Attributes of God
What Does a Perfect God Look Like?
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Classical Theism, God, Jesus, Open Theism
Topics: Attributes and Character
The “classical view of God” refers to the view of God that has dominated Christian theology since the earliest Church fathers. According to this theology, God is completely “immutable.” This means that God’s being and…
God Clearly Can, So Why Doesn’t He? (podcast)
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God's Character, Objections to Open Theism, Open Theism
Leah expects more from God. Should she? Greg confronts God’s inactivity and underperformance. Episode 510 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0510.mp3
Podcast: Can Divine Simplicity Apply to a God Who IS Love and IS Relational?
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Attributes of God, Simplicity
Greg distinguishes practices from beliefs, and warns Christians about the evils of Christmas trees and shaking hands. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0353.mp3
Podcast: Does a Jesus-Centric Theology Reduce God?
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, God's Character
Greg challenges the traditional starting point of many theologies and defends starting our theology about God’s nature and character with what has been revealed about Jesus. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0325.mp3
Podcast: Should We Take Verses Where God is Forgetful, Fatigued, and Doesn’t Know the Past Literally?
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, Nature of God
Greg considers a challenge to open theisms about taking verses about God changing his mind literally. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0314.mp3
Podcast: Is God Outside of Time?
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Attributes of God, Open Theism, time
Greg discusses the nature of time, the importance of sequence, and the centrality of poetry. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0286.mp3
Podcast: Is God Fickle?
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God
Is there anything at stake in our life? Greg balances God’s mercy and grace with the authenticity of free will. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0255.mp3
Podcast: What is the Greatest Philosophical Blunder in History?
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Attributes of God, Philosophy
Greg goes WAY back to trace an erroneous thought. His investigation brings all the way back to the pre-Socratics and the Ground-of-Being. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0249.mp3
God is Love: Full Stop
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, Love
Not many Christians would disagree that God is love, but many would quickly qualify that with some other kind of attribute such as justice. But love is not just one of the attributes of God alongside…
Classical Theism’s Unnecessary Paradoxes
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Jesus, Suffering
Topics: Attributes and Character
The traditional view of God that is embraced by most—what is called “classical theology”—works from the assumption that God’s essential divine nature is atemporal, immutable, and impassible. The Church Fathers fought to articulate and defend…
How God is Glorified
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, God's Character, Love
Peter wrote, “[God] has given us … his precious and very great promises, so that through them … [we] may become participants of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). With the coming of Christ, God…
An Omni-Resourceful God
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Open Future, Open Theism
Topics: Defending the Open View
It is quite common for us to talk about the attributes of God as omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing) and omni-present (present everywhere), but what about God’s unlimited resourcefulness? Consider the story of Moses’ commission in…
God is Not a Monster
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God is Love, Jesus
Pastor Brian Zhand has a way with words that captures the imagination. And he is a pastor that has taken time to read the church fathers. In a recent post, he quotes Saint Antony who wrote, “I no longer…
Thankful for the Passion of God
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, Classical Theism, God, Jesus, Thanksgiving
The classical view of God has held that God is impassible, meaning he is above pathos (passion or emotions). The main reason the church came to this view was that, following the Hellenistic philosophical tradition, they associated…
Is Your Christianity Shaped by Plato or the Bible?
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Blueprint Worldview, Change, God, Open Theism, Perfection, Plato, time
Topics: Apologetics
The Timaeus is a work that Plato wrote that addresses the questions: “What is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is that which becomes but never is?” (Tim. 28a)? These questions…
God is Not What You Expect
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God is Love, Jesus
Jesus came, in part, to finally reveal the absolute truth about God. He is the way and the truth (alethia) and the life (Jn 14:6). The word “truth” means “uncovered.” And what we find once…
Is God Immutable? Part II
Category: Q&A
Tags: Attributes of God, God's Character, time
Topics: Attributes and Character
Yesterday, we looked at the common understanding of divine immutability and the problems inherent to it. Click here to read that post. Today, let’s look at what the immutability of God actually means. Instead of…
Is God Immutable? Part I
Category: Q&A
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God, Jesus, time
Topics: Attributes and Character
For a number of reasons, Plato believed that something changes only to become better or to become worse (Rep. II). Since a perfect being can’t be improved or diminished, he argued, God must be completely…
Love and the Other Attributes of God
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God is Love, Love
Topics: Apologetics
If we keep our focus on Christ, we see that God’s power and God’s love are not two separate attributes, as many people assume. As I often state, love is not merely something God does;…