truthfulness of the Old Testament scripture. Because ultimately, God's words can only be authenticated by God, and that is why Jesus Christ had to be God, because we must have an authentic word from him, and he is the revelation of the Father. If we wish to know God, we must know Jesus Christ, John says. Now, the final text is first Peter chapter two and verse nine, and it has directly, uh, to do with the virtues, the attributes of God. First Peter chapter two verse nine. First Peter two nine. Peter writes concerning the Christians, but ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. The word praises is the word excellences or virtues, and probably is as close to a biblical term for the attributes of God as we are able to find. The attributes of God is the theological expression for the properties and qualities of God. We will say something about these terms in a little while, but the biblical expression is the virtues or the excellences, translated here, praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Taken together, of course, the biblical term is God's glory. Now, first, a few words of introduction, and, uh, this is the outline, part of the outline that we will be following tonight. What can we know about God? The introduction to a serious study of the attributes of God demands justification in our day, for it suggests a heavy, labored, and academic exercise. And I must say that tonight's message is going to be something like that. I am sorry, but we have to begin in that way with this topic. It is right to ask that God's messenger, as the Quakers used to say, speak to the condition of his hearers. And that justification for an introduction and study of the attributes of God is seen if we simply point to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. If you go into the average evangelical church today, inclusive of Believer's Chapel, uh, you will discover that there is an amazing loss of the concept of the majesty of God. Now, we have seen evidences of that in our newspapers just recently. I am not suggesting in any way that it is impossible for someone to dance to the glory of God, and I do not want to say any word against dancing per se. I guess in my day I did as much as the average person, maybe a little more. Not very well, according to my wife, but nevertheless I did. But I never really thought that I was dancing to the glory of God, and I do know that David danced, apparently, to the glory of God, and so it is possible. But I have attended services in recent years in which dancing was carried on, supposedly to the glory of God. In Montreat, North Carolina, last summer or summer before last, I attended a service on Sunday night in the large auditorium in which there was dancing up and down the aisles, and it was not really very good dancing either, and it was supposed to be to the glory of God, and I do not say that that is impossible, but I did listen to what was said, and nothing in the service was said that was very strongly scriptural. In other words, there was no real theological backing of the activities that took place in the aisle. And afterwards, as I went out of the auditorium, there were several elderly ladies, thirty five about, and uh, no, they really, they were, they were older than that. They were about sixty five. And uh, as they walked out, I walked out by their side, listening to what they had to say about it, and they didn't know exactly how to respond, I could tell. And one of them said, uh, what did you think of it? And the other said, oh, I've forgotten exactly what she said, but it was something like it was interesting or different, and I was right with them, and so I, since I wanted a good illustration, I said to one of them, well, what did you get out of it for yourself? And then she looked at me, and she apparently sensed that I was not looking for any real spiritual benefits derived from it, and she gave me a lecture on it was perfectly all right for them to do what they did, but there was nothing really spiritual in the service. And I know recently here, was it Sunday or Saturday, we had the same thing here in Perkins Chapel. I say it is possible to dance to the glory of God, but if it were dancing to the glory of God, we should expect some revelation of the truth of God in that dancing. And as far as I can tell, the people who were dancing may have been happy, but they were not really happy in the Lord. There was no real communication of truth in their testimony by their feet. Uh, A. W. Tozer has said, the words be still and know that I am God mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshipper in this middle period of the twentieth century. And I think that is true. One of the reasons that we do not have a sense of the majesty of God in our meetings and in our personal life is that we have neglected the study of the attributes of God. We do not really know our God. The importance of right thoughts about God cannot, cannot, cannot be overestimated. No nation, no individual can ever rise above their idea of God. Now we know that a nation itself, if it does not have a true idea of God, is destined to extinction sooner or later. If we knew what our political leaders really thought about God, we would be able to foretell the history of the church in the United States. If I could really tell what our presidents and leaders thought about spiritual things, if I absolutely knew their inmost being, I could plot out for you what is going to happen to true believers in the United States of America. But of course, this is true of the individual as well. Our daily life is affected by the thoughts that we have about God, and we cannot possibly rise above our idea of God. Furthermore, there is scarcely any false doctrine or failure in practice that cannot be traced to imperfect and unworthy thoughts of God. In Isaiah chapter six and verse three, Isaiah is given a revelation of God in the temple, and he hears the seraphim saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. And then in the next verse or so, we hear Isaiah looking at himself and seeing how sinful he is. It is in the light of the knowledge of God that men see their sin and come to know themselves. You know, we often say, and I think a lot of preachers say this, and you probably have heard me say it, that the fundamental doctrine of the Bible is the knowledge of human sin. Now, I don't really think that's true. I think that is important. I do not think anybody can be straight in their theology if they do not understand human depravity. Now, that's the beginning so far as theology is concerned, in one sense, but even more fundamental to that is the knowledge of God in his holiness, for it is the knowledge of God in his holiness that leads to the clear apprehension of our sinfulness. It is Peter learning how sinful he is when he sees the holiness and omnipotence of the Son of God in the same boat with him when the miraculous draft of fishes takes place. He suddenly sees that he is in the presence of God, and it is then that he says, depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. So the knowledge of God provokes within us a revelation of our sinfulness, which is the fundamental doctrine we need to learn in all of divine truth. So, no nation, no individual can ever rise above his idea of God. I've, uh, referred to this also before, but when Lyndon Baines Johnson, our former president of the United States of America and great Texan, came to be president through the assassination of John F. Kennedy, about, uh, a month or so after he entered into office and began to feel his oats a little bit as the new head of this great country, he announced, and it was announced by his public relations office, that he was going to erect a, quote, memorial to God, unquote. And, uh, I only saw that once in the paper, because it should be obvious to anyone that if you're going to erect a memorial to God, you are in effect saying that God is no longer here in our midst, that he is dead and gone. And apparently somebody got quick to the president and said, don't you dare do anything like that because that will surely be fodder for your enemies. And nothing was ever said about it again. But I remember seeing it in the paper, and I could just mark down as long as Lyndon Baines Johnson thought as he did, there was not going to be any spiritual re- revival like Hezekiah's in the days of Johnson's presidency, because no nation, no individual is able to rise above his ideas about God. The presence of wrong thoughts about God is not something that we can, uh, counter, can, that we can put aside as a minor sin, because you see, the presence of wrong thoughts about God is really idolatry, and idolatry is one of the fundamentally, uh, bad sins. Idolatry is at bottom a libel on the character of God because it assumes that he is other than he really is. Idolatry is, in essence, the entertainment of wrong thoughts about God, or thoughts about God that are unworthy of him. Unbelief leads to wrong thoughts about God, and wrong thoughts about God leads to the worship of idols, and the worship of idols leads to immorality. That is the picture, and that is the progression that is found in the Bible. If you read Romans chapter one, that's what you see. You see unbelief, which leads to wrong thoughts about God, and then to the worship of idols, and then to the horrible immorality pictured in the last verses of that chapter. In the Psalms, the psalmist says in Psalm one hundred and fifteen verse eight concerning those that make idols, they that make them are like unto them. In other words, if you are an idolater, you become like your idol. And if you are a believer in the true God, you become like your God. Your thoughts about God determine what kind of person you are. And if your thoughts are bad, if your thoughts are inadequate, if your thoughts are unworthy, you will be that kind of person. But if your thoughts are pure, if your thoughts are right, if your thoughts are scriptural, if your thoughts glorify God, then that is going to have its inevitable influence on you also. So how important, then, is the question of the philosopher? What is God like? The question of the theologian, what is God like? The question of the man of the street, what is God like? And the question of the little child, what is God like? That is the fundamental question. So when we come to the study of attributes of God, we are really trying to answer the question, what is God like? I was not surprised at all, too, by the way, that God is dead theology arose, because the thoughts of contemporary theologians about God are such that it is no surprise that we should hear them saying that God is dead, for really God is dead in their thoughts. Now, to study the attributes, I said that this was a heavy, pedantic exercise in the eyes of many, and tonight, unfortunately, we're going to have to do a little of that, but it is an introduction, and then when we consider the other atri- or the attributes in detail, I think you will find it a great deal more inspiring, but it is necessary to lay the foundation tonight. So our outline, Roman one, some preliminary considerations. There are a few questions concerning methodology and validity that are necessary to discuss. And so in the outline, capital A, methodology in the determination of the divine attributes, and Arabic one, the wrong way. How can we determine the attributes of God? Well, the scholastics, and the scholastics were the philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. They spoke of three ways of determining the attributes of God. And there I have put these on the board as the we are, the Latin V, when I was going through my eight years of Latin, was pronounced like a W, and so I'm pronouncing it that way. We are negationis. We are eminentiai, we are causaliptatis. And these are the three ways by which the Scholastics said we could come to know God. Now let me explain them. These are the wrong ways, as we shall see, but you ought to understand why they are wrong, because a lot of people still decide that God is to be known in this way, by one of these ways. First of all, the via negationis. Now you can tell from that that that means the way of negation. The Latin word via means way or road, and negationis means negation. The way of negation. This is one way we can come to know God, the philosopher theologians of the Middle Ages said. They meant by this, we remove from our idea of God all imperfections seen in his creatures. Anything that we see in man or in creation that is unworthy of God, we strip that away from our concept of God, and we ascribe to him the opposites, the perfections. We remove from him all false images, and thus we come to speak of him not as dependent, but independent. We speak of him as not finite, for we are finite. We are limited beings. We're limited by our environment. We're limited in, in hundreds of different ways. We are finite. Well, we eliminate finiteness, and we have an infinite being, and so God is infinite. Uh, we are cor- corporeal beings, that is, we are spirits that dwell within bodies, and our body itself is a finite thing. So we think of God as being incorporeal. Uh, we think of God as being immense. We die. We think of God as one who does not die, and so we say of him that he is immortal. Uh, we can understand men to some extent, but we cannot understand God, and so we strip away the negatives and ascribe to him the positives. That's the via negationis, and that was the way that they thought we could arrive, one of the ways that we could arrive at a proper idea of God. Now, the second way is the via immanentia, and that is the way of immanence, as you can probably tell from the Latin term. Now, this way was we ascribe to God in the most imminent way the relative perfections of man. If we look around at men and we say man is mighty, then we would say God is more than what man is. If we say, uh, man is mighty, we would say, according to the scholastics, well, the angels are mightier, and God then is almighty. So man is mighty, the angels are mightier, God is almighty. So we ascribe to him the perfection of what we see in men positively. If I look out at you and I say, my, he is a wise man. Well, God is all wise. And, uh, if I see another man and I say, well, my, he is a good man. Well, God is all good. Or if I see a virtue in a man and say, well, he is a merciful man. Well, God is all merciful. And so by the via immanentia, the scholastics ascribe to God in the most imminent way the relative perfections of man. That's the second way. The third way was the via causa causalitatis, and as you can tell probably, this means the way of cause. We rise from effects in the world to the first cause, from the creation to the almighty creator. We look around and we see all of this wonderful creation about us, and we say that must have come from someone. And so we say it must have come from God. This is the way the Scholastics thought. We look out and we see government by men, moral government. It may be imperfect, but it is nevertheless moral government. And we say, well, we must affirm of God's government, uh, that which is the, the cause of this. And so we reason back from effect to cause. So by the three ways, the way of negation, the way of imminence, the way of cause to effect, the Scholastics came to an understanding of God. Now, what's wrong with that methodology? The truth of the matter is, most people really think that way about God. They look around and they say, well, God is, he's better than men. Men are pretty good, but God is better. Uh, that's the general way in which men think of God. They look about at this great creation about us, and they say, well, that tells us there must be a God who is great enough to make the creation. But as you can see, if you think for a moment, and I'm trying to make theologians out of all of you, that this is a method that begins in man, and it makes him the measure of man. In every one of these ways, it is ultimately man who is the measure of God. It is, as Professor Bruner has said, possibilities of knowing God in a human manner. They are natural, rational theology, the ways of the scholastics. What is the right way? Now, in the outline, this is Arabic two. We do not come to know God in the way of the scholastics, for it is essentially a human way of reasoning about God. We may learn some things about the creation, we may learn some things about looking at men, about God, but we can never really know the perfection of God's being by looking at man or looking at man's works. The right way to know God, the right source of the knowledge of God, is his divine self-revelation. Now, where is his divine self-revelation? Is it in my pocket? No. Is it in my library? No. Is it in the library down at the theological seminary? No. The divine self-revelation of God is contained in the scriptures. They are God's revelation of himself. Now, they contain a record of God's revelation, and they also themselves are revelation. They tell us how God revealed himself in the Old Testament days, and they tell us how prophets responded to him, and how men responded to him, and how psalmists responded to him. Preeminently, they tell us how Jesus Christ came as the revelation of God, did the will of God, laid the foundation for the completion of all the program of God. And so this divine self-revelation, which reached its climax in the coming of Jesus Christ, is now encased, not in the sense that it is all within these pages, but this is the only pointer to that divine revelation, the Word of God. So self-revelation supplants human discovery. The way of the Scholastics was essentially human discovery. The way of the Bible is revelation. Man cannot know God of himself. We would never know God if he had not revealed himself. Canst thou by searching find out God, Job said. No, we cannot know God. It is just as impossible for us to discover God by human reason than it is for a scientist to discover God in his laboratory by means of his scientific instruments. You can only know God if he is pleased to reveal himself to us. Now, nature may give us light on his power and deity, but even then, after we are Christians, we cannot really look at nature and adequately see God. The Bible is our spectacles when we look at nature, Calvin said. So, even now as Christians who have been renewed, given the Holy Spirit, so we can look with the understanding of God, and when we look out on God's great creation and see the revelation of his glory there, we have to see that through the, through the Bible. In other words, we have to put on our spectacles, which are the Word of God, and look at God's creation through his Word, even then to understand God. Now, B, validity in the study of the attributes. Can we really be sure that the conceptions we have of God, which we see in the Bible, are objectively true? Now, there are two extremes that must be avoided. One extreme is that our conceptions of God are adequate in kind and degree to represent God in his perfections. In other words, we can know God, and we can know him completely. We can know everything about him, and we can know him completely. Now, there is more of God than you and I will ever know. Ever. Not only here, but in eternity. There is more of God than you and I will ever know. He is the only eternal God, and he is the only eternal God throughout all eternity. So when you get to heaven and you think you're going to be gods, forget it. You're not going to be gods. You will always be creatures. And consequently you will be limited so far as God is concerned. Furthermore, what we do know of him, we know imperfectly. We never know him perfectly, even though we may say we know him. Now, I've used this illustration over and over again. I'll refer to it and then use another one. I know my wife. I know I know my wife. I know I know I know her, but there are times when I don't. There are times when I say, I don't understand you. And there are times when she tells me the same thing. She says, I cannot understand you, and I assure you those words are not said in love ordinarily. At least that isn't the tone of voice, it seems to me. Now, she's here in the audience tonight, so I have to be careful. I won't go any more into that. I'm going to use another illustration. Let's think of a little child who lives next door to an outstanding philosopher. Now, that little child, if you were to ask him, do you know the reverend, uh, or let's just say he's not a preacher too, let's say, do you know Doctor so-and-so? The little child, eight to ten years of age, will say, oh yes, he's my neighbor. But the little boy does not really know him. He does know him, and he knows him really, but he does not know him in the depth of knowledge that he could know him. He knows him as a man, he doesn't know him as a philosopher. That's really what he is. You know, if you were to know Roger Staubach as simply a next door neighbor and didn't know that he played football for the Dallas Cowboys and was the quarterback, even if you knew him and knew him fairly well, if you did not know him as a quarterback, you would not know him in that which he does best. You wouldn't really know him. If you were to live next to me and you knew me simply as a neighbor and you did not know me as a Christian, as an expositor of the Word of God, as a teacher of the scriptures, as a would-be theologian. Well, you would know me, but you wouldn't know me in, in that part of my being, which is most I, as I see it. So you see, it's possible to know God, but we don't know him in the degree of deity. And what we do know of Him, we know imperfectly, always. So we must not fall into the trap of the extreme in the study of the attributes of say, of thinking that our conceptions are adequate in kind and degree of God. Now that's one extreme. The other extreme is to say, as some men have said, not Christians, our knowledge of God is purely illusory. Now that leads to skepticism, if not to dogmatic atheism. If it is true that we cannot really look at the Bible and know God, if you tell me as a theologian that I am so finite and so limited and so utterly unlike God that what I think to be the knowledge of God is not really the knowledge of God, that he is the, now this is a common term of our contemporary theologians, that he is the holy other one. If we were to take that in its absolute literality, if he were the holy other one, then we could not know anything about God. We would have to say that we are either agnostics or atheists, skeptics. If our minds, taught by the Spirit and the Word, present us illusory conceptions of what God is, then we have no assurance that they give us evidence that he is. In other words, uh, we cannot look at the Bible and say, now the Bible is a revelation of men, and these men were finite and limited, and what they give you is not really true of God. Uh, we cannot say that, be- that is, if we want to be theists at all, because this same book is the book that authenticates for us the existence of God. And if we cannot from the word of God understand what he is like, then we cannot even understand that he is. We could not trust our thoughts and our faculties. Let's move on. Capital C. The problem, is this on the... The problem of anthropomorphism. Isn't that a lovely word, anthropomorphism? Every theologian ought to understand what anthropomorphism is. Anthropos, I have written it out underneath, that's the Greek word for man, anthropos, and morphe is the Greek word for form. So an anthropomorphism is speech about God in the language of men. Anthropomorphisms in the Bible are references to God in language that is used of men. To give you illustration, the Bible speaks in Exodus chapter thirty in verse eleven and verse twenty about God's face. Now, God does not have a face. The Father does not have a face. The Spirit does not have a face. Jesus Christ does. The face is an anthropomorphism. In second Chronicles chapter sixteen in verse nine, the Bible speaks about God's eye. Now, he does not have eyes. He is a spirit. So he does not possess eyes, but he sees. That's the point. And so in the language of men, God is described. That's an anthropomorphism. In two Samuel chapter twenty two verse nine, the Bible speaks about God's nostrils. God does not have a nose, but the nose was the means of the expression of wrath in the Old Testament, and even now it is. When a man gets angry, you can tell it by looking at his nose. And, uh, consequently, in the Bible, God's nostrils are frequently associated with his wrath. He is angry, and this is a human way of speaking about God. The Bible speaks of God's arms and feet and other ways in which it expresses his power and the fact that he may go from one place to the other fast. All of these are anthropomorphic ways of speaking about God. We had a student at seminary some years ago, about fifteen or so, and he was in my class, and a real nice fellow, but he had a quirk about him, and that quirk about him was this: he was convinced that we should understand the Bible literally. And I'm convinced that we should understand the Bible normally. But he would not even acknowledge that there was any figure of speech in the Bible. In other words, for him, everything was to be taken in a starkly literal fashion. If it said, for example, uh, I cannot follow you because I must go home and bury my father, as one of the men said to our Lord, he never recognized that as a figurative expression in common use at that time. No, his father was really dead, and he had to go to the funeral. And so finally, one day, I, in the class, this thing came up again, and I said, well, now, Richard, if that's true, then, of course, what you really are going to have to say is that God has a nose. And he looked at me real strange, because it had not, he had not really put that together with this idea that the Bible was to take, be taken completely literally. And then he answered, as you would expect a consistent man to do, but as you would expect a wise man not to do, he said, yes, God has a nose. And at that I gave up. I don't know what that young man is doing now, but, uh, my m- my guess is, if he has not changed his ideas, he's not doing much of anything worthwhile. But I hope that he has changed his viewpoint. He did not graduate from the seminary, as I remember. Why do we have anthropomorphisms in the Bible? Well, in the first place, they are necessary. And because they are necessary and because they are used, they are valid. If man is created in God's image, it should not be surprising to us that God should be described in anthropomorphic language. Now, we are not to take that literally, but we are to see the truth back of it, because it enables us to understand things about God, which we would not if they were given to us as he is. We don't have the capacity to understand God now. We are not yet spirit beings in the fullest sense. Just as we are personal, rational spirits, so God is a personal, rational spirit. Just as we have a mind, as we have volition, as we have emotions, uh, so does God. And as we are created in the image of God, we find the Bible speaking about him being like us only to draw attention to those features of God that parallel our own makeup. And of course, he has them in eminent degrees. In addition, we have no other way of knowing God if we cannot speak of him in our own terms. How can we possibly know God if we must use an unknown language? Uh, we cannot, we cannot speak of God, for we have no one to teach us that unknown language. We could not learn it. If the Bible were written in that kind of language, no one could read it. It has to be written in our language. Furthermore, Jesus Christ came as the God-man, and he has revealed God perfectly to us, and God was manifested in human form. He was manifest in the flesh, Paul says. So it's not surprising, then, that we should find God spoken of as a man in an attempt, as possessing features of man, because in this way the Bible speaks to us so we can understand it. Let's move on now to Roman two, the definition of the divine attributes. The term attribute is not an ideal term because it conveys the notion of adding something to the divine being. It's an attribute. Well, that's something that he has, and so we add to his essence, his attribute. Berkhof, one of our theologians, likes the term properties rather than attributes. The biblical term is virtues. First Peter chapter two verse nine. Perhaps we can point out the meaning of attributes in this way. First, what they are not, then what they are. So capital A, what they are not. Attributes are not parts of the divine essence. We are not to think of the attributes of God as parts of the divine essence, because theologically the whole essence of God is in every attribute, and the attribute is in the essence. So there is a unity of attribute and essence, which we are inclined to miss if we think of the attributes as something that, some as things that are added to God. Now, I have a good friend who likes to speak about the attributes as the doctrine of the essence box. But if we are to think of a box out of which we may draw goodness, righteousness, justice, and so forth, apart from the essence and the whole essence, that is an untheological illustration. Almost every human illustration is untheological and untrue ultimately, because God cannot be completely illustrated. You just cannot do it. It's like trying to illustrate the Trinity. Three in one. Well, what can we say? Well, God is like an egg. It's one, and then you have a shell, and you have a yolk, and you have the white. There you are, three in one. But that's not an illustration of God. He is a person. An egg's not a person. It doesn't greet you on at seven, quarter to seven every morning as Mary fixes my breakfast, puts it on the table. The egg doesn't say, good morning, Lewis, I'm ready. It's three in one, but it's not an illustration of the Trinity, and yet at first glance you might say, ah, finally found an illustration of the Trinity. No, you cannot illustrate God like that. Well, attributes are not parts of the divine essence, for the whole of God is in each attribute, and the attribute is in the essence. The essence did not exist by itself and prior to the attributes. God is not essence and attributes. He is essence in his attributes. In addition, attributes are not persons. A person is a mode of the existence of the essence. The essence exists as a person. That is a mode of the existence of the essence of God. God exists as Father, Son, and Spirit, three persons who subsist in one essence. Person is a mode of the existence of the essence. An attribute is a mode of the internal relation or external operation of the essence. So they're not parts, and they're not persons. What are they? Well, as uh, Shedd, one of our best theologians, says, the divine attributes are modes either of the relation or of the operation of the divine essence. I'll explain this, so don't get discouraged. They are consequently an analytical and closer description of the essence. Let me read that again. If you're going to be a theologian, you've got to think. Think. Now, I know that this is new for some of you, but nevertheless, think. Listen to what he says. The divine attributes are modes either of the relation or of the operation of the divine essence. They are consequently an analytical and closer description of the essence. Now, there are two kinds, they are of two kinds. As passively related to itself, the essence is self-existent. In other words, if we look at the essence as a relation of the divine essence, not related to others, but simply within itself, within the essence of God, then, uh, the attribute is self-existence. As passively related to duration, we have the attribute of eternality, eternity. As related to space, God is immense. As related to number, he is one. All these are inactive relationships. They are ways of existing. And so those are one aspect of his attributes, those things that mark him out as a person who does not relate, operate towards others, but just as he relates within himself. Then, as related to his action toward men, his attributes are different. Now, he, of course, is inclusive of all of these things, and we're going to discuss them one by one later on, and that's when the blessing will come, but we've got to classify them now. As actively related to action or energizing, God is omnipotent. When he acts toward men in energy, acts outside of himself, he is not simply powerful, he's all powerful. When he acts in, in knowledge, in cognizing, he is not only knowledgeable, not only wise, but he is omniscient. When he adapts means to ends, he possesses infinite wisdom. When he benevolently exercises himself towards men, he is perfectly good. So within himself, looked at only within himself, he possesses such qualities as eternity, infinity, simplicity, unity, self-existence. In his operations toward men, he demonstrates that he is omnipotent, he is all-wise, he is, uh, good, and so on. Now, Roman three, classification of the divine attributes. Many attempts have been made to classify the attributes, and some of them are these. And I'm going to run fairly quickly through these six classifications that have been suggested of the attributes. What shall we say about those properties, those excellences of God's being, and how shall we, how shall we put them together in such a way that we may remember them? Some theologians have said we should divide them, first of all, into natural and moral attributes. Under natural attributes, we have self-existence. He's not dependent on anyone else. We are. He has simplicity. He's not made up of parts. He's not body, soul, and spirit. He is a spirit being. These belong to his constitutional nature. Now, his moral attributes belong to his will, so they say, and they are truth, goodness, mercy, justice, etcetera. Now, this is not a perfect classification, and I wish I, wish we had time to have a good discussion over this, because I'm sure one or two of you would ultimately say, but, uh, after all, are not the moral attributes of God just as natural in God as the others? And I would have to say yes. And if that's so, then it's not proper for us to divide the attributes into natural and moral attributes. And that's why theologians who have suggested, have suggested this, but others have abandoned it, and I've abandoned it too. Second, absolute and relative. It's quite common for theologians to classify God's attributes as absolute on the one hand and relative on the other. By absolute attributes, they refer to his essence considered in itself, and then by relative, his essence in relationship to his creation. Now, if we look at the essence of God in relationship to himself, what does he possess? Well, he possesses self-existence. He possesses immensity. He po- possesses eternity. But if we look at his attributes in relationship to his creation, what does he possess? Well, he possesses omnipresence. He possesses omniscience. He possesses omnipotence. These are different ways of classifying the same attributes. Now, again, really all the perfections of God are relative, for they all indicate what he is in relationship to this world. Even when we say he is self-existent, we say he's not like us. He is not dependent. So it is impossible, really, to speak of absolute attributes. I cannot have knowledge of God absolutely. I'm no God. Every knowledge that I have of God, every little piece of knowledge, is a relative kind of knowledge. So I do not think it best to qua- to classify God's attributes as absolute and relative. Others have suggested imminent or intransitive, whatever that means, and imminent or transitive. Now, imminent and imminent sound alike, but do not mean the same thing. Immanent means to abide. Immanent, E-M-A-N-E-N-T, means to abide out from, that is to emerge, that type of thing. Well, now his immanent, I double M, attributes are those which do not go forth and operate outside the divine. That is, they are immanent. They remain immanent. What are they? Well, we've been thinking about these attributes. Someone tell me, what would be one of the attributes that is immanent by this classification? Hm? Self-existence, right. Uh, immensity, simplicity, eternity, so forth. Now, those that are transitive or imminent would then be what kind? For example. Hmm? What did you say? Justice, right. We have a budding theologian. Lives right next door to me almost, too. Association, I hope. Anything else? Well, all of those others. Omnipotence, justice, mercy, goodness, so forth. Well, now, if some of the attributes are purely immanent, I double M A N E N T, how could we have knowledge of them if they were totally within God? So you see, again, this classification does not really classify. Fourth, some have classified them as positive and negative. By this, they mean the positive express some positive perfection of the essence, such as omnipresent, omnipotence. They belong in a finite degree to the creature. The negative deny all defect or limitation of any kind to God, so that he is immutable, not mutable. He is infinite, not finite. He is incomprehensible, not comprehensible. I think we can pass that one by. Fifth, active and passive. Now, the active involve action, and so consequently, what types of attributes would be his active attributes? Well, they would be his omnipotence again, his justice, his benevolence, his goodness, his mercy. The passive would be those that imply what he possesses when he doesn't act towards us, when he's at rest. Well, those are those immanent attributes, that is, those that express his self-existence, his immensity, his eternity. You see, these are just different ways of saying, trying to arrange the attributes and describe them correctly. And so I'm come- going to come to the last because this is the most popular classification of the attributes among Reformed theologians. Now, the Lutherans have never really warmed up to the idea of classifying the attributes as incommunicable and communicable, but it still is the most common distinction, and this is the one that we will be following, although we will not spend a whole lot of time on this after tonight. The incommunicable attributes are those which have no analogy to the creature. His immutability. The creature is always mutable. God is immutable. God's infinity. We are finite. God's unity. We are made up of parts, and so on. The communicable are those to which the properties of human nature bear some analogy, such as his power. We have power. He has all power. We have goodness, but his goodness is perfection. We may exercise mercy, but he is perfectly merciful. We may be righteous, but he is all righteous. So the incommunicable are those that cannot be communicated to men. The communicable are those which we may, in some measure, experience. Now we must qualify this. As Hodge says, all God's attributes known to us or conceivable by us are communicable in as much as they have their analogy in us, but they are all alike incommunicable in as much as they are all infinite. And so when we say that, uh, the communicable attributes are justice, mercy, et cetera, we don't mean to say that the way in which God is good is communicable, or the way in which God is just is communicable. It is not. The degree to which he is just or communicable can never be transmitted to us, but we can in measure know them. So if we will think of God's attributes as incommunicable, those that have to do with that, those aspects of his being into which we ha- of which we have no experience, his infinity, his incomprehensibility, his eternity, uh, his self-existence, and if we will think of his communicable attributes as those of which we have some experience, we will have a classification that will enable us to understand the types of the attributes of God. Now, I began tonight by saying that there's nothing more important than our thoughts about God. There is nothing more difficult, really, than to think thoughts about God. Thomas Traherne once said, as nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well. And if that is true of human thoughts, how much more is it true of God? It may be easy to think, it is difficult to think well, it is even more difficult to think accurately of God. But to think about God is to think about the ultimate thoughts, and for us it should be a tremendously sweet and absorbing spiritual exercise to come to know God as he really is. And so to think of God in his attributes should really have a tremendous effect upon our own spiritual life, and perhaps as a result of coming to know who he really is and what he is really like. Perhaps some of the concept of the majesty of God may become a reality in our lives and be a transforming experience. At least that is my hope and my prayer. Let's bow together in a word of prayer. Father, we thank thee for the greatness of our God. We do not know, we do not for one moment think, Lord, that we can understand thee perfectly, but we know thou hast given us thy word, and thou hast said the secret things belong unto the Lord, but thou hast said the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children. Enable us, O God, to come to know thee in a better way as we study the attributes and properties of our great self-existent and eternal God. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.