Knowing God (IVP Signature Collection)

by J.I. Packer

God has no body—therefore, as we have just said, he is free from all limitations of space and distance, and is omnipresent. God has no parts—this means that his personality and powers and qualities are perfectly integrated, so that nothing in him ever alters. With him “there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas 1:17 RSV). Thus he is free from all limitations of time and natural processes, and he remains eternally the same. God has no passions—this does not mean that he is unfeeling (impassive) or that there is nothing in him that corresponds to emotions and affections in us, but that whereas human passions—especially the painful ones, fear, grief, regret, despair—are in a sense passive and involuntary, being called forth and constrained by circumstances not under our control, the corresponding attitudes in God have the nature of deliberate, voluntary choices, and therefore are not of the same order as human passions at all.