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Marisa Johnson
Philosophy of Religion
Shannon Atkinson
April 28th, 2015
The Characteristics of God
God, in all of his differing conceptions around the world, is considered
to be a perfect being. After all, only a perfect being could be deemed worthy
of our worship. But what's a god, truly? How powerful must they be? Classic
theologians hold to the view that, for the Judeo-Christian god to be
considered truly perfect, he must be impassable, immutable, omniscient,
omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and eternal by his very nature.
In this paper I will, in detail, describe each of these characteristics one
at a time, evaluate their importance as God-like attributes, and ultimately
synthesize why all of these is necessary for the classic god to be considered
perfect. In addition, while describing the traits, I will highlight popular
problems and criticisms regarding these and what that means to a believer
in the classic god.
Firstly, the impassibility of god, simply put, is the "view that god cannot
be affected by human beings or other creatures; in particular, god cannot
suffer or undergo negative emotions of any kind" (Peterson, Hasker, et all.)
Christians generally will accept this to be true without any fuss. Upon closer
examination, however, I think we can spot a problem most believers might

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take issue with. According to the definition of impassability, "God cannot

undergo any negative emotion." Can we conclude then that god does not
feel any sorrow when his children suffer? Does he not feel loss or remorse
when one of his creations goes astray? It may feel uncomfortable to consider
god as an unsympathetic being, but it is a trait that necessitates his
perfection. We might also argue that impassability is more perfect than a
sympathetic god - we often hear the phrase "god has a plan." He know how
everything will work out. He doesn't need to feel sorrow for our fleeting pain,
of which he is acutely aware of how minute it is in the grand scheme of
things.
Immutability is rather similar to impassability, with some key
differences. Immutability is the trait of being unable to change through time,
or being unaffected by time. This is also a necessary trait for the classic god.
He must remain completely sovereign and unchanging. We can extend this
to his relationship towards his own creations. His compulsory sovereignty
means we have no affect on him. We might conclude our prayers, our
wishes, and our hopes will never change his nature or his will. To the limited
human understanding and experience, this may seem like a detriment. Many
may ask, why pray at all?
One of the three 'omni's', gods omniscience, is one of the most well
known and most widely discussed of gods traits. Our text describes it as,
"Gods knowledge of all propositions, or rather, all trust propostitions"

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(reading, pp. 146). He knows everything there is to know, at all times, and in
all possible scenarios. He knows every thought, every intention, and knows
all possible outcomes of actions that may or may not ever be taken. The
classic god's omniscience brings about one of the oldest philosophical
problems in history - the problem of Free Will.
If god knows everything in the world, past, present, and even
hypothetical universes, how can humans ever have truly free agency? Our
actions are known to god even before they are known to ourselves. In other
words, we don't have complete control; we never even had the ability to
choose other than that which god knew or intended. Certain philosophers
use theodicies to justify our illusion of free will. One popular rationalization is
the thought that we still retain our agency by creating choices based on our
own urges. For example, imagine you had a feeling you couldn't describe, an
urge to make a choice. As soon as you make your choice and internalize it
based on your feelings, you are exercising your free will, regardless of the
fact that god knows what choice you ultimately will or won't make.
Among all the traits possessed by the classic god, omnibenevolence
seems the most natural or inherent. Omnibenevolence is the quality of being
perfectly good, or all-loving. But what does it mean to be perfectly good? As
humans we can look out into the world and see events and people we might
deem to be evil. How is it that a perfectly loving and perfectly moral god
could create a world in which these environments exist? Either our

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conception of gods "goodness" is flawed, or our perception of "evil" is

incorrect. Who are we as humans to deem which qualities are "good?" Is the
fact that humans exercise their free will to spread suffering a reflection of
gods own morality? It may be naive and narrow minded to assume that all
negative things we experience here on this Earth as 'evil.'
It is also widely accepted that god is all powerful, or omnipotent. There
is nothing that is beyond gods ability. Many thought experiments spring up in
response to this; the question "is there a rock so big god can't lift it?" is an
age old conundrum. Asking such questions are, in actuality, logical fallacies.
God is all powerful. He is capable of every possible thing. He would never
be able to create a rock he couldn't lift - the rock doesn't exist. God is limited
(if you can call it such) to only what is logically possible. Thought
experiments aside, it seems obvious that god must be all powerful. The
vastness of the knowledge and ability needed to create the world and
everything in it is staggering.
From our text, "That god is eternal is a common conviction among
theists." What does it mean to be eternal? We can simply say that god has
always existed and will always exist. Does he then function within time, or
outside of it? Does he do both? I believe it's understood that god functions
both outside and inside of time. Being eternal goes hand in hand with his
omniscience, and existing outside of time facilitates gods expansive
knowledge. He does not experience moments chronologically as we humans

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do, rather, it could be hypothesized that he experiences them all at once, or

not at all.
As the individual threads of each of gods traits are pulled apart and
examined meticulously, we can see how each characteristic is contingent
upon the other to create the being which we conceive as "God."
God cannot be all powerful without being eternal. He must be
everlasting in order to have all his knowledge about the universe and our
lives. He must be omnibenevolent in addition to being impassable - without
his sovereignty, he is susceptible to change through his love and sympathy
for his creations. To conclude, if god didn't have perfect knowledge, perfect
power, and perfect love, he cannot be perfectly sovereign and multifaceted,
and by extension, perfectly in control. Only a god which understands us in all
ways, perfectly, is logically conceivable.

WORKS CITED
Petersom, Michael. Hasker, William. Reichenbach, Bruce. Basinger, David.
(2013.) "Reason and Religious Belief."
Attributes of God: http://www.allaboutgod.com/attributes-of-god.htm
"Gods 'omni' attributes":
http://hermeneutics.kulikovskyonline.net/hermeneutics/omni.pdf