No, I do not. Moreover, I do not use terms describing God that are actually derivatives of those attributes revealed to us in the Scripture.
Some use words like ‘relational’ when the proper word is ‘personality’. This is yet another method often used by cultists, creating a new lexicon that indoctrinates the unsuspecting into a closed world of unbiblical doctrines. Also as the cultists do, they deploy loaded terminology, such as ‘control’ in a thinly-veiled attempt to mock orthodox thinking. If expected to be taken seriously, it does not serve any of these groups to adopt these cult-like tactics. Rather, all Christians should rely on the commonly used orthodox terms when describing or discussing God’s nature.
As answered here, every positive attribute of God inheres in all positive attributes of God. Moreover, we must be careful to avoid separating the divine essence and the divine attributes. We must also guard against false conceptions of the relation in which these attributes stand with each other. This is the most egregious error of groups that seek to redefine the sovereignty of God. God’s attributes are not parts composing the Divine Essence. The whole essence is in each attribute, and the attribute in the essence. We should not conceive of the divine essence as existing by itself, and prior to the attributes. God is not essence and attributes, but in attributes. Indeed, knowledge of the attributes carries with it knowledge of the essence.
That said, what we can do is attempt to classify God’s attributes in order to learn more about the nature of God. Barth’s (Christian Dogmatics II, part I) outline of how the attributes may be classified is often used by theologians. According to Barth, the attributes of God may be classified using one of the following six different classification methods:
(1) positive and negative
(2) communicable and incommunicable (what God is and of Himself)
(3) quiescent and active
(4) relative (to creation) and absolute
(5) transitive and intransitive
(6) metaphysical and moral
(2) communicable and incommunicable (what God is and of Himself)
(3) quiescent and active
(4) relative (to creation) and absolute
(5) transitive and intransitive
(6) metaphysical and moral
Readers of theology will note that many theologians use method (2). No matter what methods are used, all of God’s attributes fall into the classes of great and good. When one examines any of the orthodox theological literature, we see this method at work, a kind of ecumenical consensus based upon 1,500 years of thinking by Christian scholars. What derives from this is a gathering of the attributes of God according to five Biblical affirmations:
(1) ‘God is spirit’ (John 4:24)
- personality (Genesis 3:9-23; Genesis 18:17; Exodus 3:3-6; Exodus 19:9-19)
- self-consciousness (Exodus 3:14; 1 Corinthians 2:9, 10)
- self-determination (Isaiah 40-66; Ephesians 1:5, 9, 11; Deuteronomy 29:29)
- life (Deuteronomy 5:26; Jeremiah 10:10, 11; 1 Thessalonians 1:9)
- activity (Psalms 84:1-2; Ecclesiastes 12:14; Mark 9:41)
- intelligence (Psalms 104:24; 1 Samuel 1:3; Isaiah 11:2; Job 38-41)
(2) ‘the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath, there is no other’ (Deuteronomy 4:39)
- Biblical doctrines of monotheism (Deuteronomy 4:35; Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Isaiah 44:6-7; James 2:19)
(3) ‘our God is greater than all gods’ (2 Chronicles 2:5)
- self-existence (Exodus 3:14; John 5:26; Jeremiah 2:13; Psalms 36:9)
- eternity (Psalms 90:2; Isaiah 57:15; Hebrews 1:2; 1 Timothy 1:17)
- immensity (1 Kings 8:27; Romans 8:38, 39)
- omnipresence (Psalms 139:7-10; Jeremiah 23:23-24)
- omniscience (Hebrews 4:13; 2 Chronicles 16:9; Isaiah 46:9-11)
- omnipotence (Matthew 19:26; Genesis 17:1; Jeremiah 32:17; Isaiah 40:28; Ephesians 1:11; Revelations 19:6)
- incomprehensibility (Psalms 36:5-6; Romans 11:33, cf. 34-35; Job 11:7)
- absoluteness (1 Timothy 6:15; Romans 1:25)
- infinity (Ephesians 1:23; Jeremiah 23:23-24; Psalms 139:7-12; Psalms 147:5; Job 11:7-9)
- transcendence and immanence (Isaiah 57:15; Psalms 139:7-10; John 8:23)
- time and space, time-space (Psalms 90:1-2; 1 Corinthians 2:7; Romans 8:39; 1 Kings 8:27)
(4) ‘Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good’ (Psalms 107:1)
- holiness (Psalms 99:9; Psalms 51:11; Isaiah 57:15; Psalms 105:42; Psalms 89:35)
- righteousness (Psalms 11:7; Titus 1:2; 2 Timothy 2:13; Psalms 89:14; Psalms 119:137; Romans 3:21; Revelations 16:4-7)
- truth (John 17:3; Jeremiah 33:6; 2 Samuel 2:6; Exodus 34:6; John 1:17; Romans 3:4)
- faithfulness (Deuteronomy 7:9-11; Deuteronomy 32:4; Jeremiah 16:19; Psalms 89:18; Psalms 19:7; Deuteronomy 6:26)
- love (1 John 4:19; 1 John 4:12; John 4:8)
- mercy (Psalms 145:15-16; Psalms 106:1; Psalms 136:11; Acts 14:17)
(5) ‘the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Matthew 28:19)
- one simple essence/substance, three modes of subsistence (not modes as in the sense used by Unitarianism), which are often called “persons”, which do not divide the essence of God. Instead God’s essence is common to the three Persons in God, not communicated from one to another; they each of them partake of the essence, and possess it as one undivided nature—‘as all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ’, so in the Holy Spirit; and of the Father. One God who eternally exists in three different persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all of whom are fully God, all of whom are equal. (Romans 16:26; Revelations 1:17; Matthew 28:20; Acts 17:28-29; John 14-16)
To be clear, we have absolutely no warrant to elevate any one of God’s attributes above another. Nor do we have a warrant to fixate, as do cultists, upon one attribute at the expense of all of the others.
AMR
