How Would I Describe the Triune God!

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
This thread was inspired by, and is in direct response to, another thread with a similar but distinctly different title.

The format of the opening post of that other thread inspired me to give some thought to the attributes of God. My goal was to think them through and place them in a coherent order rather than as a random collection of loosely connected ideas. What has emerged is a list of 21 attributes, which fall very naturally into 3 sets of 7. I did not set out to hit a special number. In fact, I didn't even notice that it had happened that way until I was editing this post. The structure built itself as I worked through what is essential to God's being, what flows naturally from that essence, and how those realities are expressed in His dealings with creation.

Here what I came up with...

I. God in Himself – Essence and Moral Core

Living
God is the living God, the source of all vitality. Without life, nothing else follows.
(Deuteronomy 5:26, I Timothy 4:10)

Personal
God is self-aware and volitional. Life alone could still be impersonal, so personhood must be affirmed next.
(Exodus 3:14)

Reason (Logos)
God is Logic and Truth itself. His nature is coherent and non-contradictory. Without reason, morality has no foundation.
(John 1:1, Isaiah 1:18)

Relational and Triune
God is never solitary but eternally exists in fellowship. Father, Son, and Spirit share perfect communion.
(John 1:1–2, John 17:24)

Goodness and Righteousness (Holiness)
Flowing from reason, God’s character is the standard of moral perfection. Goodness describes His being; righteousness, His action; holiness, the integrity of both.
(Psalm 119:68, Psalm 145:17, I Peter 1:16)

Love
God’s unwavering commitment to the true good of others, grounded in truth, guided by reason, and expressed through righteousness.
(I John 4:8, John 3:16)

Wisdom
The perfect ordering of means to right ends, depending on reason, moral goodness, and love.
(Romans 16:27, Proverbs 3:19)


II. God in Relation to All Reality – Stability and Sovereign Scope

Everlasting Existence

God has always existed and never ceases to exist. He experiences real sequence and interaction, not timeless abstraction.
(Psalm 90:2, Revelation 1:8)

Immutability of Character
God does not change in who He is, though He responds dynamically in His relationships.
(Malachi 3:6, James 1:17)

Omniscience
God knows all that is knowable and that He chooses to know. His knowledge is living, personal, and morally grounded.
(Hebrews 4:13, Isaiah 46:10)

Omnipotence
God is the fountainhead of all power. He may delegate power but retains the ability and right to recall it at His wisdom and discretion.
(Job 42:2, Romans 13:1)

Omnipresence
God is everywhere He wills to be at once, fully present and attentive in each place.
(Psalm 139:7–10, Jeremiah 23:24)

Creator
God brought the world into being, reflecting His rational nature.
(Genesis 1:1, Nehemiah 9:6)

Sovereign
God rules as the highest authority over what He has made, delegating freely yet never relinquishing His right to reign.
(Psalm 103:19, Daniel 4:35)


III. God in Action – His Dealings with Creation

Father, Shepherd, Teacher

God provides, nurtures, guides, and reveals.
(Psalm 23:1–3, Matthew 6:9, John 14:26)

Jealousy (Righteous Zeal)
God’s holy zeal that demands exclusive devotion. He will not approve of rivals that destroy His people through idolatry.
(Exodus 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24)

Judge
God discerns and enforces moral truth.
(Acts 17:31, Psalm 9:8)

Wrath
God’s righteous opposition to evil, the necessary counterpart to His justice and love.
(Romans 1:18, Revelation 19:15)

Mercy and Compassion
God’s goodness applied to suffering and failure, bringing relief and restoration. Mercy is not indulgence; it is moral goodness directed toward healing.
(Exodus 34:6, Psalm 103:8)

Patience and Longsuffering
God’s enduring love that gives time for repentance without compromising justice.
(II Peter 3:9, Romans 2:4)

Redeemer
God delivers and reconciles through Christ, satisfying righteousness in love.
(Ephesians 1:7, Titus 2:14)

God is the living, personal, triune Creator whose reason, goodness, love, and wisdom define morality and reality itself. He is everlasting, unchanging in character, infinite in knowledge, power, and presence, and He relates to His creatures as Father, Judge, Redeemer, and Shepherd. He shows mercy, patience, zeal, and wrath in perfect harmony with His nature.

This is the God revealed in Scripture: Rational, Righteous, Relational - REAL.
 
Last edited:

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
The Absolute Beginning of Theology

The proper place to begin theology is not with what God has done, but with who God is. This is the starting point of all sound doctrine, and it is why the study of God's nature is rightly called theology proper. When one begins with salvation, judgment, providence, or divine power, the danger is that one will define God by His works rather than interpret His works in light of His nature. Once that mistake is made, theology loses its center of gravity. Doctrines that were meant to flow from the being of God begin instead to reshape our view of God, leading us to imagine Him as a collection of His most dramatic acts, rather than the living and morally perfect being from whom all those acts proceed. The only sound course is to begin with God's essence, to ask what He is in Himself, before asking how He relates to His creation or engages in the work of redemption.

The attributes presented in this first section form the foundation not only for this essay but for the entirety of Christian theology. They are not derived by observing how God has acted within the created order but are recognized through the necessary reflection on what it means for God to be God. These attributes do not describe temporary roles or reactive functions; they express the immutable character of God, revealed in the moral consistency of His being. They describe the character of the One who was, and is, and is to come. Without them, no other divine attribute can be rightly understood. Knowledge, power, justice, and mercy all take their shape from the moral and rational core of God's being. These seven attributes are not optional considerations to be added to our doctrine of God when convenient. They are the moral and metaphysical core of divinity. If they are neglected, distorted, or misordered, the result will not merely be a partial understanding of God, but an incorrect one.

The consequences of beginning elsewhere are not theoretical. The history of theology is filled with examples of systems that exalted one divine attribute at the expense of others, resulting in distorted portraits of God. When sovereignty is emphasized without first establishing God's moral nature, He begins to resemble a cosmic despot, defined more by control than by character. When love is elevated without anchoring it in righteousness and reason, it degrades into indulgence or sentimentality, hollowing out the very justice that gives it meaning. When omniscience is affirmed without first recognizing God's personality, knowledge becomes mechanical and impersonal, like the data retrieval of a vast cosmic machine. When wrath is preached before holiness and love have been understood, it loses its moral clarity and begins to resemble cruelty. These are not merely errors in doctrine. They are errors in sequence. They occur when the theologian begins with what is secondary and leaves the primary truths unstated or undeveloped. The attributes in this first section are not only logically prior. They are morally essential. They are the lens through which everything else must be seen. God's actions are not arbitrary or reactive. They are consistent with who He has always been and continues to be.

These seven attributes have not been selected as a matter of convenience, nor are they an arbitrary list. Each one arises necessarily from the question of what kind of being God is. They are not listed as a rigid sequence, yet they do unfold with a meaningful order. Life comes first, for nothing follows unless God is alive. Personhood follows, because life that is not personal cannot think, choose, or love. Once personhood is affirmed, reason becomes essential, because personality without rationality is not mysterious or unknowable, it is incoherent. A person who is not rational is not simply unpredictable; he is insane. God is not erratic or self-contradictory. He is the very ground of logic, order, and meaning. Rational personhood leads inevitably to relationship, and God is not merely capable of relationship, but is relational in His very being. He exists eternally as Father, Son, and Spirit, not in isolation but in fellowship. That fellowship is not arbitrary, but morally perfect, which brings us to goodness, righteousness, and holiness. God is good in His essence, righteous in His action, and holy in the seamless integrity of both. From this moral foundation flows love—not a vague sentiment, but the unwavering commitment to the true good of others, directed by reason and rooted in righteousness. Finally, wisdom draws all the previous attributes into harmony. It is not superior to the others, but is their proper coordination. Wisdom is what makes God's character not only true and good, but also beautiful.

These seven attributes are not compartments, nor are they theological options that can be emphasized or ignored according to personal preference or denominational tradition. They are interdependent. Each one supports the others and is supported by them. A God who is not living is no God at all. A God who is personal but not rational is insane. A God who loves but is not righteous is a codependent enabler. A God who is powerful but not wise is a tyrant. These attributes must all be true, and they must all be present, or the result is not the God of Scripture, but a theological construct made in the image of our confusion.

This foundation is not merely abstract or philosophical; it is deeply moral. The commands of God are not the result of divine preference or sovereign whim but are the necessary expression of His nature. What He commands is good because He is good, and His goodness is not measured by anything outside of Himself but is revealed in the consistency and harmony of His character. Righteousness is not a standard God conforms to, nor is it something He invents; it is what He is. For this reason, morality is neither subjective nor artificial. It is not imposed upon reality from above, nor constructed from below by human cultures or individual preferences. It is embedded in the structure of reality because reality itself is the expression of the living, personal, rational, and morally perfect God. To know God rightly, then, is not merely to know what is sacred, but to know what is real. Sound theology begins here, and when it begins anywhere else, it loses its anchor in both truth and meaning.
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
God is Living
God is the source and standard of all life.


The most fundamental truth about God, the one upon which all other truths must rest, is that He is alive. This is not merely eloquent wordplay or an echo of ancient religious instinct; it is the most basic affirmation of Scripture and the necessary starting point for all theology. If God were not living, then He would be incapable of thinking, speaking, willing, or loving. He would possess no awareness, no purpose, no power, and no presence. Whatever else He might be, whether force, concept, or principle, He would not be God. Throughout Scripture, God is called “the living God,” not in contrast to death, but in contrast to that which is false, lifeless, and unreal. Moses cried out, “For who is there of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived?” Paul, centuries later, affirms that “we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.” These declarations are not throwaway lines; they are profound theological claims. God does not merely possess life; He is the source of it. He is not made alive by anything else, nor does He derive vitality from outside Himself. His life is not contingent, borrowed, or sustained but original and self-existent. He is Life itself, the origin of all vitality, the fountain from which every living thing derives its being.

This is why the prophets often drew a stark contrast between the living God and the lifeless idols of the nations. The idols were made by human hands, being formed, shaped, and carried about by those who made them. They had no breath, no sight, no voice, no movement, no thought, and no love. They were powerless and dead, not only because they lacked animation, but because they were not real. To worship that which is not alive is to worship that which does not exist. In Jeremiah 10, the prophet declares, “But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King.” The implication is not merely that God is better than other gods, but that He alone is God, and all others are either illusions, fabrications, or outright lies.

To say that God is living is to say that He is active, conscious, and volitional. He is not a cosmic force, nor a fixed principle, nor a passive presence at the center of the universe. He is aware. He knows, He wills, He communicates, and He acts. His life is not abstract, like a philosophical essence; it is personal and relational. In John 5:26, Jesus says, “As the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself.” This statement does not describe a biological condition, nor does it refer to divine independence in a general sense. It is a revelation of God’s nature. The life of God is not a condition He happens to be in; it is what He is. He is not only alive, He is Life. This is what makes divine personhood possible. Thought, choice, goodness, and love are meaningless apart from life. If God were not living, there would be no personhood, no rationality, and no relationship. To begin theology with anything other than this is to begin in abstraction. Systems built on sovereignty, or decree, or power, apart from the living reality of God, inevitably drift into determinism or mysticism. The God of Scripture is not a formula, nor is He an eternal machine. He is the living God who speaks, remembers, rejoices, grieves, creates, judges, delivers, and saves. To believe in Him is to believe in Life, not merely as a concept, but as the root of all that is good, and true, and real.

To understand what it means that God is Living, we must also understand what death is. Death is not a thing in itself; it is a negation. Just as darkness is the absence of light, so death is the absence of life. In Scripture, death is consistently portrayed as separation, not cessation of existence. When God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, man became a living being. That breath was the creation of Adam’s own spirit, his immaterial self. Physical death occurs when that spirit is separated from the body. Spiritual death occurs when the human spirit is separated from God. And the second death is the final, irreversible separation of the condemned from the presence of the living God. Because God is Life, death is not part of Him, nor is it willed by Him. It is simply the inevitable result of separation from Him. Death is not something God created; it is what happens when life is lost.

The living God is the answer to this condition. He is not merely the giver of existence, but the restorer of life in its fullness. The gospel is not about helping people cope with their mortality, but about reconciling the creature to the Creator so that life in its truest sense may begin. When Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly,” He is not promising a longer biological lifespan. He is promising to restore what death has destroyed. Eternal life is not chiefly about duration; it is about relationship. It is about knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.

In light of all this, it becomes clear that to affirm the life of God is not merely to acknowledge His existence, but to recognize the standard by which all other life is measured. To live rightly is to live in relation to Him who is Life. To live apart from Him is, in the truest and most meaningful sense, to die. This is a truth that will be explored more fully when we consider God's righteousness and moral nature, but it must not be overlooked here. Life is not only a fact; it is a value. It is the highest value. The difference between good and evil, between love and destruction, between hope and despair, is the difference between life and death. It begins here, with the affirmation that God is living, that He is Life itself, and that life is worth everything because He is the one who gives it.
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
God is Personal
God is a who, not a what.


To say that God is personal is to make a claim of enormous theological significance. It is not a concession to human psychology, nor a minor doctrinal detail, but a foundational truth about reality itself. God is not an abstract principle, a blind force, or a metaphysical essence. He is not the universe contemplating itself, nor the impersonal sum of all that is. He is a person. He is a who, not a what. He has a mind, a will, emotions, self-awareness, and the capacity to enter into relationships. If God were not personal, then He could not know, love, choose, grieve, rejoice, or respond. He could not create, command, judge, forgive, or enter into covenant. In short, He could not be the God of Scripture.

When we speak of God being a person, we know what that means because we are persons. Each of us has our own mind, our own thoughts, our own intentions and desires. We remember our past, experience the present, and project ourselves into an anticipated future. We understand ourselves as distinct from others, yet capable of relationship with them. It is this personhood that makes relationship meaningful and morality possible. To recognize another human being as a person is to affirm that they are more than a body, more than a function, more than a tool to be used. They are a someone, not a something. The ability to recognize personhood in others is itself a function of personhood. If God were not personal, He could not relate to us in any meaningful way, nor we to Him.

Scripture presents God as undeniably personal. He speaks. He remembers His covenant. He grieves over sin. He delights in His people. He responds to prayer. He feels anger and compassion. He acts with deliberate intention, thoughtfully and purposefully. These are not mere figures of speech or rhetorical concessions to accommodate human limitation. They are revelations of His actual nature. In Exodus 3:14, God identifies Himself not by an abstract title, but by the declaration, “I AM WHO I AM.” In this statement, He affirms both His self-existence and His self-awareness. He is not a force, but a being. He is not a process, but a person. Likewise, in John 3:16, we are told that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Love is not a trait of energy, matter, or law. It is the act of a person who is aware of other persons and who acts for their benefit. Only a person can love, and only a personal God can be known and worshiped.

Moreover, we find in ourselves something that demands a personal origin. We are persons, and we live in a world filled with persons. There is no known mechanism by which consciousness, volition, or rationality could arise from that which has none of these traits. Time and chemistry cannot account for intention. Chemical reactions do not produce self-reflection. Gravity and friction do not produce conscience. Thought and moral awareness cannot be distilled from mass and velocity. It is axiomatic that the effect cannot be greater than the cause. A mindless, impersonal universe cannot produce mindful persons. If we exist as persons, then whatever brought us into being must also be personal. Indeed, it must possess, in original and infinite form, the very attributes we recognize in ourselves: reason, volition, emotion, and the capacity to love. The Creator must be sufficient to account for the creature. Therefore, God must be personal because we are.

This truth has far-reaching implications. A personal God is a God who can be related to, not merely studied. He is not a concept to be systematized or a power to be appeased, but a being who desires fellowship. Worship is not an exercise in ritual or projection, but a real encounter with Someone who knows us. Prayer is not a psychological exercise or a meditative device, but actual communication with a real mind and heart. Theology itself becomes not a catalog of doctrines, but a pursuit of understanding the character and purposes of a living Person. This elevates the need for sound doctrine. For to speak falsely of a person is to misrepresent them, and to do so with regard to God is to blaspheme.

The personhood of God is also most clearly revealed in Jesus Christ. In Him, we see the exact representation of God's nature. Christ weeps, rejoices, teaches, rebukes, forgives, and lays down His life in love. These are not just actions performed by a man who happens to be divine; they are the actions of God Himself. In Christ, the personhood of God is not merely affirmed, it is demonstrated. The Incarnation is the ultimate proof that God is not impersonal. He did not send a law or a symbol or a force. He came Himself. The person of Christ is the perfect expression of the person of God.

To affirm that God is personal is to affirm that He is knowable, relational, and morally responsible. It is to say that the universe is not governed by chaos or by cold necessity, but by a rational and relational Mind. It is to say that love, justice, goodness, and truth are not accidents of nature, but attributes of a divine Person. This is not a speculative or sentimental idea. It is the only explanation that accounts for the reality we live in and the relationships we value. We are not adrift in an impersonal cosmos. We are creatures of a personal God, made in His image, called to know Him, and capable of doing so precisely because He is not a what, but a who.

This truth sets the stage for everything that follows. God is personal, and therefore He is relational. His personality is not closed in on itself but expressed in love. He exists not as a solitary being, but in perfect fellowship within Himself. It is this reality that brings us next to the affirmation that God is relational and triune.
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
God is Reason

God is Reason. We are rational beings. We reason, we reflect, we seek consistency, and we expect the world to make sense, and we find that, in fact, it does make sense. The universe we inhabit is structured, intelligible, and governed by principles that can be discovered, understood, and applied. Mathematics works. Cause and effect operate with stability. Language conveys meaning and thought can align with reality. These cannot be the result of mindless, purposeless interactions of matter. Rather, they are marks of a rational order, and rational order does not arise from chaos. It arises from a rational mind.

To affirm that human beings are rational and that the universe is intelligible is to admit, whether one acknowledges it or not, that reason is not a local anomaly but a universal necessity. If thought is to mean anything, if truth is to be distinguishable from error, and if existence is to be anything other than absurdity, then reality must be coherent at its core, and coherence is not a property of matter or energy. It is a property of mind, which is why the rationality of creation points beyond itself to the rationality of its Creator. It is why our ability to reason is not a glitch but a gift. And it is why the opening line of John’s Gospel rings with such profound weight: “In the beginning was the Logos.” The Greek term Logos, typically rendered “Word” in English bibles, was already rich with meaning in the first century. To the Greek mind, it referred to the principle of rationality behind the cosmos, to the Reason that made knowledge possible and the world intelligible. To the Jewish mind, it evoked the creative voice of God, the active expression of His will and wisdom. In both streams of thought, Logos meant much more than mere speech. It meant the Reason that structures reality.

John intensifies this meaning by identifying the Logos not merely as a force or principle, but as a person. “The Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.” In so doing, he affirms that the rationality behind all things is not impersonal, but personal. The very Reason of the universe is alive, self-aware, relational, and divine. God is not simply the wielder of reason; He is Reason. Logic is not a tool God uses, nor a standard He conforms to. Rather, it is who He is.

This is no mere ivory tower abstraction or metaphysical speculation about the “nature of divinity.” It is a necessary affirmation about what it means to exist at all. To be real is to be coherent. Contradictions do not exist because they cannot exist. A thing cannot both be and not be in the same way and at the same time. Existence is inherently logical because to exist is to possess identity, and identity entails consistency. Nothing can be what it is and what it is not. This is not a law imposed upon creation from without. It is not even a law in the proper sense. It is simply an observation of what must be the case for anything to be real. Logic is not a human invention; it is the recognition of how reality works. This is why the idea of an irrational God is not merely unbiblical; it is incoherent and self-defeating. God does not will Himself into rationality any more than He wills Himself into existence. Rationality is not a feature He adopts, nor a posture He assumes; it is the inevitable result of being real. Contradiction is not a choice among possibilities; it is a non-thing. Just as a triangle with four sides is not a different kind of triangle but a contradiction in terms, so an irrational God is not an alternative kind of deity but an impossibility. God exists, and to exist is to be logically coherent. If God were irrational, He would not be. Nor would we. Irrationality is not an alternative mode of being; it is the negation of being itself.

This helps us distinguish between logic as a principle and reason as a faculty. Human beings are often irrational, meaning that we often fail to reason correctly. We ignore evidence, we misapply categories, or we rebel against truth. Yet even in our rebellion, we never escape logic itself. When we lie, we still expect to be believed. When we argue, we expect others to follow our reasoning. Even the most irrational person lives under the assumption that reality is consistent and that contradiction is a sign of error. We are capable of violating reason, but we cannot violate logic itself. That is not within our power, nor within the power of any real being. God is not logical because He chooses to be. He is, and therefore He is logical. The irrational cannot be. This may sound tautological - "God is because He exists." - yet it is no fallacy. It is the irreducible foundation of coherence. When God says, “I AM WHO I AM,” He is not stating a preference or revealing a role. He is declaring His identity as the self-existent One. His being is the grounding of all existence. He does not derive His nature from some higher standard, nor does He will Himself into coherence. He is coherent because He is real. The name “I AM” is the most concise expression of that fact. It is the ultimate affirmation of His independent existence. It is not empty repetition; it is the bedrock of all truth.

This is why nothing irrational can be true. Truth is not simply correspondence with fact; it is coherence with reality, and reality is what it is because God is who He is. There is no such thing as an irrational truth. Any doctrine that depends on contradiction is false. Any theology that permits mystery to swallow reason has forfeited the only means by which it can distinguish itself from delusion. If we can plead “antinomy” or “paradox” to excuse theological incoherence, then so can any cult leader or false prophet. If reason is optional, then truth is inaccessible, and falsifiability is impossible. Logic is not the enemy of faith; it is the foundation of faith. We believe because it is reasonable to do so.

Thus, to say that God is Reason is to say that all reality is ordered, coherent, and knowable because it is grounded in the being of a rational, personal Creator. It is to say that reason is not a human convention, but a divine necessity. It is to say that the world we live in is intelligible, not by chance but by design. And it is to say that Scripture, if it is true, must be consistent, not only with itself, but with the rational structure of the world that God has made. Not that all things are simple or easily understood. There is much that we do not know, and much that remains hidden. Yet the hidden things of God are not illogical. They are simply undisclosed. Mystery is not contradiction. It is the frontier of understanding, not the suspension of reason. God’s thoughts are higher than ours, but they aren’t lower than ours. They are still coherent thoughts. They are not nonsense, and they are not absurd. To allow nonsense into the mind of God is the equivalent of allowing immorality into His character. It’s a contradiction and cannot be so.

In affirming that God is Reason, we are not reducing Him to a syllogism or philosophical abstraction. We are elevating logic itself to its rightful place, not above God, but within Him. Just as we affirm Love as holy, not merely because God is loving but because God is Love, we are likewise saying that Reason is holy, not merely because God is rational, but because God is Reason. We are saying that truth matters, because reality is coherent. We are saying that the mind is not a liability to faith, but a gift from the One who made us in His image. And we are saying that any system, any belief, any worldview that despises reason is not from God, because God is Reason.
 
Last edited:

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
God is Relational

God is not a solitary being, closed in upon Himself, nor a detached abstraction, He is relational. This is not a trait He acquired when He created the world, nor a mode of interaction He chose to adopt. It is who He is. Relationship is not a consequence of creation; it is a quality of God's eternal being. God did not become relational. He always has been.

Some have argued that if God is truly perfect and self-sufficient, then relationship must be beneath Him. Why would a perfect being need anything outside Himself? This objection sounds pious but reveals a misunderstanding. It treats relationship as a response to deficiency rather than as an expression of fullness. It assumes that to be relational is to be dependent, that to love is to lack, and that to give is to diminish oneself. This is not Christianity, it’s Platonism. The God of Scripture is not a static perfection removed from relationship, He is a living, personal Being whose nature is so rich and complete that it overflows in communion and love. To say that God is relational is not to weaken Him but to glorify Him. It is not to make Him needy but to reveal Him as the source of all goodness.

This truth becomes clear when we consider that God is Triune. He did not exist as a solitary essence for all eternity. From everlasting to everlasting, God has existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are not roles He temporarily adopts, but are names that express eternal relationships within the divine being. A father is not a father without a child, nor is a son a son without a father. These terms point beyond metaphor and into the very structure of God's nature. He is not a solitary monad, self-contained and impersonal. He is the living God who speaks, who loves, who gives, and who receives all within His triune self, and in so doing provides a coherent answer to one of the oldest moral questions ever posed....

Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?

If the former, then goodness is arbitrary. If the latter, then goodness is higher than God. If goodness is defined solely by God's commands, then morality is arbitrary. He could just as easily have declared cruelty to be good and kindness to be evil. Yet if God commands something because it is good, then goodness exists as a standard outside of God, which makes Him subject to something higher than Himself. This is known as Euthyphro’s dilemma, and it has unsettled philosophers since Plato wrote it. The strength of the dilemma lies in its presupposition of a unitarian god; a solitary will that either creates morality by decree or submits to it as an external standard. Many theologies have tried to dodge the trap by appealing to mystery or semantics. Only one answers it directly. Only one shows why goodness, love, and righteousness are neither arbitrary nor external, but eternal. It is the triune nature of the Christian God that breaks this binary. God is not a lone authority, He is an eternal fellowship of three Persons, each bearing witness to the others. Goodness is not a divine assertion; it is a divine relationship. As Jesus said, “If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not credible” (John 5:31). In God, there is not merely one witness to divine goodness, but Three. This avoids the problem of circular self-justification. The Father testifies of the Son, the Son of the Spirit, and the Spirit of the Father, each of the three bearing witness to the righteousness of the others. The standard of goodness is not externally imposed nor arbitrarily created. It is the eternal, relational consistency of God’s own being. Moral truth is not decided or invented, nor is it imposed from outside. It is descriptive of God’s nature. It is eternal because it is rooted in God's character, and His character does not change.

This is not any sort of abstract or esoteric philosophical indulgence; it is a foundational and necessary truth. If God were not relational in Himself, then love would not be essential to His nature. That would undermine not only moral absolutes but also God’s trustworthiness, His relationality, and ultimately, the very foundation of salvation. If God were not triune, He would have had to create in order to love. That would make love contingent rather than essential to His being. But God did not need to create in order to love. He said, “Let Us make man in Our image” (Genesis 1:26). Not in "My image", but in "Our image". Also, God the Son, the Logos of God, “was in the beginning with God” (John 1:2). There was already relationship. There was already love, joy, and fellowship, and there were three divine Witnesses to it all, which is how Christianity resolves the ancient dilemma. Rather than sidestepping it as other religions do, it exposes the false assumption that morality arises from either command or compliance. In the God of the Bible, there is no gap between what is and what ought to be, because relationship itself bridges the divide. God is righteous because He is relational, He is good because He is love, and He is love because He has never been alone.

God is relational. That is why love is possible and why righteousness is real. Relationship is not an add-on to divinity. It is not an appendage, an afterthought, or an accommodation to human weakness. It is the eternal glory of the living God. Everything else flows from this.
 
Last edited:

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
Okay, so with this next essay, I sort of begin a process that is going to have the effect of destroying the three by seven structure I presented God's attributes in when I started the thread. I've realized that being holy, righteous, just, loving, wise, etc are all part of what it means to be good, which sort of collapses the number of attributes and makes the first seven into just five. It doesn't matter the three by seven structure was just a happy accident anyway.

Also, this next essay was more difficult to write because there is no logical order to place things like righteousness, justice, love, wisdom, etc into. They are all equally the result of what has been established up to this point. They are all interwoven and interdependent aspects of God's character and cannot be separated from one another any more than a solitary facet can be removed from a diamond. They together make an integrated whole, and as such, I've addressed them in a single essay.
 
Last edited:

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
God is Good

Because God is Living, Personal, Relational, and Logic, it necessarily follows that He is good. Not merely by declaration or by force of will, but by nature and by necessity. Any being who Life itself, who is personal rather than impassible, who exists in perfect relational harmony, and who is the very foundation and fountainhead of all rational thought must also be good. To suggest otherwise is incoherent. The notion of a living, personal God who is irrational, cruel, unjust, or unloving is not only morally repugnant, it is logically impossible. God is good because He is what He is.

Righteousness is not a standard that exists above God to which He must conform, nor is it a mere label He applies to Himself. It is the moral quality of being aligned with what is truly right, what ought to be. Since God is Logic, and logic is the grammar of reality, righteousness is the life that logic prescribes. It is what reality looks like when lived rightly. More than that, God is Life, and the good is that which upholds, sustains, and promotes life. To nourish, to protect, to create, to redeem, these are acts of goodness. Evil, by contrast, destroys what is living, obscures what is true, and perverts what is beautiful. To lie, to murder, to oppress, to corrupt, these are acts of evil because they lead to death. God is good because He is Life, and He is righteous because He lives in perfect harmony with His own nature. He is entirely self-consistent. He never acts against His own being. He does not deceive, because He is Truth. He does not destroy without cause, because He is the Giver of life. He does not contradict Himself, because He is Logic. He cannot act as His own destroyer, nor could He ever will to do so. In Him, there is no contradiction between thought and action, no dissonance between what is understood and what is done.

Justice flows from righteousness just as action flows from intention. Righteousness is alignment with the way life was meant to be. It is the internal consistency of a nature that does not destroy itself. Justice is that same consistency turned outward, expressed in how one relates to others. It is the obligation to treat others in a way that sustains life rather than undermines it, to uphold what is true, to protect what is good, and to resist what would lead to ruin. To be just is to act in accordance with the logic of life, to give each what is proper, to condemn that which destroys, and to vindicate that which gives life. Because God is Relational, His righteousness does not remain abstract. It engages. It judges with equity. It refuses partiality. Justice is not something God chooses to do; it is something He must do to remain faithful to Himself. A God who excuses evil is not merciful, He is corrupt. A God who looks away from injustice is not compassionate, He is compromised. But the God of Scripture is just, and because of that, we have hope.

Love, too, flows from what has already been revealed. Love is not blind sentiment or passive kindness. It is the active pursuit of the good of another. And if the good is that which promotes life, then love is the rational, personal commitment to seek another's flourishing in light of what is true. Love does not suspend logic; it relies on it. Logic is the language of love. The lover asks, “What is good for the one I love?” and reason answers. Every act of true love begins with moral clarity. God is love not because He indulges sin or overlooks evil, but because He seeks our greatest good, even at immeasurable cost to Himself. The Cross was not a retreat from justice; it was the ultimate expression of it. Justice and love met there not in contradiction, but in perfect harmony. Because sin destroys life, The God who is Life had to deal with sin, and because God is Love, He did.

Wisdom is the ability to discern what sustains life and to live accordingly. It is not simply knowledge, and it is not raw intelligence. It is understanding in motion. Wisdom sees how actions ripple into consequences. It traces the arc between cause and effect. It chooses the path that leads to life over the path that leads to death, and does so not by impulse, but by insight. A wise person sees the stakes clearly. He understands the gravity of each decision and weighs outcomes against what is good. God is wise in all His ways. He never misjudges, never acts rashly, never loses sight of the end. His plans are not only good in intent, but perfect in design. They are constructed in a way that upholds life, renews what is broken, and ultimately brings order to chaos. Wisdom is the crown of God’s moral attributes, the application of His righteousness, justice, and love in ways that lead to flourishing, both for the individual and for creation.

Holiness is the perfection of all these things. It is not aloofness or distance. It is not a category that simply separates God from creation. It is the utter purity of a being who is entirely consistent with life. Holiness is moral wholeness, the absence of anything corrupt, selfish, or destructive. God is holy because He is uncorrupted by anything that would lead to death. He is never petty, never cruel, never indifferent. There is no deceit in Him, no darkness, no contradiction. Holiness is not one attribute among many; it is the harmony of them all. It is righteousness without flaw, justice without prejudice, love without pretense, wisdom without error. It is what goodness looks like when nothing is missing and nothing is out of place. To say God is holy is to say that He is utterly, gloriously good and that His goodness is complete.

These qualities are not masks God wears or roles He plays. They are not chosen behaviors. They are who He is. And because He is Living, Personal, Relational, and Logic, He must be all of them. They are not optional. If He were to lack even one, He would not be the God we’ve been describing. You cannot be good without being just. You cannot be just without being loving. You cannot be loving without being wise. And you cannot be any of these perfectly unless you are holy. They are interwoven, indivisible, and eternal, and they all derive their meaning from the truth that Life is the standard of what is morally right.

Scripture gives us a window into these truths through what it calls the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These are not arbitrary virtues. They are not spiritual accessories. They are the traits of a soul that is alive in God. They are what begin to appear in us when the life of God begins to shape how we think, how we feel, and how we act. Joy is not naïve cheerfulness, but the settled delight in what is good. Peace is not mere quiet, but the relational stability that truth makes possible. Patience is the strength to wait for the right thing. Kindness is the resolve to build rather than tear down. Self-control is the discipline to prefer the lasting over the fleeting. These are not rules to obey but fruit that grows naturally when life is rightly ordered and lived wisely. They are the practical outworking of what it means to be made in the image of a good God.

To know God is to desire these things, not out of obligation, but out of a recognition of their value. It is to see that goodness is not a burden, but the very fabric of life. It is to hunger for righteousness, to long for justice, to rejoice in what is true, and to love what is holy. Goodness is not just the goal of the moral life; it is the life itself, and it is life because God is good.
 
Last edited:

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
Concluding Reflections on God’s Qualitative Nature

Everything we have seen so far concerns the kind of being God is. We have not yet spoken of how much He knows, how powerful He is, or how long He has existed. Those are important matters, but they are not primary. The true foundation of theology begins not with questions of magnitude but with questions of nature and quality.

We have established that God is Living, Personal, Relational, and Reason. From these, we have drawn out the necessary moral attributes that follow: that God is Good, which means that He is Righteous, Just, Loving, Wise, Holy, etc. These qualities are not chosen characteristics or useful traits that God happens to exhibit. They are what it means for a being to be truly and fully alive. They flow logically from who God is and express what it means to live rightly, to think clearly, and to love perfectly.

These are God's qualitative attributes. They describe the ontological, moral and rational quality of His being. They focus us not on how much He can do or how much He knows, but on the quality of His character. These are the traits that make God worthy of worship. Power without goodness is tyranny. Knowledge without love is manipulation. Presence without righteousness is oppression. It is God's nature, His moral excellence, His internal coherence, His unwavering faithfulness, that gives meaning to His power, His knowledge, and His presence.

Only now, having grounded ourselves in the moral and rational essence of God's being, are we ready to speak of His quantitative attributes. These describe not the quality of who He is, but the extent of what He is capable of. These include His omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, eternality, and sovereignty. Each of these must be understood in light of what has already been said. We are not describing an abstract force with infinite attributes. We are describing a living, personal, relational, rational God whose greatness is measured not only by how much He can do, but by how He conducts Himself makes sense of everything else.

Only a God who is good can properly wield infinite power. Only a God who is logical and wise could deal with knowing everything and being everywhere at once. If we invert this order, if we begin with quantity rather than character, we end up with something monstrous. When the power of God is the power of a righteous, wise, and loving person, it becomes not a threat, but a hope. That is the God we now turn to consider.
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
I've added a major chunk of material to the "God is Relational" essay. It occured to me that it needed to establish that all three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are God.

Here's the revised version....

God is Relational
God is love, shared.


God is not a solitary being, closed in upon Himself, nor a detached abstraction. He is relational. This is not a trait He acquired when He created the world, nor a mode of interaction He chose to adopt. It is who He is. Relationship is not a consequence of creation; it is a quality of God's eternal being. God did not become relational. He always has been.

Some have argued that if God is truly perfect and self-sufficient, then relationship must be beneath Him. Why would a perfect being need anything outside Himself? This objection sounds pious but reveals a misunderstanding. It treats relationship as a response to deficiency rather than as an expression of fullness. It assumes that to be relational is to be dependent, that to love is to lack, and that to give is to diminish oneself. This is not Christianity; it is Platonism. The God of Scripture is not a static perfection removed from relationship, He is a living, personal Being whose nature is so rich and complete that it overflows in communion and love. To say that God is relational is not to weaken Him but to glorify Him. It is not to make Him needy but to reveal Him as the source of all goodness.

This truth becomes clear when we consider that God is Triune. He did not exist as a solitary essence for all eternity. From everlasting to everlasting, God has existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are not roles He temporarily adopts but are names that express eternal relationships within the divine being. A father is not a father without a child, nor is a son a son without a father. These terms point beyond metaphor and into the very structure of God's nature. He is not a solitary monad, self-contained and impersonal. He is the living God who speaks, who loves, who gives, and who receives, all within His triune self.

This, in turn, provides a coherent answer to one of the oldest moral questions ever posed…

Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?

If the former, then goodness is arbitrary. If the latter, then goodness is higher than God. If goodness is defined solely by God's commands, then morality is arbitrary. He could just as easily have declared cruelty to be good and kindness to be evil. Yet if God commands something because it is good, then goodness exists as a standard outside of God, which makes Him subject to something outside Himself. This is known as Euthyphro’s dilemma, and it has unsettled philosophers since Plato wrote it. The strength of the dilemma lies in its presupposition of a unitarian god, a solitary will that either creates morality by decree or submits to it as an external standard. Many theologies have tried to dodge the trap by appealing to mystery or semantics. Only one answers it directly. Only one shows why goodness, love, and righteousness are neither arbitrary nor external, but eternal. It is the triune nature of the Christian God that breaks this binary.

God is not a lone authority. He is an eternal fellowship of three Persons, each bearing witness to the others. Goodness is not a divine assertion; it is a divine relationship. As Jesus said, “If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not credible” (John 5:31). In God, there is not merely one witness to divine goodness, but three. This avoids the problem of circular self-justification. The Father testifies of the Son, the Son of the Spirit, and the Spirit of the Father, each of the three bearing witness to the righteousness of the others. The standard of goodness is not externally imposed nor arbitrarily created. It is the eternal, relational consistency of God’s own being. Moral truth is not decided or invented, nor is it imposed from outside. It is descriptive of God’s relational nature.

This relational nature is not something God assumed for the sake of others, nor is it a posture He adopted when creation came into being. It is who He eternally is. The doctrine of the Trinity, far from being a speculative abstraction or a later theological imposition, is the necessary and explicit conclusion of what Scripture reveals from the very beginning; that God is one, and yet not solitary. The God who is love must be relational in His very being, because love requires more than one.

Even the grammar of Genesis 1:1 testifies to this. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The Hebrew word translated “God” is Elohim, a plural noun. Yet the verb “created” is singular. This is either a grammatical mistake in the very first sentence of the Bible, or a deliberate hint at plurality within the one God. Moses was not confused. That same plural form is used thousands of times throughout the Old Testament. The Spirit who inspired Moses was not careless. God is one, and yet not alone.

The testimony of Scripture affirms four things simultaneously: that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God and yet there is only one God. These are not mere labels or functions, but living Persons, distinct from one another, yet united in essence. Each is presented as fully divine, and each interacts with the others in personal terms.

The Father is most obviously and universally acknowledged as God. Jesus Himself refers to Him as "the only true God" (John 17:3), and Paul affirms that "for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him" (I Corinthians 8:6). Yet this affirmation of the Father's deity is not exclusive. The Son is also clearly and repeatedly declared to be God. John opens his Gospel with the profound words, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). Later, Thomas addresses the risen Christ as, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). The writer of Hebrews quotes the Father as saying of the Son, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Hebrews 1:8). Paul declares that in Christ "dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9), not as a temporary manifestation but as an eternal and embodied reality. In Revelation, John records Jesus identifying Himself by declaring, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8).

The Holy Spirit, too, is affirmed as God, not merely as an impersonal force or influence, but as a divine Person who speaks, grieves, teaches, and wills. When Ananias lied about his offering in Acts 5, Peter confronted him by saying, “You have not lied to men but to God” (v. 4), having just said he had lied to the Holy Spirit (v. 3). The Spirit is the one who searches the deep things of God (I Corinthians 2:10), who gives gifts “as He wills” (I Corinthians 12:11), and who raised Christ from the dead (Romans 8:11). He is not the Father, and He is not the Son, but He is God.

Nor are these three simply aspects or modes of one divine person. They are shown throughout Scripture to speak to one another, love one another, glorify one another. At the baptism of Christ, the Father speaks from heaven, the Spirit descends as a dove, and the Son rises from the water (Matthew 3:16–17). Jesus says that He will ask the Father to send another Helper, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father and testifies of the Son (John 14:16–17; 15:26). These are not symbolic visions or figures of speech. They are consistent and coherent depictions of three who are distinct in personhood and united in essence.

Even the most formulaic language of Scripture affirms this triune relationship. In the Great Commission, Jesus commands that disciples be baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). The word “name” is singular, yet it is applied to three distinct Persons, all of whom share that one divine identity. This is not contradiction, nor is it confusion. It is the very reality of who God is.

This eternal relationality explains not only the nature of divine love, but the very coherence of divine being. Without relationship, love has no object. Without plurality, reason has no dialogue. Without distinction, unity collapses into silence. But in God there is both unity and distinction, both oneness and fellowship. God is not a solitary being who later chose to relate. He is eternally Father, eternally Son, eternally Spirit. He is the living fellowship from which all love, all meaning, and all community flows.

This is the God who made us. Not a mathematical singularity, nor a disconnected monarch, but a living, personal, relational God whose very being is a communion of love and truth. And because this is so, the call to know Him is not a summons to ritual or religion, but an invitation into relationship with the One who is Relationship.
 
Top