A Speculative Schema for Describing God's Nature

What is God like?

God exists necessarily. Although a Bible verse like "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14) has been interpreted by some, such as Huldrych Zwingli,¹ to refer to God's necessary existence, Clark Pinnock says that this way of thinking misses the point: "What God is saying to Moses in this verse is not 'I exist' or even 'I will be present.' God is saying that he will be a faithful God for his people."² Faithfulness is an aspect of God's character, and the way Exodus 3:14 is worded makes it sound necessary. So, in addition to God's necessary existence, we may say that he has a necessary character.

What else can be said about what God is like? Not only does God exist and have a character, but he acts. These can be pictured as different qualities that God has. Existence is primary, character is secondary, and acts are tertiary.

Christians who accept classical theism will take issue with the schema presented here. A couple aspects of classical theism include that God is timeless and simple (divine simplicity). To say that God is timeless is to say that he "dwells in an eternal present that lacks a before and after."³ Divine simplicity is the idea that "God's essential attributes are both identical to one another, and identical to God's nature and existence."⁴ On this view, "God does not possess any properties."⁵

What I have suggested, on the contrary, is that God is composed of properties: existence, character, and acts. God has a prioritized existence, since he exists without being caused to do so. Having a character is impossible without first existing. One's acts also have a certain character to them, being either good or evil. Existence, character, and acts work quite naturally in relation to each other.

Are God's essential attributes identical to his nature and existence? This is tricky to evaluate. While I would be comfortable saying that God's existence and essential attributes (or "character," as I would put it) are both necessary (which could be taken to mean "identical"), some of the expressions of his character do not seem to be. For example, it is intuitive to believe that a personal God loves people individually. Love is certainly an essential attribute of God, but his loving me is not because I exist contingently rather than necessarily. It seems at least possible that I could not have existed. If I did not exist, God could not have loved me, but this would pose no threat to his essential attribute of love, which God could express in other ways. On the one hand, it sounds like I am agreeing with this aspect of divine simplicity because God's love seems to exist without it being expressed in particular contingent ways. On the other, God's existence is necessary, yet his essential attributes are capable of being expressed in contingent ways. If one is necessary and the other is contingent (at least, in part), the two cannot be identical.

As for timelessness, it is problematic if we are to also believe that God has accurate knowledge about our world, which is temporal. Richard Swinburne writes persuasively on this point:

And, how could God 'simultaneously' be aware of a temporal event 'as it happens', unless his awareness of it is simultaneous with it happening, and so how could he be aware at his one timeless moment of two events happening at different times, unless the two awareness are simultaneous with each other, and so the two events happening at different times would have to happen at the same time—which is logically impossible. How could God be aware of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE as it happens, and of its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE as it happens, when these two times are not simultaneous with each other?⁶

This has implications for God's character and acts. God's omniscience can be thought of as an aspect of his character. Furthermore, God's knowledge about the world informs how he acts. Not only is the notion that God has timeless knowledge confusing, but it looks as though it could not produce historical acts. This is puzzling if we are to believe that God acts in history, which is what would be happening if he genuinely interacted with a temporal world.

The three properties I have discussed in this post—existence, character, and acts—are the most basic ones I can think of at the moment, so I will stick to them. I am willing to change my mind about the accuracy of this schema should any objections come my way that I find convincing. The value of this schema is that it offers an alternative to some of the questionable elements of the classical theist model. I believe it also has the potential to offer an interesting way of conceptualizing the God-world relation. That, however, is a topic for another time.

Notes

1. Steven Nemes, Theology of the Manifest: Christianity Without Metaphysics (Lanham: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2023), 58.

2. Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 106.

3. R. T. Mullins, God and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 16.

4. Ibid., 17.

5. Ibid.

6. Richard Swinburne, "Causation, Time, and God's Omniscience," Topoi (2017), 36:682.