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Believers have contemplated the attributes (a.k.a. qualities and abilities) of God as long as there have been believers. Jewish and then Christian theologians have made the attributes of God an ongoing discussion from the time the first books of the Bible were penned, read and discussed. Somewhere along the line, I learned “the eight attributes of God.” This number is not divine, it is not as if we have eight fingers and toes. However, I have managed to retain, and teach the following, and each contains the words “All” and “Always,” or the prefix “Al-.” 1. God is Always. In the Begining, before creation, God was, the unmoved Prime Mover, the uncaused First Cause. 2. God is All Powerful (Omnipotent). God can do whatever God pleases to do. 3. God is Always the same. God is perfect. “In God there is no shadow or variation due to change,” says the author of Hebrews. Christians believe that God has always existed as One God, perfect in unity, and in Harmony, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 4. God is All Spirit. Spirit alone endures forever. Spirit alone cannot be contained in a body, unless God choses to manifest an aspect of God’s Self in a body, as in the Incarnation or “enfleshment” of the Eternal Son in Jesus of Nazareth who is called the Messiah (Hebrew), Christ (Greek), King (English).
God knows what I need today, and what you will need tomorrow. God knows the end from the beginning. For God, as for Einstein, “Time is relative.” 7. God is All Good. (All loving). God does not have a dark side (see Attribute 3). Everything that God does is freely chosen and freely given. God wants the best for his creation, and, according to the Bible, human beings are the apex of that Creation. No wonder Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God in Human Flesh, gave his life for our sins, and rose again to give us a future and a hope. When we decide that we believe that God is good, and wants our good, it is one of the most important decisions we can ever make. 8. God is Always Holy, Righteous and Just. (Righteous). God’s holiness is nothing more and nothing less than God’s Self-Respect. God must be God! God’s righteousness means God keeps his promises. In this world we trust that God is righteous, holy and just, even though God’s justice is sometimes delayed. The wicked sometimes appear to triumph. It will not last. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of the things done in the body, whether good or bad.” Though we are all sinners, in Christ, God pronounces us “Not Guilty!” Thus, in Romans 5:1 St. Paul writes, “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I believe that Christians should think great thoughts about God. The contemplation of these attributes, a summation of what Scripture says about God, can help us think those great thoughts. Of course—your list may go beyond my own. Say—it just occured to me that, in the 8th Attribute, it could be argued that I 5. God is All Over. (Omnipresent). God is everywhere. snuck three attributes into one. Maybe there are Ten Attributes of God, one for each finger just like the Ten Some theologians teach that God had to “withdraw himself ” in order to make room for the universe. God Commandments. Whatever, “God is Love!” is everywhere. God is not everything. The doctrine The Pastor From The that God is everything is pantheism. Pantheism acPastor... cents one attribute of God (God is All Over) at the expense of every other attribute of God. Think about it. 6. God is All Knowing. (Omniscient). If God is everywhere (in all times and places) God knows everything.