The Attributes of God (Belgic Confession 1b)

Rev. Angus Stewart

Belgic Confession 1: There Is One Only God
We all believe with the heart, and confess with the mouth, that there is one only simple and spiritual Being, which we call God; and that he is eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly wise, just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good.

Our first instalment introduced the Belgic Confession and the second began our exposition of its first article emphasizing that the Belgic Confession is a God-centred creed. We shall now consider Belgic Confession 1's teaching on the attributes of God.

God's Simplicity

The very first divine attribute or perfection mentioned in Article 1 of the Belgic Confession, and the one that is especially highlighted, is God’s unity, oneness or simplicity. God is one, single and simple, as opposed to two, double and consisting of many parts. The first three words used to describe God, "one only simple" all present His glorious attribute or perfection of simplicity. This is why the article is headed "There Is One Only God."

There have been, and are, many in the world who do not believe there is one God. In UK politics, the leaders of the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, respectively, are atheists, believing in no god at all. Those who believe in two gods are dualists, like the ancient Manichaeans, in whose ranks Augustine was found prior to his conversion to Christ. Those who worship many gods, like the Greco-Roman pantheon or the millions of idols of the Hindus, are polytheists. Pantheists believe that the universe is god.

Our confession makes an affirmation: there is one only God. This opposes agnosticism, which claims that we do not, or cannot, know that there is a God. We reject scepticism, which doubts our ability to know anything, and relativism, which claims that there is no absolute truth. Our confession begins with an article titled "There Is One Only God."

The first, and most basic, of the four statements I shall make concerning divine simplicity, unity or oneness is that it means that there is one God.

Second, the simplicity of God means that His Being—that which He "is," for "Being" is related to the verb "to be"—equals His attributes or His perfections. This is not true of anyone or anything else. For instance, Jack is clever, but he does not equal his cleverness. Jill has a superb memory, but she is not her fine memory. A man of thirty years old may be the same person at ninety but many of his attributes and characteristics have changed—many of them, especially his physical qualities will have gone downhill. But God is different: He is His holiness, He is His eternity, He is His goodness and all His other perfections. In this, He is utterly incomparable and unlike man!

Third, God's simplicity means that all His attributes or perfections are one in Him and qualify each other. Although we distinguish God's attributes—His love, His justice, His power, etc.—we learn from His Word that all these attributes are one in Him. This means that God’s love is His justice; God’s power is His holiness. God’s wisdom is His sovereignty, is His grace, is His righteousness, is His unchangeability, is His spirituality. Each of God’s attributes implies and includes all the others. Yet it is also meaningful and helpful for us to refer to God's various perfections, to define them, to distinguish them, to relate them, in order better to understand, love and serve the Most High. This truth is hard for us to grasp, but we need to remember that God is infinitely greater than our puny and limited minds can comprehend.

We can also use the attributes of God to qualify each other. God’s holiness is a merciful, just, all-powerful and unchangeable holiness. God’s omniscience is a righteous, long-suffering, eternal and sovereign omniscience. Similarly, the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, "God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth" (A. 4). This sentence affirms that "infinite, eternal, and unchangeable" qualify God’s "being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Therefore Jehovah’s justice, for instance, is an infinite, eternal and unchangeable justice. This is included in the truth of divine simplicity, that God is one.

A very popular error is contradicted by the doctrine of God’s simplicity, especially the truth that the attributes of God qualify each other. The free or well-meant offer claims that God loves the reprobate and desires to save them. That theory presents God as if He loves the reprobate throughout their lifetimes but, when they die, He stops loving them and punishes them forever in hell. That view posits a temporary divine love. But God’s simplicity means that all the attributes of God qualify each other. So God’s love, being God’s love—remember He is absolutely simple in His Being—is a love which is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, wise, omnipotent, holy, just, good and true. So if someone talks about a divine love which is merely temporal, you should think, "That doesn’t make sense. That isn’t God for He is simple."

Some try to get around this by saying that God has an infinite love for the elect in Jesus Christ, but He also has a second love which is a lesser love than the first love. Our response to this is: "You posit two loves in God. But God, being one, has only one love—a holy, omnipotent love, a love in perfect conformity with His own blessed Being. Two divine loves would be two gods! You haven’t grasped the simplicity of God." A love of God for those who are not His own in Jesus Christ would be a love that is not infinite, but we know that God is infinite. If that love of God changes into hatred when the person dies, then Jehovah’s love would also be temporal, but God is eternal.

Also, there is no mercy of God for someone who is never saved in Christ, for God’s mercy, being God’s mercy, is omnipotent, for God is omnipotent. Moreover, if God were to love and sincerely desire to save someone, yet this person perishes everlastingly, this would conflict with His wisdom, because God’s wisdom directs His love to the accomplishment of His desires.

I once exchanged letters in the British Church Newspaper with a Scottish Presbyterian minister who tried to explain how, in his mind, God could love and desire to save those whom He does not elect, redeem or save. That man said that God has "two levels." On one level, God loves the elect with His infinite love in Christ; on the other (lower) level, He loves the reprobate in time but does not save them and they perish in hell. The unity of God means there are no "two levels" in God. There is one "level" in God (if we want to use the word "level" at all) and there is no disunity, division or conflict in Him for His Being is absolutely simple. We, fallen puny human beings, have conflict within ourselves: we want to do one thing and we also want to do something that is incompatible with the first thing. This is because we are sinful creatures and not simple like God, who is absolutely one in His Being, mind and will. He does not have any division or conflict or "two levels."

Fourth, since God is simple, none of His attributes are higher than, or superior to, any other divine perfection. Many people today elevate the love of God above the other divine attributes. Of course, it is a blessed truth that the God of love sent His own Son to the cross to deliver us from destruction. If it were not for the love of God, we would all perish and nothing could comfort our hearts. But to elevate the love of God (or any other divine perfection) above His other attributes is wrong.

In the history of the church, Arminianism, Liberalism and Charismaticism have elevated the love of God above the other divine perfections have a bad pedigree. Sadly, much of contemporary evangelicalism has this false view of the love of God and this is often displayed in its wrong presentation of the gospel to unbelievers: "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life."

Nowhere in the books of Acts, the biblical book that most deals with the spread of the gospel and the church, do Paul or any of the other apostles say in their sermons, "God loves you, God wants to save you and Christ died for you." You can look in vain in Scripture for that. But telling unbelievers that God loves them is the sine qua non for much of evangelicalism. It is not even true that God loves everybody. He did not love Esau: "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated" (Rom. 9:13; Mal. 1:2-5). This over-emphasis on, and universalising of, God's love by modern evangelicalism leads to the same destruction that it brought upon Liberalism and Arminianism.

For instance, some in Puritan Boston and New England in the eighteenth century promoted the Arminian idea that God loves everybody and wants to save everybody. They soon realized that if a human father, with the puny love he has for his son, would not put his child in hell, certainly God, who, they say, loves all people, would not condemn anyone to eternal punishment. Then there really cannot be a hell. You see the connection? Those who hold this false view of a universal love of God will struggle with the biblical teaching of hell, especially as this teaching sinks in and begins to work through. Already, a significant number of evangelicals are having problems with hell because they cannot square it with their view of a love of God for everyone head for head.

This wrong emphasis on, and false teaching regarding, the love of God may also show itself as antinomianism in the practical life of churches and believers. What is antinomianism? Antinomianism comes from two Greek words that mean "against" and "law." It means "against the law." Antinomianism is the view and sentiment that "I can live whatever way I like because God loves me. I do not have to keep the law of God as a rule of gratitude to Him."

Consider Deuteronomy 6:4-5: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." This is a very famous text quoted by the Lord Jesus in the gospels, only He adds a little bit to it: "and with all thy mind" (Mark 12:30). So we are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, might and mind. Deuteronomy 6:4 is a important text in Judaism because it is used by the Jews as if it excluded Christian Trinitarianism. This verse is referred to as the Shema because this is the Hebrew for the command "Hear, O Israel."

Deuteronomy 6:4 is a clear biblical statement of divine simplicity. "Hear, O Israel"—this is something that needs to sink down deep into your heart—"The Lord our God is one Lord." That is, there are not no gods or two gods or many gods but one God, and He is one in all of His infinite Being. This is the doctrine. Next, verse 5 sets forth the calling, the practice that flows from this doctrine: "thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." In other words, since God is one, perfectly simple and united—no duality, no division, no conflict—then we must be perfectly united and simple in our affection and love for Him with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our might and with all our mind.

The biblical truth of divine simplicity emphasized at the very start of our confession is necessary for especially two doctrines set forth later in the Belgic Confession.

First, we should consider the truth of the Holy Trinity, as presented in Belgic Confession 8. This article is entitled "God Is One in Essence"—this is His simplicity—"Yet Distinguished in Three Persons." The article begins, "According to this truth and this Word of God, we believe in one only God, who is one single essence"—four words are used here to underscore Jehovah's simplicity ("one only ... one single"). Concerning God's "one single essence," Article 8 continues, "in which are three persons, really, truly, and eternally distinct …" Near the end of the paragraph, Belgic Confession 8 adds, "Nevertheless God is not by this distinction divided into three," for He is absolutely simple in His Being. Jehovah is to be distinguished as to His three Persons, but He is not divided into three parts, like three slices of a pie. In short, one needs to understand God's simplicity to grasp the truth of the Holy Trinity. The Trinity does not make sense, for instance, to Islam because it does not understand the Christian doctrine of divine simplicity. Islam has a different doctrine of the simplicity of its god, Allah.

The second paragraph of Belgic Confession 9 begins, "In all these places"—referring to various texts of Scripture in the previous paragraph which prove the truth of the Holy Trinity—"we are fully taught that there are three persons in one only divine essence"—God's simplicity again! Similarly Belgic Confession 11, which teaches the Deity of the Holy Ghost, declares that He is "of one and the same essence, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son." Clearly, divine simplicity is necessary for the truth of the Holy Trinity.

There is a second truth that rests upon Jehovah's simplicity, especially as it is presented in Belgic Confession 20. Here the confession is moving into Christology and soteriology, the truth concerning God’s salvation of us in Jesus Christ. The article is entitled, "God Hath Manifested His Justice and Mercy in Christ." Both these divine attributes, justice and mercy, which are operative in our salvation, are perfectly one in God. The article begins, "We believe that God, who is perfectly merciful and just, sent His Son … God therefore manifested His justice against His Son when he laid our iniquities upon Him, and poured forth His mercy …"

The exercise of the divine attributes of justice and mercy in the salvation of sinners (Belgic Confession 20) is traced back to God's eternal and unconditional election (with its necessary corollary, reprobation) in Belgic Confession 16. This article, entitled "Eternal Election," states that God is "merciful and just: merciful since He delivers and preserves from ... perdition all whom He in His eternal and unchangeable counsel, out of mere goodness, hath elected in Christ … just, in leaving others in the fall and perdition wherein they have involved themselves."

God’s salvation of us through the cross of Christ is both just and merciful (Belgic Confession 20), but if you think of election and reprobation, election especially shows God’s mercy and reprobation His justice (Belgic Confession 16). Psalm 85:10 states, "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." So God’s truth, mercy, righteousness and peace are especially evident as one when God comes to saves His people, which is particularly demonstrated in the death of Jesus Christ for us. This is the greatest manifestation of the unity or simplicity of God—the cross!

God's Spirituality

So far we have discussed the first assertion of Belgic Confession 1, that God is "one only simple" Being. Now we turn from God's simplicity to His spirituality, which is the second divine attribute mentioned in the first article: "We all believe with the heart, and confess with the mouth, that there is one only simple and spiritual Being."

What is meant by "spiritual" with regard to God? First, God does not have a body, unlike human beings. We should not, however, think that God is somewhat inferior to us because we have hands and feet, whereas He does not. Rather, we have hands and feet because the omnipotent God, in effect, says to us, "You, being so small and weak, need to be able to do a few things, so I will create you with hands and feet. But the real hand is My hand that created the world and governs the universe, and I need not feet for I am omnipresent!" Second, God is not material, for He is not made of "stuff" and He cannot be measured, for He has no length or area or volume or limits. Third, He has no scent, flavour, texture, sound or colour. Man cannot smell, taste, touch, hear or see God because He is spiritual and above and beyond such characteristics which belong merely to the world He made and rules.

The truth of God’s spirituality is necessary for His simplicity. If God were material or non-spiritual, He could not be simple. Consider something material, like a book. It has front and back covers and pages, some of which are filled with print while others are blank. Its pages and covers are glued or stitched together. Clearly, that which is material cannot be simple. Since God is simple, He must be spiritual. Moreover, since God is omnipresent or present everywhere, He cannot be material, for this would make Him visible and He would occupy the space of all the universe! So the spirituality of God and His simplicity go hand in hand, and His spirituality is necessary for His invisibility and omnipresence.

The first two attributes of God mentioned in Belgic Confession 1, His simplicity and His spirituality, are the bases of the first two of the ten commandments. The first commandment rests upon the simplicity of God and the second commandment flows from the spirituality of God.

The italicised portions of Heidelberg Catechism, Q. & A. 94-95 highlight the connection between the first commandment and God's simplicity:

Q. 94. What doth God enjoin in the first commandment?
A. That I, as sincerely as I desire the salvation of my own soul, avoid and flee from all idolatry, sorcery, soothsaying, superstition, invocation of saints, or any other creatures; and learn rightly to know the only true God; trust in Him alone, with humility and patience submit to Him; expect all good things from Him only; love, fear, and glorify Him with my whole heart; so that I renounce and forsake all creatures, rather than commit even the least thing contrary to His will.

Q. 95. What is idolatry?
A. Idolatry is, instead of, or besides that one true God who has manifested Himself in His Word, to contrive or have any other object in which men place their trust.

Lord’s Day 35 of the Heidelberg Catechism on the second commandment declares that we must not "represent God by images, nor worship Him in any other way than He has commanded in His Word" (A. 96) for "God neither can nor may be represented by any means" (A. 97), because of the spirituality of God. The spiritual God "will have His people taught, not by dumb images, but by the lively preaching of His Word" (A. 98).

Other Divine Attributes

The first "half" of Belgic Confession 1 deals with the Being of God: "God is one only, simple and spiritual Being," and sets forth two divine attributes, Jehovah's simplicity and spirituality, as we have seen. The remainder of the article gives other perfections of God: He is "eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly wise, just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good." Nine attributes are listed here, if we take "good and the overflowing fountain of all good" as one perfection, the divine goodness.

The first six attributes are what we call incommunicable attributes, those that are not "communicated" to man. God is eternal but He does not make us eternal or outside of time. God is incomprehensible; we are not. God is invisible, immutable, infinite and almighty, unlike us.

The next three divine perfections are communicable; that is, by God’s grace and through the work of the Spirit of Christ in us, He makes us, in a creaturely way, like Him in these attributes. We become wise, for the Spirit of wisdom gives us wisdom. We are made more and more just, for our covenant God enables us to walk in righteousness. We become good for Jehovah communicates His goodness to us.

It would take too much space to go through these nine divine attributes in depth and such would not really belong here, but I should, at least, make some brief statements concerning them. First, that God is eternal does not merely mean that He is without beginning and without end. God's eternity means that He is without succession of moments and outside of time, for time is a creature; God made time. Second, that God is incomprehensible does not mean that we can know nothing about God or know nothing about Him that is certain or sure. That God is incomprehensible means that though we do know a lot about Him that is true, for it has been revealed to us in Scripture and sealed on our hearts by the Holy Spirit, we can never plumb even a fraction of one percent of God because He is infinitely deep. Third, that God is invisible means we cannot see Him, nor can even the holy angels in heaven. No creature has ever or will ever see God, and if someone could it would kill him (to speak as a fool for a moment). Fourth, that God is immutable means that He cannot change in anything, either in His Persons, perfections, Being or decree. If Jehovah could change, He would either become better or worse, but if He were to become better, then He would not have been perfect before He became better, and if He got worse He would no longer be perfect. God's perfection requires His immutability. Fifth, that God is infinite means that He cannot be limited, either with respect to time or space or knowledge or in any divine perfection. Sixth, that God is almighty means that He is powerful to do all that He wills according to His own Being. Seventh, that God is perfectly wise means that He always adapts everything outside of Himself to His own glory and everything in Himself serves His own infinite and perfect blessedness. Eighth, that God is just means that He is eternally in perfect conformity to Himself as His own absolute standard. Ninth, that God is good means that all peace, righteousness, truth and everything positive and beneficial resides in Him. That He is the overflowing fountain of all good means that all that is good flows out of His own infinite riches to us. Later, the Belgic Confession speaks of God's "mere goodness" in connection with election (Article 16) and His "pour[ing] forth [His] goodness on us" through Jesus Christ and His cross (Article 20).

Those who would like to know more about God's wonderful attributes could read the relevant sections in Rev. Ron Hanko's excellent Doctrine According to Godliness and in Rev. Herman Hoeksema's first volume of Reformed Dogmatics. A. W. Pink's The Attributes of God contains some fine material. More detailed is the two-volume work of Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God. Also my recent series of ten sermons on Jehovah's incommunicable attributes, "God's Glorious Perfections," is available free on-line in audio and video.

A Bit of History

Finally, we should understand a few things about the composition of the Belgic Confession 1. Belgic Confession 1 is similar to, and leans upon, two earlier Reformed confessions.¹ It is similar to French Confession 1 because the Belgic Confession builds upon, develops, omits and adds to the French Confession, which was drafted by Calvin and which Guido de Brès used as a sort of template. Not only is the Belgic Confession like the French Confession, but also its wording and structure is often very similar to Theodore Beza’s confession. Beza was Calvin's friend and successor in Geneva. So you can picture Guido de Brès in Belgium leaning on the French Confession and Beza’s confession that he wrote in Switzerland, both of which documents betray the influence of John Calvin!

Would you believe that Belgic Confession 1 was attacked by the Arminians? They seem to manage to find fault with all that is good! The Arminians complained that Belgic Confession 1 did not list various divine attributes such as "omnipotence, mercy, severity, anger and hatred."² There are various ways to answer their charge.

First, "hatred" is not an attribute of God. Indeed, God hates the reprobate wicked (Ps. 5:5; 11:5) but, unlike grace, holiness, justice, etc., hatred is not an attribute of God. Hatred is God’s love of His holiness reflected in His will to punish and destroy the wicked. Hatred is the outgoing of God’s spotless justice towards the reprobate. An attribute of God is something that eternally resides in Him without respect of any creatures. God is one, holy, invisible, just, good, gracious, loving, kind, etc., but He is not hatred. So the Arminians, when they talked about hatred as an attribute of God, blundered. They also spoke of God’s "anger," but anger is not an attribute of God either, nor is "severity," for God is not anger or severity. So, in response to the Arminians, we say, "Some of what you listed are not even attributes of God at all."

Second, it is ironic that the Arminians wanted omnipotence added to Article 1. "You want omnipotence? You, who believe that the sovereign will of the eternal God can be thwarted by the free will of man who is a speck of dust, do not even believe that God truly is almighty!" Why should Arminians, who deny God’s irresistible grace in salvation, want to include omnipotence among the attributes listed in Belgic Confession 1?

Third, the most simple answer to the Arminian attack on the first article of the Belgic Confession is, in short, that the list of divine attributes given here is a summary; it does not claim, and was never intended, to be exhaustive. You could add a half a dozen more from various passages of the Holy Scriptures that mention divine perfections not listed in this article. We too often list attributes of God without including them all. For instance, if someone prayed, "Father, we worship Thee who art sovereign, holy, loving, kind, gracious and just," and then ended there, you would not tap that person on the shoulder afterwards and say, "But God has several other attributes that you left out!"

The question is: Why did the Arminian ministers and theologians criticize Belgic Confession 1? The answer is that the Arminians were not just criticizing Belgic Confession 1, they were criticizing many, if not all, of the articles of the Belgic Confession. They were doing this because they had subscribed to the Belgic Confession and they knew that the creed which they had signed condemned them as false teachers; for example, they believed and were teaching doctrines contrary to Belgic Confession 16 on eternal, unconditional election and reprobation. So they criticized every part of this creed they could possibly oppose in order to try to devalue, or bring down, the Belgic Confession. Then, if someone said to them, "You contradict your creed, especially Article 16," they would answer: "It is not a very good creed and it is not authoritative for it is poor in various regards and inaccurate in many articles." This is what heretics will do, especially if given time: attack the orthodox creeds or the formulas of subscription to them, so as to try to salve their own evil consciences.

When the Synod of Dordt (1618-1619) began, the Reformed churches in the Lowlands had two Reformation creeds, the Belgic Confession (1561) and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563). The great Synod drafted a third document, the Canons of Dordt, which explained and developed the truth of God’s sovereign grace taught in the two earlier creeds. The Synod of Dordt also examined existing copies of the Belgic Confession, in Latin, French and Dutch, and adopted a standard, authoritative text in French and Dutch (the new Latin text was never officially approved).³ In doing this, Synod made a few, non-substantive changes, clarified some things and made it read more smoothly. Our Belgic Confession is not exactly as it left the hands of Guido de Brès in 1561, but it is essentially what he wrote with slight revisions, the occasional comma changed and the odd clause or word put in or taken out.

This brings us back to the Arminians and their criticism of Belgic Confession 1. Though the Synod of Dordt did not add "mercy, severity, anger and hatred," as the Arminians had suggested, the Synod did insert the word "almighty" in the first article, when it was revising and standardizing the text of the Belgic Confession. The German theologians from Bremen (who were too sympathetic to the Arminians) also proposed this.⁴

This little bit of history on the Synod of Dordt and the Belgic Confession, especially Article 1, is interesting for it gives some insight into the text of the first document in our Three Forms of Unity, the work of the great Synod and shenanigans of the Arminian heretics!