Theopedia

Attributes of God

Definition

The attributes of God are the perfections Scripture reveals God to possess — not separable parts added together to compose him, but the one, simple divine being described from different angles. Attributing a perfection to God is not granting him something he previously lacked; it is recognizing what Scripture shows is already and eternally true of him.1

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession lists many of God’s attributes together in a single sentence: God is “every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and withal most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin.”2

Biblical Basis

God himself declares his own character to Moses in almost identical terms: “the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty” (Exod. 34:6-7). John names love as God’s own nature rather than merely one of his acts: “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and James names him “the Father of lights” in whom “there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).

God’s goodness and love

Scripture presents God’s goodness toward his creatures in several distinct modes rather than as one undifferentiated quality. His covenant love, hesed, is his steadfast favor toward his own people; his mercy, rachamim, is shown especially toward those in misery and distress; his forbearance, or long-suffering, is his patience that withholds deserved judgment.3 Bavinck states the whole point directly: “God himself is the supreme good of all creatures,” and everything creatures call good in themselves is itself derived from and dependent on the good God who made them.3

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Peter Sammons, Forgotten Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2023), Introduction, 14-15. ↩

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 1. ↩

  3. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 8, “The Living, Acting God.” ↩ ↩2