Communicable and Incommunicable Attributes of God

The communicable attributes of God are the perfections He shares with His creatures in a finite form, such as love, holiness, wisdom and goodness, while the incommunicable attributes of God are those that belong to Him alone, such as self-existence, immutability, eternity and simplicity. Reformed theology made this the standard way to sort the attributes of God. The communicable attributes of God are the ones we are called to imitate, and the incommunicable ones mark the line no creature crosses. Its own best teachers admitted that the line is not clean, and this article argues that the split is right anyway and shows the rule that explains why.

Key takeaways

• Communicable attributes are shared in a finite form. Love, holiness, wisdom, goodness, righteousness, knowledge and power have real counterparts in human beings.
• Incommunicable attributes belong to God alone. Aseity, immutability, eternity, immensity, infinity and simplicity have no finite counterpart, or a counterpart that is their opposite.
• The tradition conceded the overlap. Louis Berkhof and Herman Bavinck both granted that every attribute is incommunicable as it exists in God.
• Frame-Indexed Classical Theism (FICT) supplies the missing criterion. Against theistic personalism and Scotist univocity, it holds that each attribute is absolute in God and finite in us, and it sorts each attribute by what our frame holds.
• We imitate God's love and holiness without becoming God. We receive the communicable attributes, and the incommunicable ones remain His alone.

The two lists

The lists below follow Louis Berkhof's arrangement in his Systematic Theology, with the omnipresence that Herman Bavinck and most later teachers add.

Incommunicable attributes of God

• Aseity, or self-existence: God exists from Himself and depends on nothing (see aseity).
• Immutability: God does not change in His being, perfections, purposes or promises. "I the LORD do not change" (Malachi 3:6, NIV).
• Eternity: God possesses His life without beginning, end or succession (see time and eternity).
• Immensity and omnipresence: God is bounded by no place and present to every place (see omnipresence).
• Infinity and perfection: God lacks nothing and is limited by nothing.
• Unity and simplicity: God is one, and He is not composed of parts (see divine simplicity).

Communicable attributes of God

• Spirituality: God is spirit, and human beings have spirits.
• Knowledge and wisdom: God knows and judges rightly; we know in part.
• Veracity: God is true and faithful; we can speak truly and keep our word.
• Goodness: with its forms of love, grace, mercy and patience.
• Holiness: God is set apart and pure; His people are called holy.
• Righteousness and justice: God does what is right; we can do right.
• Will and power: God wills and acts; we choose and act.

Why the lists disagree

Readers who compare catechisms will notice drift. Berkhof places power and knowledge in the communicable column, under the headings of sovereignty and intellect. Other Reformed teachers, such as Michael Horton, place omnipotence and omniscience in the incommunicable column, since no human being is all-powerful or omniscient. Both groups are reporting something true, and a criterion that cannot explain the disagreement has not yet found the rule.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism mixes the columns in a single sentence: "God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth" (Q. 4). The incommunicable words modify the communicable ones.

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The Many Beings series works through these attributes one dilemma at a time.

What are the communicable and incommunicable attributes of God?

Berkhof gave the standard definition in his Systematic Theology: "The most common distinction is that between incommunicable and communicable attributes. The former are those to which there is nothing analogous in the creature, as aseity, simplicity, immensity, etc.; the latter those to which the properties of the human spirit bear some analogy, as power, goodness, mercy, righteousness, etc."

A communicable attribute is one that can be shared, communicated from one to another. Bavinck, in the second volume of his Reformed Dogmatics, notes that the vocabulary began in the doctrine of the Trinity before it was applied to the attributes: "God's essence or deity is communicable (communicated by the Father to the Son in the generation of the Son), but the persons and the personal properties (say, fatherhood) are incommunicable." The theologians then borrowed the pair for the attributes.

Thomas Aquinas had already set the governing asymmetry. "Although it may be admitted that creatures are in some sort like God," he wrote in the Summa Theologiae, "it must nowise be admitted that God is like creatures." The likeness runs one way, from the Creator to the creature. The prophet puts the same truth as a question no creature can answer:

"To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?" says the Holy One. (Isaiah 40:25, NIV)

Where did the distinction come from?

Beyond the Trinitarian usage, Bavinck traces a second root to the old contrast between what God is by nature and what creatures have by gift. Plato, he notes, already taught that God is good inherently while creatures are good by participation, and Augustine made that idea fruitful in Christian theology. Bavinck draws the line from there: "Between the Creator and the creature, it was said, there is analogy. This then led to the division between communicable and incommunicable attributes."

The division belongs to the Reformed scholastics. Berkhof names its representative works: the Leiden professors' Synopsis, Petrus van Mastricht and Francis Turretin. Leiden was also where Franciscus Junius, professor there from 1592, wrote his Treatise on True Theology, which set out the archetypal and ectypal distinction.

The Lutherans declined it. "This distinction found no favor with the Lutherans," Berkhof records, "but has always been rather popular in Reformed circles." Bavinck explains why. The Lutherans "mostly favored another division," quiescent and operative attributes, and the Reformed found the communicable and incommunicable pair useful for a Christological quarrel: it "gave them a ready means with which to combat the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity." Lutheran theology taught the genus maiestaticum, "the view that Jesus Christ's human nature becomes 'majestic', suffused with the qualities of the divine nature," including omnipresence. If omnipresence is incommunicable, a human nature cannot receive it. The same Christological question returns in Lutheran kenoticism.

Even Reformed theologians hesitated. Berkhof reports that Abraham Kuyper was "dissatisfied with it," that Bavinck dropped it in the first edition of his Dogmatics and returned to it in the second, and that he himself kept it "for practical reasons."

Aquinas did not divide the attributes this way, yet he supplied the ground the division stands on. The names we give God, he argued in question 13 of the Summa, carry a creaturely manner of speaking, "a mode of signification which belongs to creatures," while "as regards what the name signifies, these names are applied primarily to God rather than to creatures." The perfection is His first and ours by derivation. That principle runs through Thomism and through the classical doctrine of God as a whole.

Volume One of the series sets out the method behind each of these attributes, and it is free.

Is the distinction artificial? Three objections

The distinction is not artificial, but three serious objections say it is, and two of them come from inside the classical tradition.

Every attribute is both

The first objection comes from the distinction's own defenders. Berkhof wrote: "None of the divine perfections are communicable in the infinite perfection in which they exist in God, and at the same time there are faint traces in man even of the so-called incommunicable attributes of God." Bavinck went further: everyone admits, he wrote, that the communicable attributes as they exist in God "are just as incommunicable as the others." He concluded that "each of his attributes can be said, in different senses, to be both incommunicable and communicable," and he warned that every two-column scheme appears "to divide God's being into two halves."

If every attribute is both, the objection runs, then the classification marks no real line. It sorts by emphasis, and emphasis varies by teacher, which is exactly why the lists drift.

Univocity or analogy?

The second objection asks what "shared" means. If love is communicable, is "love" one concept said of God and of us? Duns Scotus answered yes for our most basic concepts: one concept, said in two modes, infinite in God and finite in us. Aquinas answered no: "Hence no name is predicated univocally of God and of creatures," and the names are said by analogy, "a mean between pure equivocation and simple univocation."

Each answer carries a cost. If "love" means the same in God and in us, God risks becoming one more lover among lovers, larger but of the same kind, and the incommunicable column loses its point. If "love" means something related but different, we owe an account of what is shared, or the communicable column says little. The dispute over univocity is therefore the communicable attributes question stated in the philosophy of language.

The personalist objection: a remote God

The third objection presses on the incommunicable column itself. Berkhof's own chapter titles invite it: the incommunicable attributes are "God as the Absolute Being," and the communicable attributes are "God as a Personal Spirit." Pascal wrote on the night of 23 November 1654 of the "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars." Many modern philosophers of religion hear in aseity, simplicity, immutability and timelessness the God of the philosophers, and in love, mercy and response the God of Abraham.

This family of views, which Brian Davies named theistic personalism, treats God as a person in a sense close to ours, and it revises the incommunicable column to keep Him near. The intuition deserves full weight: a God who cannot relate cannot love, and Scripture shows Him relating.

Alvin Plantinga argued that if God is identical to His properties, then, as the Stanford Encyclopedia reports, "he is a property," and "No abstract object is either a person or a causal agent." William Lane Craig, who keeps God timeless apart from creation, concludes that "God ought to be considered as timeless sans creation and temporal subsequent to creation," so that God "would then begin to experience temporal personal relationships" with His creatures. R. T. Mullins's The End of the Timeless God (2016) argues that timelessness should be given up, and open theism revises immutability and foreknowledge as well.

Volume Four of the series takes up these personalist objections one by one.

The classical reply

The classical reply grants the overlap and denies the two halves. Berkhof answered that the two classes "are not strictly co-ordinate," because the incommunicable attributes qualify the communicable ones, "so that it can be said that God is one, absolute, unchangeable and infinite in His knowledge and wisdom, His goodness and love, His grace and mercy, His righteousness and holiness." The catechism's sentence says the same: God is unchangeable in His goodness, not unchangeable beside it.

Bavinck added that the negative attributes are not empty. "If they were totally incommunicable, they would also be totally unknowable and unnamable." Our knowledge of God is true because it is not exhaustive, "not false and untrue, but analogical and ectypal," a theme the tradition of apophatic theology develops at length.

Against the personalist, the reply turns the incommunicable column into the guarantee of the communicable one. A love that cannot change is a love that cannot fail:

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." (James 1:17, NIV)

The reply is sound as far as it goes. It explains how the columns relate, but it does not say what decides which column an attribute belongs to, and so the lists keep drifting.

How Frame-Indexed Classical Theism explains the split

Frame-Indexed Classical Theism (FICT) is a research program in analytic theology that resolves classical theological dilemmas by diagnosing them as artifacts of a single formal error. With theistic personalism, it holds that God's love, response and relationship are real and not figures of speech. With Thomist analogy, and against Scotist univocity as applied to the divine perfections, it holds that "love" cannot keep one sense across the Creator and the creature without making the Creator a creature. It adds the criterion the classical reply lacks.

The position rests on two axioms. A being's nature is the fusion of its essential qualities, and a conscious being's mode of existence determines its mode of apprehension. God's nature differs from ours in kind, so God's own frame and our finite, human frame differ in kind, and the same word said from each frame carries the sense native to that frame. The statement of FICT sets out both axioms.

From here every attribute comes in a pair: an absolute term in God and a finite term in us. The Many Beings books draw each pair as a circle, finite power inside and absolute power outside. God's righteousness is not ours enlarged. It is "the very standard by which the corresponding human qualities are measured." Every attribute, then, is held absolutely by God and received finitely by us. Berkhof and Bavinck were right that each is in some sense both.

The criterion asks what our frame holds on the inside of the circle.

• Communicable: our frame holds a finite counterpart of the same perfection. We know in part, we love, we act, we judge rightly. These are real knowledge, love and power, received at a creaturely scale.
• Incommunicable: our frame holds no counterpart, or holds the opposite. God exists from Himself; we exist from another. God is simple; we are composite. God is eternal; we are temporal.

The volumes prove the difference in kind by exactly this kind of contradiction: aseity against contingency, simplicity against composition.

Immutability is the clearest case. In the series' figures it is the one pair whose inner and outer terms are opposites: mutability inside the circle, immutability outside. As Volume Four puts it, "Immutability, for man, is therefore a concept held in the intellect that can find no instance in perception." We can define it and affirm it of God, yet nothing we perceive is immutable. That is what makes an attribute incommunicable, and the same structure explains why God's changelessness does not stop Him from engaging us, a point the article on whether God changes His mind develops.

The criterion also settles the drift. A communicable attribute names a perfection of act: knowing, willing, loving, acting. An incommunicable attribute names the mode in which God has every perfection: from Himself, without change, without parts, without limit. "Power" has a finite counterpart in us; "omnipotence" fuses power with limitlessness, and limitlessness has none. Berkhof listed the perfection and Horton listed the mode, and both were right about different terms of the same pair.

The three objections now receive one answer each. "Every attribute is both" is true of the pair, not of the classification. The univocity question is answered by indexing: the sense is native to each frame while the reference, the one God, is shared. And the personalist's relationship is real in both frames: God relates by eternal, complete communion, and we relate by unfolding, developing intimacy.

The Reformed scholastics came close to this. Their archetypal theology is God's knowledge of Himself, and their ectypal theology is the true knowledge accommodated to creatures. Volume Four reads the distinction as frame-indexing stated in the idiom of the seventeenth century: ectypal knowledge is true knowledge of a different kind. "The difference is mode, not measure." Volume Four carries the method through immutability and interaction, and Volume One derives it from the axioms.

You can begin with the first volume at no cost.

How do we imitate God without becoming God?

We imitate God by receiving the communicable attributes at a creaturely scale, and the incommunicable ones are not ours to reach for. Scripture commands the imitation directly:

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." (1 Peter 1:15-16, NIV)

Jesus gives the command in its highest form at the close of His teaching on loving enemies, after noting that the Father sends sun and rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike:

"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48, NIV)

The perfection in view is the Father's love, which reaches enemies, and John names its source: "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love" (1 John 4:8, NIV), and "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19, NIV). Paul tells believers to imitate God as dearly loved children (Ephesians 5:1). In each case the creature imitates by receiving first.

The Many Beings books chart this in their table of human, Christian and divine qualities. Righteousness and holiness are the rows where the Christian column matches God's, because the believer is righteous in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). In every other row the Christian column stays finite. No accumulation of finite acts grows into the absolute. The believer receives Christ's finished righteousness rather than building one.

The first temptation reached for the other column. The serpent promised, "you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5, NIV), offering self-determination in place of received life. Sin grasps at the incommunicable; holiness receives the communicable.

This is also why God's incommunicable attributes do not crowd out our freedom. His aseity is not a larger amount of our kind of existence competing for the same room, so our finite power to choose stands within His absolute power rather than against it, which is the condition any serious account of libertarian freedom has to meet.

Volume One works out that freedom question in full.

How the positions compare

Frequently asked questions

Is holiness a communicable attribute of God?

Yes. God is holy, and He calls His people to be holy because He is holy (1 Peter 1:16). Holiness has two sides in Scripture, God's majestic separateness and His moral purity. On the criterion above, the purity has a finite counterpart in the believer and is communicable, while the unbounded mode in which God is holy is not.

Is omniscience communicable or incommunicable?

Knowledge is communicable; omniscience is not. Human beings know truly but in part, so knowledge has a finite counterpart. Omniscience adds limitlessness, which has none. Lists of the incommunicable attributes of God that include omniscience are naming the absolute term, and lists that place knowledge in the communicable column are naming the finite one. Both are describing the same pair.

Why is love called a communicable attribute?

Because human beings can love truly, and Scripture commands it on God's pattern. Our love is finite and received, "We love because he first loved us," yet it is real love, which is why the apostles can tell believers to love as God loves. God's love is the same perfection held absolutely, without change and without limit, so it is not a larger amount of our love but its source.

Did Aquinas divide the attributes into communicable and incommunicable?

No. The division is a Reformed scholastic arrangement. Aquinas supplied its foundation: creatures resemble God but God does not resemble creatures, and the names of the perfections apply "primarily to God rather than to creatures."

Can a Christian become like God?

In the communicable attributes, yes, as a creature. Believers grow in love, holiness and wisdom, and they will know God more fully: "Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12, NIV). That hope is the beatific vision, and even there the creature remains a creature.

Where to go from here

The communicable and incommunicable attributes of God are a list on one page and a doctrine of God on the next. The tradition knew that every attribute is both, and it kept the distinction because it was true even without a stated rule. The rule is that God holds each attribute absolutely, we receive some finitely, and where our frame holds only the opposite, the line between Creator and creature runs.

Volume One sets out the axioms and the rule, and you can download it free. The rest of the series carries the method into time, evil, immutability and infinity.