Having made our way through the challenging waters of the doctrine of the Trinity (at least for now!), we’re moving onto talk about the divine names and attributes. As I reflected on this topic, I was pleased to find my thinking come more and more into line with the Great Tradition of Christian thought, which has concluded that the distinction between God’s names, titles, and attributes is less stark than we might initially suppose.
Ask yourself, when the Psalm 89 calls God “my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation,” is “rock” a divine name or a divine title? Or is it a metaphor indicating a divine attribute?
An even more significant idea here is that God’s attributes are identical with his essence. This turns out to be very, very important. If we forget it, we wind up believing (among other unhelpful things) that there are competing agendas within God and no rest for our weary souls. Thankfully, God is most simple.
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