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THE NATURE OF GOD

CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES AND TRADITION view God as independent of all else that exists, that is, as:

To grasp these crucial terms, we show them in slow motion, making clear precisely how they are attested in Scripture, interpreted by tradition, organized by reason, and celebrated in a worshiping community. These are defining characteristics of the divine life.

God Is Before Time

God does not need a world to be God, at least not a particular world. But, as the ancient ecumenical exegetes well knew, to imagine God as prior to creation is exceptionally difficult for minds that are themselves the products of creation (Novatian, On Trin. 3; Augustine, Conf. 7.17). To think of God as originator of time is mind-boggling to finite minds who think only within the confines of time and space (Augustine, Conf. 11.11–13; Cassiodorus, Expos. Pss., 49.7).

God minus the world is God. The world minus God is nothing. This is essential to any teaching of creation or of the Creator. If so, what can we say about God prior to creation? What characteristics might God be said to have even before positing of any world or any time. Here we are reflecting upon what might be knowable about the “primordial nature of God,” that pre-temporal nature of God that preconditions any activity in or relationship with the world.

The attributes or qualities implied in such a hypothesized pre-relational, pre-time, pre-space, pre-world being are called attributes of God’s absolute essence. They are primary attributes of God inapplicable to creatures.

All of these have traditionally been called incommunicable attributes, in the sense that they cannot be communicated from God to creatures, or ascribed to creatures, or bestowed upon or even shared with creatures. For no creature is or can ever become uncreated or utterly self-sufficient (Gregory of Nazianzus, First Theol. Orat.; Calvin, Inst. 1.10–13; Anglican Thirty-nine Articles).

The Divine Sufficiency

The Uncreated One: God Is Self-sufficient, Independent, Necessary, Underived

Scripture attests that God is the Uncreated One, underived, the Source and End of all things (Ps. 90; Isa. 40:28; Theodoret, Comm. on Is. 12.40.25; 1 Cor. 1:30). “Before me there was no god fashioned nor ever shall be after me. I am the Lord, I myself” (Isa. 43:10; Calvin, Inst. 1.7). God is by definition self-sufficient, in the sense that this One cannot be dependent upon any other being, since all things have their beginning and end in this One (Augustine, Conf. 2.5, 11.2; Trin. 1. 6; Anselm, Monologium 5–6).

The most telling Hebraic name for God, “I AM” (Yahweh), suggests that God simply and incomparably is. If anyone should try to speak of some “cause of God,” that would demonstrate the folly of the speaker. That would mean that the alleged cause of God would displace God as the cause of all things, tantamount to discarding God and ascribing deity to whatever that prior cause might conceived to be (Novatian, Trin. 3).

This uncreated cause of all things is addressed personally, unlike the “other gods”: “O Lord our God, other lords than you have been our masters, but you alone do we invoke by name” (Isa. 26:13; Augustine, EDH, Question 69.4). To this independent, self-sufficient being “everything is possible” (Mark 10:27). Isaiah prophesied of God: “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no god but me” (Isa. 44:6; Theophilus, To Autolycus 1. 1–5; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q5). Job is asked by Yahweh: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?” (Job 38:4).

To affirm that God is underived or independent or necessary means that God depends on no cause external to God. God’s life is contingent upon nothing else. This is sometimes called aseity (from a se, from itself) or self-existence, or underived existence. To say that God is uncreated or self-existent means that God is without origin, that God is the only ground of God’s being, and that there is no cause prior to God (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q7, 8). This teaching arises necessarily out of the awareness that if any outcomes or effects exist at all, then there must be causes, and consequently some reality must ultimately be uncaused, or have the cause in itself. Such a being must exist in itself, requiring no antecedent cause.

This eternal One has not at some point in time become the Supreme Being, but simply is, and has never been otherwise. This being whose nature is to be, the Hebrews called Yahweh (“I am Who I am,” Exod. 3:14) and Teutonic languages have called God. God has no cause external to God, and this is precisely what makes God God and not something else (Hilary, On Trin. 1. 5).

Some may object that this self-existence by its very language shuts out creatures and points to a being who needs no one to “complete himself,” and “nothing but himself” in order to be. In the coming discussion of creation we will correct the impression left by some natural theology that God could have been happy and better blessed without creation. At this point, however, we have a much less ambitious aspiration: simply to establish the primordial independence of God that preconditions God’s engagement with the world (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 30; Hilary, On Trin. 2.2, 2.6).

The Difference Between God and Anything Else

Essential attributes are those that are intrinsic to God. They belong to God apart from and, so to speak “prior to” any expression of God’s activity or energies in the created order (Gregory Nyssa, To Eunomius 3.5). “Prior to” is used hypothetically, because time begins with creation strictly speaking. So chronologically there is no time prior to creation, but logically God may rightly be said to be prior to and the ground of creation (Augustine, Conf. 13.34).

The relations that God creates and enables are not necessary to God’s being, for God alone created them. No relation in which the necessary being freely engages can place a final limit on God’s own primordial being.

God’s freely chosen relationships do not fundamentally displace or frustrate this divine sufficiency (Deut. 28:3; Ps. 119:12; Rom. 4:6, 9; 9:5; Chrysostom, Comm. on Rom. 16; Calvin, Inst. 2.8). The freedom of God has no limit except whatever limit God chooses freely to permit. God’s gracious choice to create and share being with other beings is an expression of God’s unfettered freedom. God’s underived existence is not conditioned by anything except that which God elects to provide and permit through a world in which other beings temporarily are empowered through God’s unlimited power (Job 21:15; Ps. 91:1; Heb. 6:3; Rev. 21:22; Apringius of Beja, Tractate on the Apoc. 21.24–26; Calvin, Inst. 1.17–18).

The Unity of God

One God

The Source and End of all things is One, not divisible into parts. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut. 6:4). This reality—God, Yahweh, Elimagehimagem, Theos—the central subject of all Jewish-Christian Scripture, is one, not many. Any polytheistic conception is by definition inadequate (Arnobius, Ag. the Heathen 3: Tertullian, Ag. Hermogenes 3). “Is there any God beside me?” (Isa. 44:8; Jerome, Comm. on Is. 12.18).

There is no pantheon. “I am God, there is no other” (Isa. 45:22). There are no gradations of divinity. God is the one and only incomparable divine being. Jesus affirmed the ancient way of Israel that maintained: “The Lord our God is the only Lord” (Mark 12:29). “Among the gods not one is like you, O Lord, no deeds are like yours…. You alone are God” (Ps. 86:8, 10). “Among the gods” is not a tacit concession to polytheism, but a way of exposing the futility of faith in claims made for other alleged deities. Similarly, Paul: “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom all being comes, towards whom we move” (1 Cor. 8:6). There is no other “god” to which God can be compared (Origen, De Princip. 1. 1; Jerome Letters 15.4).

A statue or graven image of God must not be made since God cannot be reduced to creaturely matter, even though God’s glory may shine through creaturely beings (Second Council of Nicaea, session 1). In the Old Testament there is a symbolic visualization of seraphim and cherubim in the holy of holiest; however, they are not worshiped as God but only as pointing beyond themselves, an expression of the aura of God’s presence, a reflection of the manifold glory of the one God (Basil, Letters 8; Calvin, Inst. 1.10.3; Pearson, Expos. of the Creed 1).

With his usual precision, John of Damascus summarized the point: “If there are many Gods, how can one maintain that God is uncircumscribed? For where the one would be, the other could not be” (John of Damascus, OF 1. 5; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q15).

Simplicity

Simplicity is the opposite of composition. God is one, not composed of parts. The fullness of God is present in each of God’s discrete actions (Clement of Alex., Stromata 5.12; Hilary, On Trin. 1.6; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q3). In God all the diversity of creation is unified (Augustine, CG 11.10; Anselm, Monologium 17; Julia of Norwich, SGL; Wesley, “Unity of the Divine Being”). To assert that God is absolutely simple is to stand against the proposition that God could be divisible into parts (Ambrose, On Chr. Faith 1. 16; Augustine, Trin. 5.5; Basil, Letters 234). The triune teaching strongly affirms the unity of God, for God is “not three gods,” but Three-in-One (Gregory of Nyssa, On “Not Three Gods”).

This One simply is. There is no “has been” or “will be” for God, for whom all temporal events are simultaneously experienced. Whatever God has been, God is eternally. Whatever God can be, God is eternally (Augustine, Conf 7.10; CG 8.6, 11.10). And whatever distinctions human imagination might apply to God, God remains one through and beyond such distinctions (Athanasius, Ag. the Heathen 38, 39). The essence of God is simply to exist in the uniquely simple way that only God can exist—as God (Athanasius, Defense of Nicaea: 22; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q3).

Infinity

The infinite is that which has no end, no limit, no finite boundary, and thus cannot be measured or timed by any finite standard (Catherine of Siena, Prayers 12). The infinite cannot be reached by successive addition or exhausted by successive subtraction of finite numbers, parts, or qualities (Gregory of Nazianzus, On Theophany 7).

Worshipers acknowledge their human, natural, and historical limitations in time and space, yet their petitions implicitly point beyond all times and spaces toward that unsurpassable One who transcends and embraces all times, all spaces (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 45.3; Anselm, Monologium 15; Teresa of Avila, Life 39).

It is only when infinity is attributed to God that the concept has precise, plausible, and consistent meaning (John of Damascus, OF 1.13). All of God’s good qualities are said to be without end or limit (Hilary, On Trin. 2.6), so infinity applies to every divine attribute, for God is infinitely merciful, infinitely holy, infinitely just (Calvin, Inst. 1.13).

Immeasurability

God is clearly not any thing that can be measured. Every creaturely being can be measured—even galaxies, if we had a big enough measuring device (Ambrose, Of the Chr. Faith 2.8.59–73). By this means we are walking on a negative path (via negativa) toward knowledge of God, where limitations and imperfections are, one by one, removed from the character of God.

The divine immensity is the divine infinity regarded from the point of view of space. “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and of His greatness there is no end” (Ps. 145:3; Tho. Aq., SCG 1.43). The medieval scholastics taught that “God’s center is everywhere, God’s circumference nowhere” (Bonaventure, Soul’s Journey into God 2). God transcends all spatial relations, while remaining their ultimate cause and ground (Hermas, The Pastor 2.1; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 4.20; Tertullian, Ag. Praxeas 16).

Having built the temple, Solomon humbly asked: “But can God indeed dwell on earth? Heaven itself, the highest heaven, cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have built” (1 Kings 8:27). How is human imagination and reason to measure God? After Job had inquired of God, being unable to fathom the divine purpose, God then inquired of Job: “Have you comprehended the vast expanse of the world? Come, tell me all this, if you know” (Job 38:18). “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades or loose Orion’s belt?” (Job 38:31; Gregory I, Morals on Job 29.77). “Tell me, if you know and understand” how the earth’s foundations were laid. “Who settled its dimensions? Surely you should know. Who stretched his measuring-line over it?” (Job 38:4, 5). Human imagination stands in meek silence in the presence of the Measurer of all our measurements (Julia of Norwich, Showings).

As time cannot circumscribe eternity, so the totality of space cannot encompass the divine immensity. God is not containable or measurable by even the most extensive schemes of measurement (John of Damascus, OF 1.13). God is so boundless that our very word immensity remains a weak and inexact way of pointing to the relation of God and space. It is only of God that one can rightly speak of infinite immensity (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q7), for only God is neither measured nor measurable.

The attributes of infinity, immensity, eternity, and omnipresence are closely intertwined. For immensity is infinity regarded from the viewpoint of space, whereas eternity is infinity regarded from the viewpoint of time. God’s infinity is eternal in relation to time and immeasurable in relation to space. Omnipresence is God’s mode of being present to all aspects of both space and time. Although God is present in all time and space, God is not locally limited to any particular time or space. God is everywhere and in every now (Calvin, Inst. 1.13.1, 21; Quenstedt, TDP 1:288). At first glance it may seem that talk of the divine immensity is far removed from Christian worship, yet rightly viewed this divine perfection powerfully lifts human thoughts toward a necessary being above all creaturely measurement (Teresa of Avila, Way of Perfection 19).

Eternity

That which is eternal is without beginning and without ending (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5.14). According to Boethius, divine eternity is “simultaneous and perfect possession of interminable life” (Consolation of Phil., 5.6; Augustine, True Religion, 40).

For God, the whole of time is viewed as now (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q10.; Kierkegaard, Phil. Frag. 2). “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day” (2 Pet. 3:8; Eusebius of Emesa, Cramer, CEC 99–100; Ps. 90:4).

God does not grow older with time. For humans who are time-bound, it is difficult to imagine that all time is present, as if now, to this divine consciousness. God is the inexorable one who outlasts every time. “You are the same, and your years have no end” (Ps. 102:27; Isa. 40:28, Rev. 1:4). “The guardian of Israel never slumbers, never sleeps” (Ps. 121:4). “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the sovereign Lord of all” (Rev. 1:8). “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deut. 33:27; Athenagoras, A Plea for Chr. 31).

God had no beginning, for who would be there to begin God? “From age to age everlasting thou art God” (Ps. 90:2). If God were imagined as a temporal being, God would have to have had a beginning. But God wholly transcends time without ceasing to be present to time. “The Lord, the everlasting God, creator of the wide world, grows neither weary nor faint” (Isa. 40:28). Abraham at Beersheba “invoked the Lord, the everlasting God, by name” (Gen. 21:33). The benediction of Jude prayed to One who is “before all time”: “Now to the One who can keep you from falling and set you in the presence of his glory, jubilant and above reproach, to the only God our Savior, be glory and majesty, might and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all time, now, and for evermore. Amen” (Jude 25; Hilary of Arles, Intro. Comm. on Jude 25).

The faithful share in God’s eternal life, but not in the same unbeginning sense that God lives eternally. The eternal I AM is before and after every space and time. God is the incomparable One present in every time. The eternity of God is not adequately described as an indefinite extension of temporal duration. Eternity is an attribute intrinsic to God and to God alone.

The same eternal One who is giver of time sovereignly chooses to enter into relationships with finite creatures, freely willing to participate in time, ordering and guiding the temporal process, not as if it were necessary to God’s essential being, but as utterly contingent upon the divine (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 4.5; Gregory of Nyssa, Ag. Eunomius 8.1; Wesley, On Eternity).

Those who are time-bound in every moment of consciousness may tend understandably to think of eternity as infinite duration, but this is an inexact idea. Since human reason and experience are so saturated with the assumption of time, it is difficult for the time-bound to fathom this mystery.

Only by feeble analogies can humans think of time as God thinks of time: Eternity is like a circle that continues endlessly in the same line, yet its circumference can be divided and measured. It is as if God were on a mountain watching a river. Humans see the flow of this river only from a particular point on the bank, but God, as if from high above, sees the river in its whole extent, at every point, simultaneously (Hilary, On Trin. 12.39; Calvin, Inst. 2.8–10).

The incarnation of God in the flesh bestows decisive significance upon all time. God the Son inhabits human flesh without ceasing to be eternal (Hilary, On Trin. 3; Nemesius, On Nature of Man 3). As in creation God is manifested in time, so in the incarnation God is manifested bodily in the flesh. Just as the Son does not stop being God while becoming human—feeling, experiencing, and acting as a human being—so does the Father not cease to be God while engaging in active relationship with unfolding time, acting as God in and through the conditions of time (Augustine, Trin. 14; Letters 143.7; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q10).

God’s Joy in Simply Being

God finds eternal joy in being. There can be no desire to “cease to be” in One who is insurmountably blessed and wise. God could never wish to end God’s own life. That would be unthinkable, since inconsistent with God’s blessed enjoyment of life. God exists in the fullest imaginable sense.

Simply being is a source of infinite enjoyment to one who incomparably is. God would never yearn to be less than God in full plenitude. God would never despair over simply being God in the fullest sense conceivable. The joy that comes from being is eternal joy. Thus it is said that God is infinitely happy simply and eternally to be (Ex. 3:14; Hilary, Trin., 1.5; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q26).

God has set eternity in the heart of humanity, yet it remains characteristic of the human finiteness that it “cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Eccl. 3:11). We glimpse the eternal only in part and await the end of history in which the purposes of the eternal One are to be made fully clear: “Now we see only puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then”—that is, when the divine purpose is finally revealed at the end of history—“we shall see face to face. My knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, like God’s knowledge of me” (1 Cor. 13:12, 13; Didymus the Blind, Montanist Oracles, On the Trin. 103.2).

The Living God

To Be Incomparably Alive is God’s Nature

The living God (chai Elōhimagem, Theo zōntos) is the Subject of holy Scripture (1 Sam. 17:26; Ps. 42:2; Matt. 16:16; 1 Thess. 1:9; Heb. 12:22; Rev. 7:2). God’s unutterable aliveness is contrasted with the immobility and impotence of “the gods.” Jeremiah spoke of God (Elōhimagem), in contrast to humanly fashioned idols, as “God in truth, a living [chai] God” (Jer. 10:10). Idols do not live, except in the mind’s eye of mortals (Ps. 115:3–9). “The gods who did not make heaven and earth shall perish from the earth” (Jer. 10:11). In response to the incomparable aliveness of God, the psalmist exclaimed: “My whole being cries out with joy to the living God” (Ps. 84:2). Hence classical Christian teachers sought to clarify the sense in which it is confessed that God is alive and that God lives (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.6; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 18.29).

Life is that which differentiates a plant, animal, or human being from something that is dead—inorganic, nonliving matter (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q18). God’s being is intrinsically characterized by life, by being alive (Gregory of Nyssa, Ag. Eunomius VIII.5; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q18). It cannot be properly conceived that God could die, because life is intrinsic to God, an attribute of the divine essence. Even when we despair of life (Job 9:21; 2 Cor. 1:8), God continues to give us life (Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death). The life of God is the eternal, underived vitality of God’s being.

It is God’s very nature to be alive, so much so that God is properly known as the life of all that lives (Chrysostom, Comm. on John 47; Calvin, Inst. 2.3.20; Quenstedt, TDP 1: 289; Watson, TI 1:350). John’s Gospel proclaimed that God the Father “has life-giving power in himself” (John 5:26; Novatian, Treatise Concerning the Trin. 14).

God’s way of being alive is distinguishable from other forms of life. Plants, animals, and humans enjoy life at different scales of consciousness, movement, and self-determination. But in all plants, animals, and humans, bodily life ends in death. From the moment of conception, the processes of decay and death are at work in our bodies. Not so in God’s life. God’s life is eternally alive. God’s life is not only without end but without beginning. For before anything was alive, God was alive (Gen. 1:1). When this world is gone, God remains alive (Luke 1:33; Heb. 7:3; Chrysostom, Comm. on Hebrews 12). “He is himself the universal giver of life and breath and all else” (Acts 17:25, 26; Chrysostom, Comm. on Acts 38). That which is alive has soul, or aliveness. Insofar as creatures are alive, they share in the life of God (Augustine, Conf. 10.5; Tertullian, On the Soul).

It is the living God to whom the worshiping community prays. God is present in unceasing spontaneity and limitless energy. The tetragrammaton (YHWH) points to God’s incomparable aliveness (Origen, OFP 1. 3). Not only is God living, but also the source of our life—active and tireless (Isa. 40:28; Ps. 121:4). God is unfailingly alert and aware, as distinguished from “the gods,” who, without life, are without consciousness or power (Hilary, On Trin. 8.43).

The Living God Is Eternally Active

It is an active, engaged God who is portrayed in Scripture, not quiescent, not merely letting creation be or leaving humans alone to their own devices (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.5; Augustine, CG 5.11; Calvin, Inst. 2.3.10). The essence of God is known through God’s energies and activities (Gregory of Nyssa, Ag. Eunomius 1. 18). God’s will is manifested in God’s actions (melãkāh, energeia, through energies, operations, workings). History, according to the Hebraic view, is the story of the acts of God (Deut. 11:7; 1 Sam. 12:7; Ps. 150:2). God is active from the beginning to the end of time.

God is willing to allow companionate willing creatures. God’s willing is eternally operative. God’s power is never static, but always working, ever active, eternally in motion, never immobilized, never stalemated, never depressed (Isa. 40:1; Jer. 27:1; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q3.1, 2; SCG 1. 13; Luther, Comm. on Galatians).

The Majesty of God

It is this sovereign One who deals intimately with creation, this infinite One who nurtures finitude, this immeasurable One who cares about the smallest sparrow, this eternal One who sustains time.

Relational Attributes Displaying God’s Presence, Knowledge, and Power in the World

We have spoken above of primary or essential attributes. The ensuing attributes speak of God as One who freely brings the world into being and enters into a relation with the world.

We are now recounting those qualities that display God’s way of relating to the world of creatures: being present to them, knowing them, and influencing them.

Since these characteristics all presuppose creatures in relation to their Creator, they are called relational attributes of God. Unlike God’s eternality, these attributes cannot be conceived apart from God’s relation to the world. For how could God be conceived to be omnipresent without a world to which to be present? Or omnipotent without a world through which the divine influence is everywhere felt?

No being relates to the world as God does. The unique ways God touches the world are called relational attributes (Quenstedt, LT 1.289; Watson, TI 1:365). In these relationships, God is accommodating to creatures’ limits and capacities (Hilary, On Trin. 4.17, 6.16, 8.43; Heppe, RD: 57; Schmid, DT: 177).

Consensual Christian teaching typically begins by confessing these three relational attributes: God’s ubiquitous presence in the world (omnipresence); God’s complete knowledge of the world and time (omniscience); and God’s almighty power (omnipotence).

God’s Way of Being Near: Omnipresence

Paul preached that God is “not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move, in him we exist” (Acts 17:27–28; Augustine, Trin. 16). The holy God is present in all things: “Am I a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord” (Jer. 23:24).

No particle is so small that God is not fully present to it. No galaxy is so vast that God does not circumscribe it. No space is without the divine presence. God is in touch with every aspect of creation. God cannot be excluded from any location or object in creation (Augustine, Greatness of the Soul 34; Second Helvetic Conf. 3; Wesley, The Omnipresence of God).

Every finite object exists in some place. Only God is able to be everywhere without being limited to some specific location.

We measure the size of finite things by how much space they occupy. God does not fit into these categories of location. God’s presence is not simply in one location, as is ours, but all locations, and transcending all locations (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 4.5). In worship we receive the memory of One who is the intimate companion of our existence but, at the same time, the intimate companion of all other beings, while transcending each and all (Athanasius, Incarnation of the Word 1. 8–10).

The Christian teaching of God’s presence everywhere is more than an abstract idea without personal significance. It is an intimate comfort to those who pray to know of and experience the divine availability (Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle I). God is a very present help in time of need (Ps. 46:1; Rom. 8:39). To affirm that God is high and lifted up above creaturely reality does not imply that God is absent from creatures (Gregory of Nazianzus, Second Theol. Orat. 11–21; Calvin, Inst. 1.11.3).

The most holy One is precisely the One who is most personally near: “Thus speaks the high and exalted one, whose name is holy, who lives for ever: I dwell in a high and holy place with him who is broken and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, to revive the courage of the broken” (Isa. 57:15; Jerome, Comm. on Is. 16.11). But being near one place does not imply that God is absent from another (Jer. 23:23). “The Lord looks out from heaven, he sees the whole race of men; he surveys from his dwelling-place all the inhabitants of the earth. It is he who fashions the hearts of all men alike, who discerns all that they do” (Ps. 33:13, 14; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q8).

The presence of God was thought by classical exegetes to encompass the widest possible range of creaturely activity—natural, active, conscious, moral, bodily, sacramental, and sacred. Scholastic traditions distinguished modes of God’s presence:

God is naturally present in every aspect of the natural order, every level of causality, every fleeting moment and momentous event of natural history (Ps. 8:3; Isa. 40:12; Origen, Ag. Celsus 7.34; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 4.5).

God is actively present in every event of history as provident guide of human affairs (Ps. 48:7 f.; Augustine, CG 7.30).

God is in a special way attentively present to those who call upon his name, intercede for others, who adore God, who petition, who pray earnestly for forgiveness (Matt. 18:19–20; Acts 17:27; Cyprian, Epistles 7).

God is judicially present in moral awareness, through conscience (Ps. 48:1, 2; Athanasius, Ag. Heathen 41).

God is bodily present in the incarnation of his Son, Jesus Christ (John 1:14; Col. 2:9; Hilary, On Trin. 8.24).

God is sacramentally present in the Eucharist, and through the means of grace in the church, the body of Christ (Eph. 2:12; John 6:56; Ambrose, On the Mysteries 5).

God is sacredly present and becomes known in special places where God chooses to meet us, places that become set apart by the faithful, remembering community (1 Cor. 11:23–29), where it may be said: “Truly the Lord is in this place” (Gen. 28:16; Gen. 23:18; Matt. 18:20; Augustine, CG 22.29).

In all these ways God is present to the world. God is present to creatures in more ways than creatures can recognize (Augustine, Letters 137.2).

God’s Way of Knowing: Omniscience

Only God knows all creation omnisciently—altogether beginning to end—without limitation or condition. The psalmist praised God’s wisdom as “beyond all telling” (Ps. 147:5; Ps. 94:9–11; Ps. 139) and God’s understanding as immeasurable (Ps. 147:4–5; Augustine, On Psalms 90.7.1–10). God’s incomparable way of knowing knows the end of things even from the beginning: “I reveal the end from the beginning, from ancient times I reveal what is to be; I say, ‘My purpose shall take effect, I will accomplish all that I please.” (Isa. 46:9, 10; Clement of Alex., Stromata 6.17).

Jesus taught his disciples: “Your Father knows what your needs are before you ask him” (Matt. 6:8, Anon., Incomplete Work on Matthew, Hom.13). Paul exclaimed: “O depth of wealth, wisdom, and knowledge in God! How unsearchable his judgments, how untraceable his ways! Who knows the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor?” (Rom. 11:33, 34). The New Testament constantly echoes the theme of the fully aware God found in the psalms and prophets: “There is nothing in creation that can hide from him; everything lies naked and exposed to the eyes of the One with whom we have to reckon” (Heb. 4:13). One who is greater than our self-condemning conscience “knows all” (1 John 3:20; Augustine, CG 5.9; Enchiridion 104).

How can we get our sluggish intellects in touch with the awesome conception that God knows all? The divine omniscience is best viewed as the infinite consciousness of God in relation to all possible objects of knowledge. God knows past, present, and future (John of Damascus, OF 2.10). God knows external events and inward motivations (Hilary, On Trin. 9.29). God does not perceive fragmentarily as humans perceive, as if from a particular nexus of time, but knows exhaustively, in eternal simultaneity (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 2.26–8; Catherine of Siena, Prayers 7). God looks to the ends of the earth, sees the whole of the heavens (Isa. 46; Job 28), knows the secrets of the heart (Ps. 44:21). “You have traced my journey and my resting places, and are familiar with all my paths. For there is not a word on my tongue but you, Lord, know them all” (Ps. 139:3, 4). “Such knowledge is beyond my understanding, so high that I cannot reach it” (v. 6). “Darkness is not dark for you and night is luminous as day” (v. 12).

Jesus taught: the very hairs of our heads are numbered by the Father (Matt. 10:30; Chrysostom, Hom. on Matt., Hom. 34.2–3), suggesting that every discrete aspect of personal existence is known to God (Justin Martyr, First Apol. 12). No sparrow falls without God’s recognition (Matt. 10:29; Kierkegaard, Gospel of Suffering). God searches the hearts of all (Rom. 8:27).

We know some things, but God knows incomparably more, greater, and better (Ambrose, To Gratian on Chr. Faith 5.6; Augustine, On Trin. 15.22; CG 12.18; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q14.13). “The eyes of the Lord are everywhere” (Prov. 15:3; Benedict of Nursia, Rule, 19), implying that God sees all simultaneously. God knows objects as distanced from one another, but not from God, for there can be no distance of any object from God (Augustine, CG 5.11). God’s knowing is said to be (a) eternally actual, not merely possible; (b) eternally perfect, as distinguished from a knowledge that begins, increases, decreases, or ends; (c) complete instead of partial; and (d) both direct and immediate, instead of indirectly reflected or mediated (Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 63–71).

Pantheism has exaggerated this closeness so as to imagine that God is indistinguishable from all things; hence, the pantheistic idea of God holds that God is conscious only in and through the consciousness of finite creatures. Such knowing cannot be infinite knowing. This is why pantheism has been so often rejected by Christian teaching (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Her. 1. 21; Augustine, Concerning Faith of Things Not Seen). For in seeking to affirm that God is in all things, it forgets the biblical premise that God is prior to, above, and beyond all things.

The wisdom of God is God’s incomparable ability to order all things in the light of good, to adjust causes to effects, and means to ends, so that the divine purposes are firm and never finally thwarted (Prov. 2:2; Isa. 10:13; 1 Cor. 1:21; Athanasius, On the Incarnation 15; Calvin, Inst. 1.16).

The Mystery of Divine Foreknowing

God foreknows the use of free will, yet this foreknowledge does not determine events. Rather, what God foreknows is determined by what happens, part of which is affected by free will.

God knows what will happen, but does not unilaterally determine each and every event immediately—that would dishonor human freedom and the reliability of secondary causes. God fully understands and knows all these specific secondary determining causes that are at work in the natural order, but that does not imply that merely by fiat God constantly acts so as to overrule or circumvent these causes. God’s merely foreknowing these causes does not negate or undermine their causal reality (Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word 1–6; Hilary, Trin. 9.61–75). Hence God’s foreknowledge does not imply God’s omnicausality or absolute determination so as to eliminate all other creaturely wills. God knows what other wills are doing by divine permission (Justin Martyr, First Apol. 45–53). God’s knowledge is precisely of free choice, of human and creaturely willing (Athanasius, Four Discourses Ag. Arians 3.30; Augustine, CG 5.9; Luis de Molina, Scientia Media, RPR: 424–6).

God not only grasps and understands what actually will happen, but also what could happen under varied possible contingencies. If God’s knowing is infinite, God knows even the potential effects of hypothetical but unactualized possibilities, just as well as God knows what has or will come to be. God knows what would have been had things been otherwise and had different historical decisions been made (Augustine, On Spirit and Letter 58; Ag. Two Letters of Pelagians 3.25–4.4; Calvin, Inst. 3.21, 22). This assumes that God knows, easily and without effort, an infinite number of alternative universes that could have been but as yet are not.

This affirmation is encompassed in the celebration of God’s omniscience. God knows not only what is, but what possibly might be, yet is not, and what can be but will never be, and what might eventually be chosen but as yet remains undecided and subject to creaturely freedom. This has been called “God’s knowledge of the hypothetical” or scientia media. It is God’s knowledge of the middle or hypothetical ground between freedom and necessity, which is neither the necessary knowledge that God has of himself (scientia necessaria), nor the knowledge that God has of the freedom of his creatures (scientia libera, Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q14; Watson, TI 1: 375). Hence it is said that “God’s necessary knowledge precedes every free act of the divine will; free knowledge follows the act of will” (Alsted, Theologia Scholastica 98, RD: 79; Augustine, On Spirit and Letter 58).

Suppose the opposite were true, that God’s knowing were almost infinite but not quite; and that God knew only what has happened and will happen, but not what might have happened. Such a “God” would hardly be omniscient. Suppose that God knew what free agents have chosen and will choose, but not what they will consider choosing but reject. This is a misleading view that would block God from awareness of the inward depths of the free subject self struggling to decide between possibilities. It fails to grasp the biblical vision of God who has “searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely” (Ps. 139:1–4).

Consensual teaching has thought hard about the difficult question of how God’s omniscience correlates with the contingent freedom of creatures. If God knows what I later will do, does that take away my freedom? Although it may at first seem so, the consensus of classical Christian teaching is to answer no. Human freedom remains freedom, significantly self-determining, even if divinely foreknown (John of Damascus, OF 4.21; Augustine, CG 5.9).

God’s foreknowledge of events does not destroy the reality of other influences than the divine. God knows whether a marigold seed will bear a flower, but that knowledge does not override the conditions that would affect the growth of the plant. God does not arbitrarily take the place of natural forces and levels of causality that God himself has graciously provided creatures.

God foresaw that Jerusalem would fall to the Babylonians. But the faithful are not imagining that foreknowledge in itself directly or unilaterally caused the defeat without any other historical, human, or natural forces or influences at work.

The biblical principle underlying such distinctions is “God makes all His works good, but each becomes of its own choice good or evil” (John of Damascus, OF 4.21; Gen. 1–3). Suppose it were asserted that God’s knowledge of future events completely destroys the effectiveness of the free self-determining influences that God foresees. That would result in a fatalism that undercuts human freedom. That would be tantamount to asserting that there is only one will in the universe, the will of God, and that no other wills exist. That is an extreme view, contrary to Christian teaching about creation, human freedom, self-determination, and human dignity (Luis de Molina, Scientia Media, RPR: 424–30).

Origen’s debate with Celsus was the prototype of all these arguments. It grew out of an exegetical issue: Did Judas freely commit his traitorous deed, or since it was prophesied in Scripture (Ps. 108), must God be held responsible, since God foreknew it? Celsus argued the latter. Origen argued both that Judas willed it and that God foreknew it. “Celsus imagines that an event, predicted through foreknowledge, comes to pass because it was predicted; but we do not grant this, maintaining that he who foretold it was not the cause of its happening” (Ag. Celsus 2.20). It is foolish to say that in whatever God foreknows there is no freedom, thought Origen, for it is precisely the acts of free will that God foreknows.

A related potential misunderstanding flows from this question: If God is unchangeable, how can God know duration or succession? The classic consensual answer: If God is infinite in knowing the world, God must be aware of duration and succession, even though not bound by them. If God did not understand duration and succession, God would understand even less about time than we do.

God does not cease being eternal in the process of knowing time. God views all times as eternal now. God thus beholds and understands the process of temporal succession. We do not know next year until next year, but God knows next year already. We learn only successively through experiencing, but God does not have to learn something God already knows. We know things in part and by pieces, but God knows things fully, all at once, while yet being aware of how temporal things slowly come to be or evolve. What we consider to be future events are to God not future but present events, so what we call divine foreknowledge is to God simply present knowledge (Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 70, 71; Calvin, Inst. 3.22). Summing up: God conceives all things simultaneously but perceives all things in terms of their duration and succession (Watson, TI 1:371; Pope, Compend. 83).

God’s Way of Influencing: Omnipotence

God’s influence upon the world is unlike any other mode of influence—unlimited in capacity, though spare in correction. Omnipotence may be defined as the perfect ability of God to do all things that are consistent with the divine character (Athanasius, Ag. Heathen 28–47; Augustine, CG 5.10). God can do all that God wills to do. Omnipotence points to the necessary form of power pertinent to the One worthy to be worshipped (Hilary, On Trin. 3.6, 9.72; Quenstedt, LT 1:289). God is not limited in any of the divine attributes by anything external to himself. No power in history has any other empowering source ultimately than God (Ps. 59:11–16; Origen, Comm. on Rom. 13.1; Calvin, Inst. 1.5).

“Almighty” refers to God’s way of expressing His will. It is how God alone exercises influence: Everywhere and over all. This extent of the influence of God is called omnipotence, that is, over all things, yet over all things in such a way as to empower and enable the freedom of other things besides God. This does not imply that God wills in every instance everything that God can possibly will, for that would suggest that God is capable only of willing but not also capable of withholding influence (Clement of Alex., Exhort. to the Heathen 4; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q25.1; ST 1 Q19).

The Scriptures abound in expressions of the almighty power of God. “The Lord God omnipotent reigns” (Rev. 19:6). The creeds confess: “I believe in God the Father Almighty” (Der Balyzeh Papyrus, CC, 19; Athanasius, Defense of the Nicene Definition 3; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 6).

God’s power employs natural, historical, and human means for its accomplishment, but the use of means does not imply that God is limited by the restricted means that God alone created and freely sustains (Clementina, Recog. 8.1–30; Gregory of Nyssa, On “Not Three Gods”).

God’s power is most fully known through acts of self-giving love, as made known on the cross (Col. 2:14, 15). It is a power that also works through limited, but real, finite historical processes. God’s power is so great that it is non-defensive and able even to allow other freedoms to challenge it without being anxious about its own security or identity (Gen. 11:1–9; Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 1. 4; Augustine, CG 11.1). God is at ease with human competencies and incompetencies, free to laugh about desperate human pretensions (Ps. 2:4). The nations are, in the presence of God, less than nothing, like a drop in the bucket (Isa. 40:15).

Humans may fail to accomplish an act of willing by either failing to know what is to be done; or knowing what should be done but not willing it; or lacking the power to do what is willed. God’s power lacks none of these deficiencies of will since God enjoys untrammeled awareness of what can be done. God wills that the good be done, even if beyond the range of our finite perceptions. God has the power to accomplish what God wills (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 1. 22; Tertullian, Ag. Hermogenes, 8, 17; Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 72–88).

Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord?

When it was announced to Abraham that Sarah at ninety would have a son and become “the mother of nations,” Abraham laughed, and Sarah laughed too (Gen. 17:15–17; 18:12). Then Yahweh said: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Gen. 18:14). After the captivity of Jerusalem in the sixth century BC, most thought it utterly impossible that the course of history would reverse and their land would be returned to them. It was then that Jeremiah affirmed his confidence in God, that “There is nothing too hard for you” (Jer. 32:17). Having spoken of how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God, Jesus, when asked who could be saved, similarly affirmed the boundless power of God: “For men this is impossible; but everything is possible for God” (Matt. 19:26; Chrysostom, Hom on Matt., Hom. 63.2). Nothing that God conceives and wills to do is beyond God’s ability or power to accomplish (Augustine, On the Creed, LF: 563; Calvin, Inst. 2.7.5).

Yet God’s power is sometimes alleged in wild and imprecise ways implying paradoxical riddles: Can God do that which is logically self-contradictory? Can God abolish the past? Can God make a square into a triangle? Can God make a stone larger than God can lift? (Origen, Ag. Celsus 5.23). Each of these familiar trip-up questions hinges on a hidden comic premise: To answer either yes or no without inquiring into the absurdity or contradiction presumed in the question is to fall into an unnecessary trap that can easily be avoided.

There is only one way of speaking properly of any restriction upon God’s power that does not detract from God’s almighty power. The Bible has identified it concisely: God “cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:13; Augustine, Sermons 214.4; Tho. Aq., ST I-IIae Q100; Calvin, Inst. 3.15.2). This key biblical principle of the divine self-constraint may be expressed in various forms:

  • God would not do that which is inconsistent with what God knows, or repugnant to God’s goodness, or not in accord with other qualities of God’s character (Chrysostom, Comm. on Timothy 5).
  • Scripture maintains that it is “impossible for God to lie” (Heb. 6:18; Calvin, Inst. 1.17), for to lie would be inconsistent with God’s goodness (Tho. Aq., ST Q25, I). God cannot deceive himself, for this would be counter to God’s integrity, congruity, omniscience, and constancy.
  • God cannot cease being, or even desire to cease being, because that would be inconsistent with God’s very being as eternal and blessed, eternally happy in the divine enjoyment of being (Augustine, CG 5.10).

If God is incomparably merciful, God will not do anything that lacks mercy. God “cannot” be not good. God “cannot” be unjust (Tho. Aq., SCG 2.25). “Cannot” is here expressed in hypothetical quotation marks, for aside from that which is inconsistent with God’s being, there is nothing that God cannot do, hence it is a kind of comic game with language even to play-like saying “God cannot.” It is God’s nature to act in a way that is congruent with God’s essential being and character (Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catech., prologue; Pearson, Apostles’ Creed 1; Petavius, De Deo 5.5–11; Suarez, Summa. 1.5.1; Wesley, WJW VII: 265).

Omnipotence does not include the power of God to act in ungodly ways (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q25). It is only a lack of imagination that might prematurely call this a limitation on the power of God. The essential idea of omnipotence is that God has adequate ability to do whatever the being and power and knowledge and goodness of God requires. There are some things that God either could not do without denying himself, or would not do being who God is (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q25; Calvin, Inst. 1.4.2; 1.14.3).

It is no diminution of the divine majesty to acknowledge that God “cannot” do that which by definition intrinsically cannot be done. Suppose someone asserts that God can do something that is intrinsically contradictory or absurd. That does not increase the power of God. Rather it traps the idea of God in a comic premise. Contradictions are by definition unable to be actualized (such as that A may be both A and not A), so what good does it do to elevate them to some presumed dignity by the spurious assertion that God can actualize them? (Tho. Aq., SCG 2.25).

Hence it is hardly an offense against the divine integrity to insist that God does not know what is intrinsically unintelligible (Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil: 39–41). It is no disparagement to the divine omniscience or constancy that God knows changing contingencies as changing contingencies. Rather it would be an offense to God’s knowledge to assert that God could not know contingencies, or to God’s presence to assert that God could not be present in finite localities. Similarly, it is no offense to divine omnipotence that God “cannot” do that which by definition cannot be done (Anselm, Proslog. 7.12). The New Testament celebrates God’s capacity to do more than we can conceive: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or conceive” (Eph. 3:2).

God’s Power Permits Other Powers to Act Through Secondary Causes

God’s power is not bound always to exercise every conceivable form of power in every situation. God has also the power to withhold influence temporarily, and to allow creaturely powers to influence, and other wills to have their own effect (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q25). God even allows wills contrary to the divine will to act and express influence within fleeting temporal limits. Wills that are able to stand but liable to fall are permitted to fall (Wesley, WJW 6:313–25; 7:335–44).

The worshiping community understands that the all-powerful God paradoxically sustains in being those creatures that oppose God’s authority and goodness (Westminster Conf. 5,6, CC: 200–2). When fallible wills fall, God continues to act to nurture, support, encourage, and redeem these wills, and finally to consummate his purpose by bringing good out of evil (Justin Martyr, On the Sole Government of God; Westminster Conf. 7–15; Wesley, WJW 10:361; 6:506–13).

Human freedom is grounded in, permitted by, and derived from the power of God. Human freedom can assert itself within ordinary causal chains against God’s power, but only in limited and fragmentary ways that can never finally alter or challenge the power of God (Augustine, CG 11.12; Calvin, Inst. 1.18.1, 2).

Classical pastoral care has wisely distinguished God’s absolute power from God’s ordered power (that is: God’s power as expressed through the orderly conditions of nature). God’s absolute power, in classical theology, is without limit and can be exercised without mediating causes in the creation, as in miracle or direct agency. God’s ordinate power works through the order of nature by means of secondary causes and influences (Origen, OFP 2.9; Watson, TI 1:355).

The effective power of God is exercised uniformly through the orderly operation of secondary causes in a reliable, intelligible, natural causal order (Lactantius, On the Workmanship of God; Tho. Aq., SCG 1. 70). Absolute, unmediated divine power is not the usual way we experience the power of God. Rather, it is usually expressed through mediated powers in nature and history.

God works through the order of nature without denying God’s absolute power. Yet it is also within God’s power to transcend the very natural law that God has freely provided. Although eighteenth-century rationalism wanted to rule out miracle, classical Christianity affirms that God is capable of transcending the very order that God has created (Augustine, CG 12.2;. C. S. Lewis, Miracles).

The Transcendent One Present in Our Midst

The unlimited presence, knowledge, and influence of God has often been summarized in a single idea: transcendence. God is the utterly transcendent One (Gregory of Nazianzus, Second Theol. Orat.) who is nonetheless incomparably present in our midst (Third Theol. Orat.; Calvin, Inst. 1.5.5; Wesley, WJW 10:361–63). Transcendence and immanence are not separable in the Hebraic faith. The very One who is beyond the finite and human is intimately manifested and warmly knowable within the human sphere.

It is a common misjudgment to take only one side of this equilibrium so as to miss the interfacing point: It is precisely the holy God who is with us. It is the transcendent God who is immanent, palpably indwelling in the human world (Athanasius, Incarnation of the Word; Tho. Aq., God Knows Lowly Things, SCG 1. 70). The Holy One (gadosh) of Israel is always understood to be “among you” (Isa. 12:6) as intimate partner in dialogue, “my refuge and defense” (Isa. 12:2).

The divine life defies rash comparisons. “‘To whom then will you liken me, whom set up as my equal?” asks the Holy One” (Isa. 40:25; Tertullian, Ag. Marcion, 1.4). Yet, this One remains everywhere at home, every moment engaged, ceaselessly involved in the world. No one is a stranger to this all-present One. God shows through the events of human history the affection that the vine keeper shows toward the vineyard (Isa. 5:4).

The biblical tension between transcendence and immanence remains taut: The source of all things has the tenderness of a father (Hos. 11:1), the care of a mother (Isa. 49:15). This holy God above all has chosen to be radically empathic with human failings (John 1; Hilary, On Trin. 4.17; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q25; Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity).

In speaking of God’s presence, knowledge, and power in creation, we have identified relational divine attributes—those that emerge out of God’s relation to the creation, distinguishable from divine qualities characteristic of the independent existence of God apart from creatures.

Summarizing the divine relational attributes:

  • God’s way of being with the world is omnipresence.
  • God’s way of knowing the world is omniscience.
  • God’s way of influencing the world is omnipotence.