Last week, my girlfriend was writing a paper on one of Plato’s dialogues, The Allegory of the Cave, and since I’m a great boyfriend I was helping her out some. The analogy takes a very interesting perspective on life. I won’t dig into the whole philosophy here but Plato’s main premise is that there are many ideas out there about reality based on the shadows of truth we see in the world. However, there is an ultimate good, which we should be striving to know. While Plato doesn’t articulate in the story who or what exactly is the ultimate good, in Christianity we believe the ultimate good is God. Though it’s not wrong to study or understand things of this world, it is of utmost importance that we understand God, at least as best we can with our limited human mind. So, in this post we will be looking at some of the basic attributes that the Bible outlines about God.
The first attribute of the God of the Bible is that He is a personal being. This does not mean that he has a physical form. The Bible is clear that God is a spirit with no material form. (John 4:24) Throughout the Bible, however, God interacts with men and the world in personal ways. For example, Exodus 33:11 states that God “spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” While God is transcendent and not bound to this physical world, (I’ll discuss this a little more later) He is also not a vague force. Deism views God as a creator who has no part in this world and is just a vague force, like Star Wars, but the Bible presents God as actively involved in the world in a very personal way.
This attribute is important for two reasons. First, it allows us to learn about Him. God has definite attributes and characteristics that we can know. We can also learn about what He has done throughout history and even some of what He will do in the future. Second, we can have a relationship with God. This will be examined more in later topics but for now I’ll just state it briefly. Humans were originally created to live in relationship with God. We have all sinned and messed this up and the point of the Gospel and Jesus’ death is to restore that relationship. God is a personal being who wants to live in relationship with us and allow us to know Him.
Another core aspect to understanding the Biblical God is the concept of the Trinity. Many books could be and have been written about this concept. The exact nature of the Trinity was hotly debated throughout much of early church history. The basic idea, if you can call it basic, is that God is one being who exists in three distinct persons; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These are not three different gods, but rather one God in three. The word trinity is never used in the Bible but the concept is alluded to in many places. It's seen in the use of the plural pronoun in Genesis 1:26. All three persons are together during Jesus’ baptism in Luke 3:22. Finally, both Jesus and Paul allude to the trinity in Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14, respectively. I would use more space to explain this concept but, honestly, I don't fully understand how it works. I believe it because I see it expressed in the Bible, not because I can grasp it fully. Other men, smarter than myself, have articulated many more words to explain the Trinity and I encourage you to read their work, if this topic interests you.
Another important group of attributes are that God is self-existent, eternal, and immutable (unchanging). God needs no other being in order to exist. In Genesis 1, God is already there before anything was created and He had existed from eternity past. In Revelation 21, He is seen reigning over the eternal future kingdom. In Psalm 139:7-12, the Psalmist writes that he can go nowhere the presence of God does not exist. God is not bound by space or time but exists outside of those parameters. He is everywhere and everywhen, simultaneously.
Since, God is not bound by time this means, as James 1:17 states, that his character never changes. We as humans change because we pass through time. We age physically and mentally. The circumstances that we go through in life change us emotionally. God, on the other hand, does not age. He sees all circumstances before Him at one moment and thus is not changed by them. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow because yesterday, today, and tomorrow all exist simultaneously for Him.
God is also omniscient and omnipotent. First, God possesses all knowledge. Isaiah 46:10 states that God declares the end from the beginning. He knows everything there is to know or ever will be known because He is the ultimate source of all truth. Second, God has all power. Job 42:2 declares that there is nothing that God cannot do and nothing that can stop Him from doing whatever He wants to do. God is creator and exists outside His creation, thus He is free to do whatever He wills with His creation. This includes circumventing the laws of nature that He established.
Finally, there is one more group of attributes that will be very important as we move on into other areas of doctrine. God is holy and righteous. In a general sense, holiness means to be "set apart." God is wholly different from creation. Anselm, in his 1078 work Proslogion, defined God as "that which no greater can be conceived."
In 1 Peter 1:15, Peter challenges his readers to be holy as God is holy. Paul is obviously talking about moral perfection here. God is perfectly moral. Everything He does is right and good because He is the creator and ultimate authority. (Psalm 145:17, Deuteronomy 32:4) God's holiness and righteousness also means that He cannot be in the presence of those that have sinned and failed to meet moral standards. (Psalm 11:4-6)
This gives us a general outline of some of the important attributes of God. There are many more that we could discuss and that will arise throughout this study of Christian beliefs. If one really stuck out to you, I encourage you to dig deeper into it. As I mentioned early, God created us to know Him and live in relationship with Him. He wants to reveal Himself to us.
