None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

by Matthew Barrett

There you have it, God’s absolute and ordinate power in two sentences.

By asking such questions we are so amused and impressed by our own cleverness that we fail to see just how contradictory our words have become.

For God to do anything that would violate his other attributes does not complement his power but destroys it.

He is the Creator, the one who determines all things. His knowledge is not a posteriori, like the creature’s, as if he knew by observing, but his knowledge is a priori, meaning he observes what he already knows and has decreed eternally.

“To hypothesize something which exists on its own not immediately caused by God’s thought is to deny God’s omnipotence.”

Omnipotently omnipresent, his power is wholly present in all places simultaneously.

from acting in the world as he who is in control of all things. However, Scripture paints a completely different picture of God. As seen with Nebuchadnezzar, the God of the Bible is actively omnipotent not only in the overall, sweeping plan of history but even in the smallest details.

God works “all things according to the counsel of his will.” If you are a child of God, then Paul has this to say to you: there is nothing, absolutely nothing that happens in your life that has not been planned by God before the foundation of the world.

Notice, however, that Satan cannot touch anything unless God says so.

God’s absolute control over evil, including Satan himself, like the story of Job does.

I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things. (Isa. 45:7)

Now you can see why it is so unexpected that the same word would be used in Isaiah 45 to refer to God’s control over evil.

God’s point is to make it crystal clear that he is the one who is in control of all things.

Even Job, who is completely in the dark as to God’s dealings with Satan, understands that the same God who is in total control of the horrific evil done to him and his family is and remains good.

As mysterious as it may be, God’s holiness, his ethical purity and impeccability, is in no way compromised by his exhaustive, meticulous control over the evil he ordains. How do we make sense of this apparent paradox?

First, God is equally in control of evil and of good, but we should not assume that he relat...

God’s control of good and evil is asymmetrical.

So yes, God has ordained this evil, but the evil itself originates in Satan and stems from the motives of the Sabeans and Chaldeans.

There motives already exists.

And yet, it is God who sends Assyria to punish his people for their idolatry, though Assyria knows it not and has nothing but wicked motives.

Nevertheless, God’s control is indirect. He uses means. And while those means have only ill motives, God’s intentions are for good (e.g., to turn Israel from idolatry and to repentance).

“Just as a father forbids a child to use a sharp knife, though he himself uses it without any ill results, so God forbids us rational creatures to commit the sin that he himself can and does use as a means of glorifying his name.”

Throughout the Old Testament the biblical authors praise God for his wisdom in redemption, but in doing so they cannot help but be drawn to his wisdom in creation

As mentioned, few of us would have stood at the foot of the cross and concluded that God’s power and wisdom were present, let alone prevailed. The king was crucified; evil had the last word.

“we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”

Lips give expression to the heart. They express what truly lies within us, even our deepest, darkest thoughts.

It’s critical to clarify that Isaiah experiences God’s love not apart from God’s holiness but through it and because of it. It is God’s love—a love that provides the atonement needed for forgiveness—that not only upholds but fulfills the conditions of divine holiness.

As much as our culture protests a God of retributive justice, we dare not imagine a society without it.

Everyone knows John 3:16, but few ever consider how it begins.

we ought to think of God even more often than we draw our breath. GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS, Theological Orations

“One of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of meeting” (25:6).

However, they have projected a human, and very distorted, conception of jealousy back on God, which explains their disgust.

First things first: we need to remember that the Creator is not the creature. Whenever we describe God, we do so in human language using symbols and objects found in our human world, in our human experience, and so our language is analogical by definition (as opposed to univocal; see chap.

Unfortunately, since our culture associates jealousy with reproachful behavior, we have to correct misconceptions of what jealousy means (and doesn’t mean) for God.

God is not insecure, overcome by envy, and unpredictably full of irrepressible, immoral rage.

For starters, jealousy is not the same thing as envy. In Scripture, envy is always considered a sin.

Envy is characterized by a malicious, bitter, and irrational spirit.

Jealousy, on the other hand, is an “ardent desire to maintain exclusive devotion within a relationship in the face of a challenge to that exclusive devotion.”

No, jealousy describes something more like the husband who so loves and cares for his wife and is so devoted to the commitment reflected in the promises they made on their wedding day that he seeks to earnestly draw his wife back to himself should she be flirting with adultery.

In our age of inclusivism, exclusivism is considered intolerant, but if we really think about it, intolerant is sometimes the most loving thing we could be.

Intolerant love is the type of jealousy we cannot do without.6 Apart from it, we have no reassurance that our spouse loves us enough to pursue us.

Jealousy means God “always responds to the abrogation of his exclusive right to be acknowledged as the only true God.”

One chronic virus that seems to infect the church in almost every century is the tendency to think the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath while the God of the New Testament is a God of love.

A supreme being must be an infinite being, and an infinite being must be independent, simple, immutable, impassible, eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, all-wise, holy, and loving. But where does God’s glory fit into this picture?

He is, after all, the “Being of beings, infinitely the greatest and best of beings,” says Jonathan Edwards.

In a world that is hopelessly narcissistic, humanity’s purpose on earth in the biblical worldview is about as countercultural as it gets.

Idolatry occurs every time we fail to see him as supreme.

A selfish God, ironically enough, is a God who is perfectly supreme yet does not insist that we center our lives on him and live our lives to his glory.

The Lord is jealous for his name and for his people; he will not tolerate a people who limp back and forth between true worship and idolatry.