Definition

The attributes of God are the perfections of the divine being — the various ways in which God has revealed Himself to be, considered under the limitations of our finite understanding. An attribute is not a part or property added to God from outside, nor a quality that He possesses as a creature possesses qualities. Rather, each attribute is the whole divine essence regarded under a particular aspect of its perfection. When we say God is holy, or loving, or eternal, we are not describing three things God has; we are describing the one God as He is, from three vantage points accommodated to our weakness. The attributes are God Himself, made known.

The Reformed tradition, following the great catholic consensus, classically arranges the attributes under two heads: the incommunicable attributes, in which God is utterly unique and of which the creature bears no proper likeness — aseity, simplicity, immutability, infinity, eternity, and omnipresence — and the communicable attributes, of which the creature bears a finite, derived analogue — knowledge, wisdom, goodness, love, grace, mercy, holiness, righteousness, truth, and sovereign power. The distinction is useful and ancient, though never absolute, for even the communicable attributes belong to God in an incommunicable manner: His love and knowledge are infinite, eternal, and unchangeable as ours can never be.

Why It Matters

To know the attributes of God is to know God, and to know God is the chief end and highest good of the creature. As the doctrine of God governs all other doctrines, so the doctrine of the attributes governs our entire posture before Him. A diminished view of any attribute distorts the whole. Strip God of His sovereignty and prayer becomes manipulation; strip Him of His holiness and the cross becomes superfluous; strip Him of His immutability and His promises become unreliable; strip Him of His love and His holiness becomes terror without hope.

The attributes are also the wellspring of worship. Stephen Charnock observed that the more we know of God’s perfections, the more we are inflamed to adore Him. To contemplate His infinity is to be humbled; His holiness, to be sobered; His grace, to be melted; His eternity, to be steadied amid the flux of time. The right study of the attributes does not leave the heart cold but bows it in reverence and lifts it in praise.

Biblical Foundation

Scripture does not give us a tidy catalogue of attributes; it reveals them in the living narrative of God’s dealings with His people. Yet certain texts gather many perfections together. At Sinai the LORD proclaimed His own name:

“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.” (Exodus 34:6–7, ESV)

Here mercy, grace, patience, love, faithfulness, and justice stand side by side. The Psalms ground God’s eternity and self-existence: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Ps. 90:2). Malachi grounds His immutability: “For I the LORD do not change” (Mal. 3:6). Isaiah grounds His incomparability: “To whom then will you liken God?” (Isa. 40:18). The New Testament confesses His simplicity and self-sufficiency: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5); “God is love” (1 John 4:8); “from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). Paul’s doxology in 1 Timothy 1:17 names Him “the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God.” From such texts the church has drawn its confession of the divine perfections.

Key Components & Distinctions

Divine Simplicity

The doctrine of divine simplicity is foundational to all the rest. It teaches that God is not composed of parts — not of body and soul, not of essence and existence, not of substance and attributes. He is not partly holy and partly loving; He is wholly and identically each of His perfections. His love is His justice is His holiness is His eternity, distinguished by us conceptually but not divided in Him. As Augustine put it, what God has, He is. This guards against the error of imagining a “God behind God,” some bare divine stuff to which attributes are attached. It also means that God can never be in tension with Himself; His mercy does not war against His justice, for both are the one undivided God acting consistently. At the cross these perfections are not balanced against one another but gloriously harmonized.

Aseity (Self-Existence)

God is a se, from Himself. He has the ground of His being in Himself and depends on nothing outside Himself. “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex. 3:14) is the great confession of aseity. He gives life and breath to all and is not served by human hands, as though He needed anything (Acts 17:25). The creature exists by participation and dependence; God exists necessarily and independently. This perfection is the root of all the incommunicable attributes, for a God who is from Himself must be infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.

Immutability

Because God is perfect and self-existent, He does not change. He cannot improve, for He is already infinitely perfect; He cannot decline, for He is the fountain of being. “I the LORD do not change” (Mal. 3:6); with the Father of lights “there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). The Scriptures that speak of God “repenting” (as at Nineveh) are accommodations to our understanding, describing the change in His relation to a people who themselves change, not a change in His eternal purpose. His immutability is the bedrock of the believer’s security: because He does not change, His covenant love does not waver and His promises cannot fail.

Infinity, Eternity, and Omnipresence

God’s infinity is His freedom from all limitation. Considered in relation to time, His infinity is eternity: He has no beginning, no succession, no end, but possesses His whole being in one undivided present. “Before the mountains were brought forth… from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Ps. 90:2). Considered in relation to space, His infinity is immensity and omnipresence: He is not contained by space but fills heaven and earth (Jer. 23:24), wholly present everywhere, not partly here and partly there. The whole God is present at every point of His creation, sustaining all and escaping none.

Impassibility

Closely related, the historic doctrine of divine impassibility teaches that God is not subject to passions imposed from outside, not buffeted by emotional fluctuation as creatures are. The Confession’s phrase “without… passions” (WCF 2.1) means God is never overwhelmed, never the passive victim of His creatures’ actions. This does not make Him cold or indifferent; Scripture’s rich language of divine love, joy, and wrath is fully true, but it describes God’s settled, perfect dispositions, not creaturely turbulence. His love is the more comforting because it is not the volatile affection of a creature but the unchanging ardor of God.

The Communicable Attributes

Of these the creature bears a finite image. God’s knowledge is omniscient: He knows Himself perfectly and all things actual and possible in one eternal act (Heb. 4:13). His wisdom orders all things to their appointed ends (Rom. 11:33). His goodness is the overflow of His being to His creatures; His love is His self-giving delight, supremely the love of the Father for the Son and, in Christ, for His people. His grace is undeserved favor toward the guilty, His mercy compassion toward the miserable, His patience the withholding of deserved wrath. His holiness is His transcendent purity and separateness, the perfection that fills heaven with the cry “Holy, holy, holy” (Isa. 6:3). His righteousness and justice are His holiness applied to moral relations, rendering to each his due. His truth and faithfulness mean He is the genuine God whose word never fails. His sovereignty and power mean He does all His holy will (Ps. 115:3).

Historical Development

The early church confessed God’s unity, eternity, and immutability against the mutable gods of paganism and the speculations of Gnosticism. Augustine, drawing on Scripture and refining Neoplatonic categories, gave the West a profound account of God’s simplicity, eternity, and immutability. The medieval doctors, especially Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, elaborated the attributes with great precision, treating simplicity, perfection, infinity, immutability, eternity, and the rest in careful order, always insisting that human language of God is analogical — neither univocal nor equivocal.

The Reformers received this catholic heritage and set it within the framework of God’s gracious self-revelation in Christ. Calvin treated the attributes pastorally, more concerned that we know God as He is toward us than that we speculate about His essence. The Reformed scholastics — Turretin, Owen, à Brakel — systematized the attributes with confessional rigor, and the Westminster Standards crystallized the consensus. In the modern era, Schleiermacher subordinated the attributes to religious feeling, and process and Open theologians denied immutability, impassibility, and omniscience of future free acts. The Reformed have answered by recovering and defending the classical doctrine as the faithful summary of Scripture.

The Reformed & Confessional Position

The Westminster Confession gathers the attributes into a single magnificent description:

“There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, 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, and who will by no means clear the guilty.” (WCF 2.1)

The second section adds His aseity and sovereignty:

“God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He hath made… He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things.” (WCF 2.2)

The Shorter Catechism distills the attributes into a definition unmatched for compression and beauty:

“Q. 4. What is God? A. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” (WSC Q. 4)

The Larger Catechism adds that God is “in and of Himself” and “all-sufficient,” underscoring His aseity (WLC Q. 7). Thus the Standards confess both the incommunicable perfections (infinite, eternal, unchangeable) and the communicable (wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, truth), holding them together in the simple, undivided being of God.

Contrasting Views

The classical doctrine of the attributes has been challenged from several directions. Socinians and later Open theists deny God’s exhaustive foreknowledge, holding that He cannot know the future free choices of creatures; this contradicts texts in which God declares the end from the beginning (Isa. 46:9–10) and predicts free human acts with infallible certainty. Process theology denies immutability and impassibility, making God a being who grows and changes along with the world, dependent on it for His own enrichment. Some modern theologians, recoiling from a perceived coldness in the classical view, have embraced a “passibilist” doctrine in which God suffers and is acted upon by His creatures; while Scripture’s affective language of God is fully real, the Reformed maintain that God is never the helpless victim of His creation, lest His blessedness and sovereignty be compromised. The Reformed answer, after stating each view fairly, is that Scripture reveals a God who is simple, self-existent, immutable, eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, and sovereign — perfections that are not abstractions but the very ground of our comfort and worship.

Connections to Other Loci

The attributes touch every locus. Bibliology rests on God’s truthfulness and faithfulness; Scripture is inerrant because its Author cannot lie. Anthropology understands the image of God largely in terms of the communicable attributes — knowledge, righteousness, holiness — restored in Christ (Col. 3:10). Hamartiology measures sin against God’s holiness. Christology requires the Son to possess every divine attribute, for He is fully God. Soteriology displays the harmony of justice and mercy at the cross, depends on God’s immutability for the security of His promises, and rests on His sovereignty for the certainty of His electing grace. Eschatology awaits the full disclosure of God’s glory, when His people shall see Him as He is. To know the attributes rightly is to hold the key to the whole of theology.

Christ & the Gospel at the Center

The attributes of God are not most clearly seen in the heavens but at the cross of Christ. There the holiness that hates sin and the love that pursues sinners meet without compromise; there justice is satisfied and mercy is magnified; there steadfast love and faithfulness, righteousness and peace, kiss one another (Ps. 85:10). Christ is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:3), so that in Him the invisible attributes become visible. The eternal Son took our flesh, and in Him “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). Thus every perfection of God — His wisdom in the plan of redemption, His power in the resurrection, His grace in justification, His faithfulness in keeping His own — is displayed and given to us in the gospel. We do not know the attributes truly until we know them in the face of Jesus Christ.

Pastoral & Practical Significance

The attributes are the believer’s treasury of comfort. Immutability assures the trembling saint that the God who began a good work will complete it and will never cast off His own. Omniscience means no sigh, no tear, no secret sorrow escapes His notice. Omnipresence means we are never alone; in the darkest valley He is with us. Sovereignty means no trial is random and all things serve our good and His glory. Holiness summons us to reverence and the pursuit of likeness to Him. Grace and mercy assure the guilty that there is forgiveness with Him, that He may be feared. To meditate on the attributes is to find the soul anchored, the conscience comforted, and the heart enlarged in praise. The afflicted believer who learns to rest in the perfections of God has found a refuge that no storm can overturn, for he rests not in his own grasp of God but in the God whose perfections grasp and keep him.

Key Terms

• Attribute — a perfection of the divine essence considered under a particular aspect.
• Incommunicable attributes — perfections unique to God (aseity, simplicity, immutability, infinity, eternity, omnipresence).
• Communicable attributes — perfections of which the creature bears a finite image (knowledge, love, holiness, justice, etc.).
• Simplicity — God is not composed of parts; He is identical with His attributes.
• Aseity — God’s self-existence and independence.
• Immutability — God’s unchangeableness in being, will, and word.
• Impassibility — God is not overwhelmed or acted upon by passions from outside Himself.
• Eternity — God’s existence without beginning, succession, or end.
• Omnipresence — God’s whole presence at every point of His creation.
• Analogical knowledge — true knowledge of God accommodated to creaturely capacity, neither identical to nor wholly unlike His own self-knowledge.

Key Scripture References

• Exodus 3:14 — “I AM WHO I AM,” divine aseity.
• Exodus 34:6–7 — the proclamation of the divine name and perfections.
• Psalm 90:2 — God’s eternity.
• Psalm 115:3 — God’s sovereignty: “he does all that he pleases.”
• Isaiah 6:3 — the threefold “Holy.”
• Isaiah 40:18, 28 — God’s incomparability and inexhaustible understanding.
• Jeremiah 23:24 — God’s omnipresence.
• Malachi 3:6 — God’s immutability.
• John 4:24 — “God is spirit.”
• Romans 11:33–36 — the depth of His wisdom and the fountain of all things.
• 1 John 1:5; 4:8 — “God is light”; “God is love.”

Further Study

• Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (the classic Reformed treatment).
• John Calvin, Institutes, Book I, chs. 5, 10–13.
• Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2, on the divine attributes.
• Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, “The Attributes of God.”
• Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Topic III.
• Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, Vol. 1.
• A. W. Pink, The Attributes of God.
• James Dolezal, All That Is in God (a defense of classical theism and simplicity).