A Glossary for Thinking About God (Part 2)
Even More Classical Categories for Thinking About God
Continuing on from last week, I’m working through some categories that should guide our thoughts about God. I consider these to be something of theological guardrails. If my thoughts hit one of them, it means I’ve begun to limit God. And, since only God can define God, any of our limits are improper in our thoughts.
Speaking of limits, let’s start with…
God’s Infinitude
All we’re saying here is that God is not subject to limits. I think this is logical to most of us.
Everything God is and does is without bounds. Any sort of limiting thought is inappropriate in our theology. I’ll explain this in my next points. Because I think it’s more helpful with a concrete example. So we’ll keep moving.
God’s Eternality
Here we’re saying that God is not constrained by time.
When we say God is eternal, we’re not saying he doesn’t have a beginning or an end. We’re saying the category of time doesn’t even apply to Him.
Don’t think of time as one line, and eternity as a longer line. They have the same ideas, one’s just longer.[1]
God doesn’t have a cosmic fast-forward and rewind button that He uses to see all of time. Rather, he stands outside of time. I think it was CS Lewis who said it’s like God stands over the videotape, all laid out, so that he sees all of time at the same time.
Some would say He lives in an “everlasting now.”[2] Past and future don’t apply to God, they’re His creation. God is defined by Himself, not our temporal categories.
Or, we could talk about infinity though
God’s Incorporeality
All we’re saying here is that God doesn’t have a body.
In a lot of ways, a body is a set of limits, isn’t it? Because I’m a body, and I’m here, I can’t be there. Much less everywhere.
But God is not limited by a body. He is spirit. What does that mean? This is a question my daughter asked recently. And honestly, I don’t know. It means He doesn’t have a body.
But, thankfully, scripture speaks in a way we can understand. God uses body analogies so we can understand Him truly, even without understanding Him fully. You know this.
When the Lord stretches out his hand (Exo 7:5) or sets His face on you (Num 6:25), or has eyes and ears (Psa 34:15), the Bible is speaking in analogies so that we can understand God’s actions, even without fully understanding Him.
God’s Immutability
This means God doesn’t change. Whatever God is, it doesn’t ebb and flow.
I didn’t use “perfection” as one of my categories, but it’s implied here. Despite what the constitution says, there’s no such thing as “more perfect” – or less perfect. You can’t have a more perfect union. That would mean that it wasn’t perfect before.
So God can’t become “more God” or “Less God”. He’s unchanging. He can’t become more perfect or less perfect. God is unchanging. He’s immutable.
Part of how we experience this is through God’s faithfulness. He keeps His promises because He doesn’t change from them.
Malachi makes this clear - Malachi 3:6
“For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed…
It’s because God is unchanging that we have salvation. If He changed, it would not be good for sinful critters like us. But He doesn’t change – He’s Immutable.
God’s Impassibility
God’s impassibility stems from the fact that God doesn’t change (immutability), He’s in no way reliant or transformed by the outside (Aseity), and He doesn’t have a body (Incorporeality).
And so, you blend those together, and it proves that God cannot suffer.
This is why God had to become man. Because God could not suffer and die as God.[3] It makes the incarnation necessary. By becoming man, that’s the only way the immortal could die. But we’ll get there when we get to the doctrine of Christ.
For now, we just need to say that God doesn’t suffer, and when we talk Impassibility, theologians often mean that God doesn’t suffer with His – there are a couple different words here – His emotions or affections or passions.
Whatever sort of emotional life God has (and there’s room for debate and nuance here that I’m not getting into), it’s not affected by the outside. And it’s not affected by His body – like how I get hangry – because He doesn’t have a body, of course.
Compare this to the mythological gods like Zeus. For them, they get upset, wake up on the wrong side of Olympus, and next thing you know there’s a famine in the land, just because they’re angry that day. You don’t honor the god of the sea, and next thing you know the whole ship is being smitten? They act on the whim of their passions.
But God doesn’t have fits of anger like that. He’s not emotionally manipulated by His body or His creation.
Impassibility is difficult. I think partially because we simultaneously deny God’s affections with one hand, while elevating our experience of His affections with the other.
Remember divine Simplicity? God doesn’t have parts. There’s not a part of God that is compassionate, loving, merciful, or caring. Rather, that is what He Is in His entirety.
And so what I’m saying with impassibility is that nothing has to activate those things. Like my compassion has to be activated by Sarah McLachlan singing over sad puppy videos. But God’s compassion isn’t turned on and turned off. It’s always running. It’s who He is.
Because compassion and love and care are not things He can feel in certain circumstance, but are what He is. When His people suffer, it doesn’t have to reach a level to activate and receive His compassion or mercy. Rather, no matter what circumstances we’re in, we’re always running up against His compassion and mercy.[4]
One author states, “God is compassionate, loving, merciful, and caring because, and only because, he is impassible”[5] Otherwise, he could turn those things off when they’re not needed. That’s good news.
Here’s the last one:
God’s Holiness
When we say that God is Holy, what we’re saying is that God is “Separate” or “Different” or “Other.” [6] That’s what I’ve tried to get at this entire lesson, is that God is completely different than us.
When we think of God, that’s what I want us to think. “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts.” He’s completely different, completely other than ourselves.
Of course, Holiness is a relative term. You can only be holy if there’s something to be separate or different from. If we’re talking about God as Himself, “holy” doesn’t make much sense. But because or perspective is from creation, it’s helpful.[7] When you think of God, think “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Think of how incredibly different He is. How much greater He is, not just in degree, but in Kind.
When God says “I AM WHAT I AM” He’s saying, I’m not like you, I’m like me. I’m so different and distinct, there’s nothing you can compare me to.
And when we expand that word into these 10 categories – I hope you now have a more vivid picture of what God is.
I’ve quoted AW Tozer a lot in these last two posts – he’s not great on everything, but he’s really helpful on the doctrine of God. And 60 years ago, he wrote this in The Knowledge of the Holy. I think it’s actually more true today then it was then. He writes,
“The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him – and of her. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place.”[8]
Amen.
[1] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 2: God and Creation.
[2] Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, 78.
[3] Bray, The Attributes of God, 36.
[4] On this, Anselm writes, in Proslogion, “How, then, are You merciful and not merciful, O Lord, unless it be that You are merciful in relation to us and not in relation to Yourself? In fact, You are [merciful] according to our way of looking at things and not according to Your way. For when You look upon us in our misery it is we who feel the effect of Your mercy, but You do not experience the feeling. Therefore You are both merciful because You save the sorrowful and pardon sinners against You; and You are not merciful because You do not experience any feeling of compassion for misery.”
[5] Barrett, None Greater, 117.
[6] Bray, The Attributes of God, 92.
[7] Gerald Lewis Bray, God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2012), 159–60.
[8] Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, 19.