From Names to Attributes

“I love you, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.” (Psalm 18:1–3, ESV)

From Names to Attributes

For the past couple months, we’ve been working our way through the names of God. In understanding the names of God more fully, it was our goal to understand God more fully, worship Him more fully, and serve Him more fully. That’s always the goal. 

Now we’ve run out of names. But don’t worry…there’s more. We are going to move onto the attributes of God. We can find a list of these attributes in the Belgic Confession: “We all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God—eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty; completely wise, just, and good, and the overflowing source of all good” (Article 1). That’s quite a list. As always, it’s my prayer that our hearts will be stirred to worship as we dive deeper into each of these attributes. 

Division of Attributes

When we look at the attributes of God, it’s helpful to make some distinctions. There’s a fine line to walk when we try to describe God. On the one hand, we can describe God in a way that makes him too impersonal and distant. On the other hand, we can describe God in ways that make him too much like us. One way theologians have helped walk this line is by distinguishing between communicable and incommunicable attributes. 

What Does That Mean?

Some of you may scratch your head, wondering what those two words mean. Yet, if you take a moment to think about it, I think you’ll catch on quickly. 

We use words like this when we talk about diseases. We are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a communicable disease. That means this disease can be shared with other people. If the disease cannot be shared with other people, it would be described as incommunicable. 

Incommunicable vs Communicable

God is the Creator of all things. As Creator, there are attributes and qualities He does not share with his creation. He is Creator; we are creature. He is different from us. These are God’s incommunicable attributes. 

However, the Bible also tells us that God created humans in his image (Genesis 1:26-27). To some degree, we “look” like God—we share some attributes. Yes, we share these attributes in lesser degrees and we portray these attributes imperfectly, but we share these attributes nonetheless. These are God’s communicable attributes. 

Holding Onto Both

We face the constant temptation of tripping and falling on either side of the road. Throughout the history of the church, some have ignored God’s “personal” side and have focused solely on his transcendent/exalted side. In our current culture, we don’t face that temptation. Our current temptation is to ONLY see God as “personal” and turn him into our “buddy.” We must push back against this temptation without tripping on the other side of the road. We need to walk the yellow line down the middle. Herman Bavinck says, “In the doctrine of God we have no choice but to hold onto both his transcendence over, and his kinship with, the world” (Reformed Dogmatics, p. 136).