Does God Change His Mind? If God is immutable, if He does not change at all, does that mean He never changes His mind either? This is a very thorny problem. The Bible appears to say at times that God changed His mind. Related Resources What Is God?: An Investigation of the Perfections of God’s [...]
Doctrine of God
Are Your Thoughts of God Too Human?
Excerpt from A.W. Pink’s book, The Attributes of God. This book handles a doctrine little understood and heard of infrequently in these days of humanism. This book gives God his proper place of supremacy and is a classic on the subject. In one of his letters to Erasmus, Luther said, “Your thoughts of God are [...]
God the Creator by J. Gresham Machen
Machen (1881-1937) was Professor of New Testament, first at Princeton Theological Seminary, and afterwards at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Excerpts from The Christian Faith in the Modern World (1936). The Bible is doctrinal through and through. It gives not the slightest bit of comfort to the skeptical notion, so much in vogue today, that doctrine [...]
The Contemplation of God by Arthur Pink
In the previous studies we have had in review some of the wondrous and lovely perfections of the divine character. From this most feeble and faulty contemplation of His attributes, it should be evident to us all that God is–First, an incomprehensible Being, and, lost in wonder at His infinite greatness, we are constrained to [...]
The Love of God to Us by Arthur Pink
By ‘us’ we mean His people. Although we read of the love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8:39), Holy Writ knows nothing of a love of God outside of Christ. ‘The LORD is good to all: and His tender mercies are over all His works’ (Psa 145:9), so that He provides the [...]
The Love of God by Arthur Pink
There are three things told us in Scripture concerning the nature of God. First, ‘God is spirit’ (John 4:24). In the Greek there is no indefinite article, and to say ‘God is a spirit’ is most objectionable, for it places Him in a class with others. God is ‘spirit’ in the highest sense. Because He [...]
The Lovingkindness of God by Arthur Pink
We propose to engage the reader with another of His excellencies–of which every Christian receives innumerable proofs. We turn to a consideration of God’s lovingkindness because our aim is to maintain a due proportion in treating of the divine perfections, for all of us are apt to entertain one-sided views of them. A balance must [...]
The Mercy of God by Arthur Pink
‘O give thanks unto the Lord: for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever’ (Psa 136:1). For this perfection of the divine character God is greatly to be praised. Three times over in as many verses does the Psalmist here call upon the saints to give thanks unto the Lord for this adorable [...]
The Grace of God by Arthur Pink
Grace is a perfection of the divine character which is exercised only toward the elect. Neither in the Old Testiment nor in the New is the grace of God ever mentioned in connection with mankind generally, still less with the lower orders of His creatures. In this it is distinguished from ‘mercy,’ for the mercy [...]
The Patience of God by Arthur Pink
Far less has been written upon this than the other excellencies of the divine character. Not a few of those who have expatiated at length upon the divine attributes have passed over the patience of God without any comment. It is not easy to suggest a reason for this, for surely the longsuffering of God [...]
The Goodness of God by Arthur Pink
‘The Goodness of God endureth continually’ (Psa 52:1). The goodness of God refers to the perfection of His nature: ‘God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all’ (1 John 1:5). There is such an absolute perfection in God’s nature and being that nothing is wanting to it or defective in it, and [...]
The Faithfulness of God by Arthur Pink
Unfaithfulness is one of the most outstanding sins of these evil days. In the business world, a man’s word is, with exceedingly rare exceptions, no longer his bond. In the social world, marital infidelity abounds on every hand, the sacred bonds of wedlock being broken with as little regard as the discarding of an old [...]
The Power of God by Arthur Pink
We cannot have a right conception of God unless we think of Him as all-powerful, as well as all-wise. He who cannot do what he will and perform all his pleasure cannot be God. As God hath a will to resolve what He deems good, so has He power to execute His will. ‘The power [...]
The Holiness of God by Arthur Pink
‘Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy’ (Rev 15:4). He only is independently, infinitely, immutably holy. In Scripture He is frequently styled ‘The Holy ONE’: He is so because the sum of all moral excellency is found in Him. He is absolute Purity, unsullied even by [...]
The Immutability of God by Arthur Pink
Immutability is one of the divine perfections which is not sufficiently pondered. It is one of the excellencies of the Creator which distinguishes Him from all His creatures. God is perpetually the same: subject to no change in His being, attributes, or determinations. Therefore God is compared to a ‘Rock’ (Deut 32:4, etc.) which remains [...]
The Sovereignty of God by Arthur Pink
The sovereignty of God may be defined as the exercise of His supremacy–see preceding chapter. Being infinitely elevated above the highest creature, He is the Most High, Lord of heaven and earth. Subject to none, influenced by none, absolutely independent; God does as He pleases, only as He pleases, always as He pleases. None can [...]
The Supremacy of God by Arthur Pink
In one of his letters to Erasmus, Luther said, ‘Your thoughts of God are too human.’ Probably that renowned scholar resented such a rebuke, the more so, since it proceeded from a miner’s son; nevertheless, it was thoroughly deserved. We too, though having no standing among the religious leaders of this degenerate age, prefer the [...]
The Foreknowledge of God by Arthur Pink
What controversies have been engendered by this subject in the past! But what truth of Holy Scripture is there which has not been made the occasion of theological and ecclesiastical battles? The deity of Christ, His virgin birth, His atoning death, His second advent; the believer’s justification, sanctification, security; the church, its organization, officers, discipline; [...]
The Knowledge of God by Arthur Pink
God is ominiscient. He knows everything: everything possible, everything actual; all events and all creatures, of the past, the present, and the future. He is perfectly acquainted with every detail in the life of every being in heaven, in earth, and in hell. ‘He knoweth what is in the darkness’ (Dan 2:22). Nothing escapes His [...]
The Decrees of God by Arthur Pink
The decree of God is His purpose or determination with respect to future things. We have used the singular number as Scripture does (Rom 8:28; Eph 3:11), because there was only one act of His infinite mind about future things. But we speak as if there had been many, because our minds are only capable [...]
The Solitariness of God by Arthur Pink
The title of this article is perhaps not sufficiently explicit to indicate its theme. This is partly due to the fact that so few today are accustomed to meditate upon the personal perfections of God. Comparatively few of those who occasionally read the Bible are aware of the awe-inspiring and worship-provoking grandeur of the divine [...]
The Wrath of God by Arthur W. Pink
It is sad indeed to find so many professing Christians who appear to regard the wrath of God as something for which they need to make an apology, or who at least wish there were no such thing. While some who would not go so far as to openly admit that they consider it a [...]
Divine Attributes: Part I by R.L. Dabney
Traditionary knowledge not to be separated from rational, here. It is exceedingly hard for us to return an exact answer to the question, How much reason can infer of the attributes of God? Shall we say: ‘So much as the wisest pagans, like Plato, discovered of them?’ It still remains doubtful how much unacknowledged aid [...]
Divine Attributes: Part II by R.L. Dabney
When we enquire after God’s power we mean here, not his potestas, or exousia, authority, but His potentia, or dunamis. When we say: He can do all things, we do not mean that He can suffer, or be changed, or be hurt; for the passive capacity of these things is not power, but weakness or [...]
His Eternal Wisdom and Foreknowledge (Observations on the Divine Attributes – Part I) by Jerome Zanchius
With respect to The divine wisdom and foreknowledge, I shall lay down the following positions: Position l. God is, and always was so perfectly wise, that nothing ever did, or does, or can elude His knowledge. He knew, from all eternity, not only what He Himself intended to do, but also what He would incline [...]
