This is part 1 of a 4 part series, adapted from an article by Larry Taunton (http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php/larrytaunton) on why a growing number of young people in the USA have become atheists by their late teens/early twenties – it is well worth our read. “Church became all about ceremony, handholding, and kumbaya,” Phil said with a look of disgust. “I missed my old…
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We have come to the end of our series on God’s incommunicable attributes where we have explored some of the characteristics of God that we don’t share with him. The aim of this series has not just been to teach you some new words to throw around at parties(!), we have done it because knowing God is a crucial aspect of having…
As the fireworks exploded in a flash of light and colour to mark the opening of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the word Eternity appeared in beautiful copperplate on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was a salute to the iconic ‘graffitiest’ Arthur Stace who, having accepted Jesus into his life, began to proclaim to Sydney that he was in Christ for eternity, by…
This week we explore the most controversial of God’s incommunicable attributes (characteristics of God that we don’t share) and the most commonly misunderstood: his impassibility. Impassibility is really the natural outworking of three attributes we’ve already considered – simplicity, aseity and immutability. It refers to God’s immunity to suffering, or to put it another way, God’s incapacity for being overwhelmed by suffering.…
God’s immutability is a third characteristic that we don’t share with him (his third incommunicable attribute) and it refers to his unchangeability. God is already complete and perfect, he has no potential that has not been fully realised. In comparison, we are constantly changing, a truth we can see everywhere – in our children, in our spouse, in our parents. For God…
The second of God’s incommunicable attributes (attributes we do not share with God) in our series, is his Aseity, or self-existence. While the term ‘Aseity’ sounds difficult, the concept is relatively straightforward. It is the idea that God is entirely independent of the world and relies on no-one for his existence. In Acts 17:24-25 Paul illustrates this idea by contrasting God with…
The first of God’s incommunicable attributes (attributes that we do not share with God) that we will explore is his Simplicity: that God’s existence is identical with his attributes, or to put it another way, that He is not the sum total of his attributes but is simultaneously everything that all of his attributes reveal. One good way of understanding this is…
We have spent the last two months considering the so called ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ and using them as a tool to evaluate our own lives. In this next series, we are going to shift our focus from ourselves and turn instead to God. We are going to consider God’s character and in particular his incommunicable attributes and the effect of these for…
Not many of us would think that we have a problem with slothfulness, or laziness. In fact, it does not seem to be a problem that Australians as a whole struggle with – on the contrary, Australians are known for being hardworking and diligent, with some studies even suggesting that we are the most hardworking people in the developed world. This is…
Anger is scary. As a sin, its effects are immediate, serious and scarring. It involves a loss of control – a blind, all-consuming fury that envelopes them, causing them to lash out at those around them, often for the most trivial of reasons. Those on the ‘receiving end’ fear this volatile, indiscriminate, and unreasonable anger. Maybe you’ve been the victim of such…