Christians worship and adore the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God, three persons. All equal in glory, majesty, and honor. But what makes God God? What characterizes God’s nature? What makes him the God that he is? What qualities do the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share as the one God they are together?
Well, there are various qualities predicated of God that we call “attributes,” such as transcendence (God is beyond all things), omniscience (God knows all things), and love (God is immeasurably good, self-giving, and faithful).
But there are three particular attributes, historically affirmed and defended by the church, that many Christians today find quite challenging to comprehend; indeed, many Christians find these so troublesome that they either refine them (to make them more palatable) or reject them altogether.
Here are the three aforementioned attributes:
Divine simplicity
Immutability
Impassibility
These attributes affirm:
God is not made of parts (divine simplicity)
He is unchanging (immutability)
He does not have passions—he does not suffer (impassibility)
So why do so many find such attributes unpalatable? Because, they argue, these attributes present God as lifeless, static, and uncaring. As such, these descriptors do not do justice to God as he truly is; they are not befitting of our great and glorious God.
But are they correct?
No, they are not. Rightly understood, these attributes help us recognize:
While God is simple, he is the fullness of blessed life in himself.
While he is immutable, he is dynamic.
While he is impassible, he is unthwartably great and possesses upright affections.
Let me break down each of these and show how they are faithful representations of God as he truly is in his triune glory.
Simplicity
The historic doctrine of divine simplicity merely affirms that God is not composed of or divisible into parts. Unlike embodied creatures (like us, for example, with our arms, legs, head, organs, and all the rest), God is not a composite being. God is pure spirit (Isaiah 31:3; John 4:24). His nature is immaterial (spiritual, invisible), not material (physical, visible). Hence, there is no A + B + C = God. That is, “parts” do not add together (like puzzle pieces) to result in God. There is no higher “God” category of which our triune God is an instance. God is the category. God just is God. God is God’s nature. Whatever it is that makes God is just God himself (Exodus 3:14).
This is good news. Divine simplicity assures us that God is fully sufficient in himself; he needs nothing beyond himself to be himself. God is beyond creation (with all its compositions) and so is not subject to its limitations or finite. No, God is limitless and infinite. God is also one. Divine simplicity assures us that the three persons—Father, Son, and Spirit—are truly one God, not three Gods. This triune God has all he needs in himself. And it’s this God whom we need for us.
Immutability
The historic doctrine of divine immutability merely affirms that God is unchanging—indeed, he cannot change. God is infinitely and eternally the perfect God he is (Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Psalm 102:25-27; Malachi 3:6; James 1:17). But this does not mean God is unmoving or unengaging. Indeed, God engages people, has a relationship with them, responds to their prayers, forgives them of their sins when they repent, and much more. Yet in so doing, he always acts consistently with his immutable being and purposes. Immutability does not mean that God is impersonal or static. No, God is the fullness of life within himself, which is precisely why he cannot change! As Thomas Weinandy aptly states, “God is unchangeable not because he is inert or static like a rock, but for just the opposite reason. He is so dynamic, so active that no change can make him more active. He is act pure and simple.”
This is good news. Immutability teaches us that God is unwaveringly stable in his very being, his character, his eternal plan and purposes, and his promises. That means we can always count on God to be the perfect God that he is—indeed, the very God we desperately need—in every situation we find ourselves in. Especially when the waves of life are crashing down upon us, we can stand on the solid rock that is our immutable triune God (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 62:5-8; Isaiah 44:8).
Impassibility
Finally, the historic doctrine of divine impassibility merely affirms that God does not have “passions”— he does not suffer (Note: Suffering isn’t merely injury. It also includes the idea of lacking something needed for fulfillment. God needs nothing for his own fulfillment or actualization; he already perfectly is.). He is incorruptible (Romans 1:23). But what is a “passion”? Not meaning enthusiasm, gusto, or zeal, “passion” here is a technical word, derived from the Latin word passibilitas, meaning “capable of suffering.” The church has historically affirmed that God is impassible—he is incapable of suffering. That is, God is unaffected or unmoved by anything outside himself. Indeed, he is infinitely resilient against external forces. Now, “passions,” which God does not have, must be distinguished from “affections,” which God does have. Passions are negative (or passive) relations, which imply suffering, whereas affections are positive (or active) relations, and God is actively related or disposed to all things, to himself as God and to everything else as the Creator.
This is good news. Nothing can act upon God to make him more God; that would mean he wasn’t perfect to begin with. Nothing can act upon God to make him less God; that would mean a diminishment of his perfection. No, God is infinitely and eternally God. Because he possesses the fullness of divine blessedness in himself (simplicity) and because he is unchanging in that blessedness (immutability), God is never anxious, inwardly troubled, or compulsive; he never undergoes “successive, fluctuating emotional states that allow him to experience loss or growth in himself.” Quite the contrary: Consistently himself in his fullness (power, truth, justice, love, grace, etc.), God is always actively relating to creation, his creatures, their comings and goings, their highs and lows—and all this according to his eternal plan and purposes. There is no manipulating God, no pulling his arm to get him to act. There’s not even waiting on God to act, to intervene. God always has been, always is, always will be the perfect God he is. And he’s that God for us (Romans 8:28-30).
Wholly Other God—For Us
The Christian church has historically preserved these attributes—simplicity, immutability, and impassibility—as rightly attesting to God’s greatness and otherness. Yes, God is wholly other. And yet, it’s this wholly other God who created the universe, made human beings in his image, provided coverings for Adam and Eve after their fall into sin, called Abram from a far off land, redeemed the Israelites from captivity in Egypt and provided a means of atonement for their sins, and—in the fullness of time—sent the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to rescue us from sin and the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and draw us in Christ toward the Father. The utterly beyond God is intimately near, and by his grace, he draws us near to himself. Let us praise our triune God for his perfect character and his glorious grace.
1 See, for example, Bruce Lindley McCormack, The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon, Current Issues in Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
2 Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 79.
3 Stephen J. Wellum, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, From Canon to Concept (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 607–8.
4 Wellum, Systematic Theology, 1:616.