The topic was “The incommunicable attributes of God”. Why are they incommunicable? Apparently because they are not passed on or “communicated” to humans or other creatures, because these attributes belong only to God. Ummm my first thought was: that is not how I understand ‘communicable’ 😅 But now that I’m writing this reflection, I remembered (or the Holy Spirit reminded me) of the term ‘communicable diseases’ which kinda uses the word in the same context, so yeah, I get it. I guess it was just such an odd context in which to hear this word being used, because when it comes to God, I don’t normally consider that He has any characteristics which are shared… He is so separate from us and so ‘other’ that I had not really considered that we have much in common at all!
The lecturer covered five incommunicable attributes of God: Aseity (I knowwwwww. What on earth is that?!), independence, simplicity, immutability, and infinity. Of all of these, I had only heard of “immutable” and “infinite” before, as applied to God. ‘Immutable’ describes God’s unchanging nature (“the same yesterday, today, and forever”: Heb 13:8). In my experience ‘infinite’ usually refers to His infinite love, but in this class I learnt that by itself, ‘infinite’ refers to the fact that God is not bound by time or space because He is Lord of it; that’s how He is eternal and omnipresent. These are all pretty familiar concepts. So far, so good.
The lecturer asked us to consider how God’s immutability jives with the parts of Scripture that say, “God changed His mind” (after someone prayed to Him) or “God was angry with Israel for her disobedience”. Apparently, some people suggest that this cancels out immutability because changing your mind is… change… and getting angry is also a change of emotional state, which is… change. I was like eh?
I cannot conceive that there are people who enjoy nitpicking and arguing about such things. God’s immutable nature means that His core personhood – His values and character – does not change. Is that not obvious? He’s the Rock of Ages (Isa 26:4), that means you can trust in who He is. That’s about the core personhood.
I liked how the lecturer further elaborated that the Bible uses “anthropomorphic language” to describe God in human ways because that’s the only way we could understand certain things. You always interpret and understand something (or someone) from the lens of your own background and experiences. We don’t have anything else that we could use to describe God, or that could help us to understand Him. So we would ascribe certain human reactions to Him – this certainly explains why He would say, “I am a jealous God” to the Israelites (Ex 20:5; Ex 34:14), which seems odd for an all-powerful being to say, especially one that has no need for people’s allegiance, because He is self-sufficient.
Which brings us to the attribute of ‘independent’: God is self-sufficient and doesn’t derive His power, holiness, or knowledge from any external sources; He also isn’t dependent on anyone, as He is all-powerful and sovereign; and He makes decisions based on His own will, not forced by any outside source. So why then did He create us, if He doesn’t need us or need our worship?
The lecturer explained this by giving us Thomas Aquinas’ analogy of God being like the sun. The sun radiates light and gives out heat due to its nature, not because it intends to or wants to; likewise, God creates (created?) because it is part of His nature. But I’m not so sure about this because, if so, God should be constantly creating. Is He constantly creating? If we just look at our Earth, well, maybe He is. He’s not creating something from nothing, like bringing us into being, but He is creating in the sense that there is new life sprouting every day from the ground, and new babies being born, and baby animals too. Can be considered creating? I guess so.
God is Creator and therefore He is the one who came before everything: This is another attribute, the one with the weird name (well, it’s weird to me – turns out it’s from Latin): Aseity. I have heard of God being “the uncaused first cause” and that’s basically what ‘aseity’ means. I have to admit I was put off by the name because it feels like jargon. I know every field and industry has its own jargon, but I often feel like jargon makes ideas and concepts inaccessible to people because the words are unfamiliar and scary and it freaks people out, making them think that this is some incomprehensible piece of knowledge that only those with some kind of specialist training or expertise would be able to understand.
Anyway, the idea that God was there before time even existed and that He exists “of Himself, in Himself, and through Himself” is also not a new one to me; it’s just that I didn’t know what that characteristic was called. As the Creator, all creatures exist from Him, through Him, and for Him, that’s why He’s the sovereign one and Lord over all creation. Logical, right?
Perhaps if the lecturer were to lead with the description of the attribute before giving the name of the attribute, it would not seem so scary and it would be easier for us to grasp. Cos the moment I saw that foreign word, it was like my mind threw up a mental block and I was already bracing for a complicated and difficult concept. But actually, it is not that difficult nor abstract. Also, the lecturer led with this attribute before going into the other four, and I think I know why because everything seems to flow from God being "the uncaused first cause". But at the time, because my brain felt overloaded from the start trying to make sense of this unfamiliar term and the philosophical thinking attached to it, that made the rest of the lecture feel like wading through quicksand 😭
Here is said philosophical reasoning, quoting from my lecturer’s slides:
“Aseity is what makes God a necessary being (one that cannot not exist). If God lacks aseity, then God is a contingent being (one that could not exist). His existence would depend on some prior cause, condition, or reality.”
It was a bit difficult to wrap my head around this part, but in the end, it still boils down to the fact that God is not a created being and He existed before everything. Because, if He were created, then He wouldn’t be God – He would be on our level.
And, because He is “the uncaused first cause”, He is the source of everything else and can call things into being out of nothing. Whereas, as my lecturer said, if God were created, then He wouldn’t have this power: “He would be more of a shaper or organiser of reality rather than its ultimate source.” Think about it; when we humans “create”, we can’t make something out of nothing. We can only take existing materials and make something new with them. Like, when we’re painting, we need the paint and canvas for us to bring that piece of art into existence. But God doesn’t need to use anything else to create because He is self-sufficient.
So yes, I think it is a pretty straightforward concept wrapped up in complicated language. The last attribute of God was “simplicity”, which in this context has a different meaning from the everyday word. It means God is not made up of parts or divided attributes – “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut 6:4). The lecturer contrasted this with the Greek and Roman deities, where each deity was assigned a different trait, such as the god of war, the goddess of love, etc. But our God doesn’t just possess those traits; they are an intrinsic part of who He is, e.g. He is love (1 Jn 4:8).
This reflection is too ridiculously long (MS Word tells me it is currently 1298 words) but I’m also writing to help me remember the stuff I’ve learnt. I would fail if I was actually doing this for my assignment, cos the lecturer only wanted 300-400 words 😂 Overall, I think I understand better after writing this reflection than when I was listening to the lecture, cos there was so much information packed into the 2.5 hours and it was all just touch and go, touch and go, moving so fast that I started to feel like I was experiencing information overload (especially when it’s 10pm on a weekday, after working a full day and battling 1.5 hours of traffic to get home in time to log in to Zoom at 7:30pm). But now that I’ve had the opportunity to process the information, I find that it wasn’t that incomprehensible or overwhelming after all.
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