O’Glorious God of Attributes: Attributes vs. Emotions in Our Conception of the Divine

A Life Changing Read

A. W. Tozer famously said in his book Knowledge of the Holy, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.”[1]

My Sad Journey to That Book

I grew up in a faithful home with a love of Scripture, but those leading our Church and most of its members had poorly conceived theology and a rather weak understanding of Scripture. They tended to chase down every new and flashy thing presenting itself as Christian… like cats chasing that red dot into exhaustion… sometimes right off a cliff.

As I began to come into my own as a believer, I had a lot of questions. Most of the adults in my life gave poor answers. In Sunday school, an earnest question like, “Why does the cross of Christ atone for my sin? What does Jesus’ death have to do with my sin?” received the answer, “Shut up, you’re rebellious.” I would say, “I’m not arguing that it doesn’t atone for sin, I’m asking WHY it atones for sin? I don’t understand how it works.” To this I got another, “Shut up, You’re rebellious.”

After a visiting pastor came to our church, I realized that he had many answers to long considered questions. He seemed to understand Scripture in a way that almost no one I’d met did. And he’d gone to Bible college… so I got the fool idea that I should go to Bible college. The elders of our church mocked me all the way out the door because I thought I needed this step. They, who’d never been willing or able to answer any of my questions with anything that approached sense in my eyes, grew suddenly interested in keeping me from looking elsewhere.

A Teary Meeting

I remember my first experience reading Tozer’s book at the age of 19. It was one of the first books I was handed in Bible college. I felt like a life of questions were being answered not with “let me tell you what to believe exactly” but with a proper orientation to how to think about the God in whom all answers resided. I cried my way through almost every page with the joy of discovery and the awe that would shape much of my future theological ponderings.

What is an Attribute as Opposed to an Emotion

I learned the word “Attributes” as it related to my consideration of God, the One Holy Creator of All.

I read statements like “An attribute of God is whatever God has in any way revealed as being true of Himself,” [2] and “The divine attributes are what we know to be true of God. He does not possess them as qualities; they are how God is.”[3] “Love, for instance, is not something God has and which may grow or diminish… His love is the way God is.”[4] And later, “God never changes moods or cools off in His affections or loses enthusiasm.”[5]

Encountering Those Who Need to Have a Similar Encounter

Recently, when responding with some instruction to a series of malicious comments being made in an attempt to disparage a rather basic theological claim about God in another teacher’s post, I found myself locking horns with a particularly disagreeable person who, while not being a troll, manifested many troll like qualities as he defended his seeming intentional misrepresentation of that post.

The post basically said that God is motivated not by emotions like pity. And that God saved people… from His own wrath for insulting His glory… ultimately FOR His own glory. One may or may not like every chosen word in the post, but the sentiment is obvious theologically.

You Mean Like Paul Said Explicitly?

It echoes Paul’s own words in Ephesians 1:5-6, saying, “He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”

And Ephesians 1:11-12, “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.”

And Romans 9:22-23, “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.”

(For the record: Quoting these passages is not a “Calvinist claim” nor an “Arminianist claim.” It is Scripture which forms the theological core of all faith and practice.

How Dare He

The responses grew from indignance over the presentation of God as “selfish” and “unloving.” The responses were all touchy-feely and full of personal accusations against the writer. I challenged this idea saying:

This is what I mean by how badly this group has responded to the original message… poor understanding… responding emotionally not theologically. No one even tried to understand what he was actually saying… they just emoted stupidly and off point. He means that Christians today are weak, beginning with emotionalism, and imagining that God does what God does for the same emotionalized reasons (that we do).

Begin With God Not Man

When one begins with Holy God and Human sin and considers the grace and mercy of God in light of that, it comes out a lot different than those who have sentimentalized God like progressive “Christians” do, feminized God like feminism does, Marxified God like the left does. He (the original poster) says nothing about selfish or selfless… he speaks of God acting for Divine glory and divine purposes as opposed to the weakling visions of “pity” and emotionalism.

God is Not Selfish… He’s Holy

It is wrong for people to be selfish because God is the One Holy Creator of all, and all glory and majesty and honor and power belong to Him… to claim a mite of it for ourselves is high handed folly. God is love, but also holy wrath. Merciful but also just. He shows grace but is also truth. Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness but only in truth. God does not overlook our sin, he does not wave it away because he pities us… but rather He came and bore what was necessary to be born because sin is serious, holiness undeniable, and His love great. It speaks of His worth, not ours. Humans are ready to overlook sin. “They had a rough upbringing… let it slide, their feelings were hurt… let it slide… nobody taught them right from wrong… let it slide.” This is what he is talking about.

Waving a Red Flag Before Facebook Bulls

Then I became the target for this merry band’s insulted emotions. How dare I challenge their anger over the remarks and not his remarks that were deemed, “stupid, unbiblical, and wrong,” for “Theologically mankind is the imago dei. God values us. Period. He loves us. Period. He’s a loving Father. Period,” and “God is not holy wrath. He has holy wrath. Everyone knows that.”

Well, no, not everyone knows that, because that is an emotionalized way of thinking of God not an understanding of God as revealed in Scripture. Biblical authors at times speak in terms of emotions, because we experience things emotionally. The thrust of Scripture, however, is clear. God is what God is and all that God is is immutable, eternal, infinite, and holy, and loving, and true… light not darkness.

I discussed the fact that while we divide attributes into categories like “being attributes” and “moral attributes” attributes are not emotions, they do not wax and wane but are rooted in the immutable nature of God as true God… and that is the truest meaning of the biblical word holy as applied to God. Holiness is the energy of God as true God manifest… it IS wrath, is love, is eternal, is immutable, is infinite.

Attributes are What God IS… Always and Forever, Amen

Just as John says that God IS love, the author of Hebrews says, “Our God IS a consuming fire.” The full text is, as all good theology should be, a point of worship, saying, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28–29.)

In Exodus 19:21ff, therefore, God warns Moses to keep the people from rushing forward onto that holy mountain once God has manifested His presence upon it, saying, “Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to the LORD to look and many of them perish.”Also let the priests who come near to the LORD consecrate themselves, lest the LORD break out against them.” He won’t throw a fit like we might… No, indeed. He is holy and that holiness is incompatible with sin and will “break out against it.”

This concept becomes all important when understanding the tension in 1 Samuel 15 where after saying in verse 10ff, “Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, “I regret (NACHAM) that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not carried out My commands,” Samuel goes on in 1 Samuel 15:29 to chastise Saul for trying to manipulate God through ritual tricks, saying, “And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind (NACHAM); for He is not a man that He should change His mind (NACHAM).” So which is it? Does or doesn’t God NACHAM?

Answer: Depends on the context… because God is not a man with emotional arcs… He doesn’t get hangry and need a Snickers Bar to set Him to rights. God is best conceived as possessing immutable and infinite and eternal attributes that are experienced as love when we are in right relationship with Him and wrath when we are not… as grace and mercy when we fail to meet His holy standards yet are spared by His desire to redeem what He loves, but as anger when He judges sin… as He will completely when the time comes.

It must be both by the very nature of what He is vs. what we are. He loves but cannot be moved by pity the way we think of pity, even if some biblical poets speak thus of God when communicating with emotional man about an eternally infinite and immutable God of holy love and holy wrath.

~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD

[1] A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), p. 1.

[2] Tozer, pg. 20.

[3] Tozer, pg. 23

[4] Tozer, pg. 23

[5] Tozer, pg. 63