God’s Undivided Attributes

In Matthew Barrett’s book, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God, Barrett provides a great illustration of what people do with God when they consider his attributes. He speaks of his love for Dutch apple pie. The pie is one pie, but in order to eat it, it must be cut up into slices. He admits that his fear of writing individual chapters on God’s attributes is that we’re tempted to look at God like a pie. “The perfections of God are not like a pie, as if we sliced up the pie into different pieces, loving being 10 percent, holiness 15 percent, omnipotence 7 percent, and so on. Unfortunately, this is how many Christians talk about God today. … Some even go further, believing some attributes to be more important than others” (Barrett, None Greater, 72–73). A more appropriate illustration (though none are flawless) would be to say that God’s attributes are similar to light shining through a stained-glass window. “God is one, and his attributes are identical with one another. Yet when God’s undivided essence is revealed to humanity, it shines in various ways. Nevertheless, it is the same, single ray of light that radiates” (Barrett, None Greater, 81). Attempting to understand God is difficult and takes work because there isn’t anyone like him.