None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

by Matthew Barrett

Yet to say that God is in time is to bind him to time with all its limitations. What are such limitations?

We must conclude, then, that eternity and time are entirely different, antithetical to one another.

“What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know.”

“Eternity is the choice perfection of God” and the “gloss and lustre” of all other attributes, says Stephen Charnock.

Charnock concludes, “As the nature of time consists in the succession of parts, so the nature of eternity is an infinite immutable duration.”37 No parts, no change, no time.

As a result, God’s attributes or perfections can never be added to or subtracted from his essence; they are his essence.

God's essence

Whoever created him must be more powerful. That creator gave life and surely could take God’s life too. In short, God would

no one else gives God life, then our God has life in and of himself. He is independently eternal. He does not gain life as we do, nor is he granted life as we are, but he is life. Surely

God is not only the self-existent, eternal God, but he is omnipotent life itself, for he has power over all of his life at once, whereas we are restricted to experience life one instant at a time.

“Only a God who is immutable in a particularly strong sense can (logically) perform all that Scripture claims that God performs, and a God can only be immutable in this strong sense if he exists timelessly.”45

The immutibility of God

This objection is parasitic, latching onto the historic idea that there is an order to God’s decrees, which seems to imply that one decree occurs after another.

Such an order cannot be a temporal order; instead, it is a logical order.

The sinner who has been called and regenerated by grace does experience a temporal sequence. Such a person is, for example, justified first and then glorified.

Christians love to quote John 3:16, which rightly turns to an eternal God as the fountain of eternal life for those who believe. Equally true, though far less popular, is John 3:18: “Whoever believes in him [the Son] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” It has been commonly said that Jesus spoke of hell’s eternity more often than any other biblical author. A simple survey of the Gospel accounts reveals that claim to be true.

Westminster Shorter Catechism—a product of the Puritan era—says something similar in its opening question: “What is the chief and highest end of man? Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him for ever.”

“unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels,” laments C. S. Lewis, our “Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.” How so? “We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Eternal satisfaction

If God is unchanging, then the joy, the happiness, the satisfaction that we experience in eternity will never be in jeopardy.

One thing have I asked of the LORD, that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD

The reason why is simple: God does not have a body.

yourselves, in the form of any figure”

What Israel continually fails to realize, however, is that the gods with bodies are gods limited in every way.

If God were omnipresent by means of his essence being divided up, God would be multiplied.12 Omnipresence wrongly defined and applied destroys God’s simplicity.

Older generations of Christians made this point by ascribing immensity to God quickly on the heels of their affirmation of his infinitude.

Actually, by mixing God with the creation, they lose God altogether, for he is no different than the creation.

“Where the power of God is, his essence is, because they are inseparable; and so this omnipresence ariseth from the simplicity of the nature of God; the more vast anything is, the less confined.”

God is present everywhere equally, even if he is present somewhere uniquely.

He can be in both places equally though differently due to the immensity of his essence.

“When he comes to punish, it notes not the approach of his essence, but the stroke of his justice.”

efflux of his grace.” Charnock’s summary is right on target: “He departs from us when he leaves us to the frowns of his justice; he comes to us when he encircles us in the arms of his mercy; but he was equally present with us in both dispensations, in regard of his essence.”

“God’s drawing near to us is not so much his coming to us, but his drawing us to him.”

Authority: “He is present with all things by his authority, because all things are subject to him.” Power: He is present “by his power, because all things are sustained by him.” Knowledge: He is present “by his knowledge, because all things are naked before him.”

Divine Presence

Authority, power, knowledge—each is critical. God “is present in the world, as a king is in all parts of his kingdom regally present: providentially present with all, since his care extends to the meanest of his creatures.

Deism teaches that God created the world but then took a step back, intentionally having little to no providential involvement with the world thereafter.

It is appropriate to distinguish between God’s essential presence and his gracious presence.

The garden is a temple for God’s presence, and Adam is entrusted as its keeper, a priest exercising dominion as God’s representative.

Moses longs for a day, a day he does not see, when the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon every covenant member permanently.

The Spirit truly is a gift through whom we, as his little temples, enjoy fellowship with our Triune God

Regrettably, many today do not understand this. As Martin Luther experienced in the sixteenth century, some people take pilgrimages to Rome to somehow find God and make peace.

“To abandon God, to flee from him, as Cain did, is not a matter of local separation but of spiritual incompatibility.”43 As Augustine said, “It is not by location but by incongruity that a person is far from God.”

Augustine’s words, “To draw near to him is to become like him; to move away from him is to become unlike him.”

Nebuchadnezzar’s downfall is proof that it can happen simply by neglecting to acknowledge who is really King in this world.

God’s will cannot be thwarted.

God does not merely possess power or have power, he is all-powerful.

They were, in other words, reliant on others for their own power in warfare.

God’s power, on the other hand, is dependent on no one. Here is where omnipotence and aseity meet up. Since God is self-sufficient, his power must be self-sufficient. Yet in light of simplicity, it’s not just that God’s power is independent, but it is independent because he is his power. It’s not

To put the point more technically, power “is originally and essentially in the nature of God, and not distinct from his essence.”

He does. But he doesn’t have to; he chooses

His power may work through others, but it is intrinsic to God himself, depending on no one. He is that powerful. Indeed, his essence is his power.

it’s the details that matter, determining whether one is a heretic or a Bible-believing Christian.

Since God is simple, his will and nature are one, and since his nature is identical with all his perfections (holiness included), in no way can his will be set over against any attribute.