There are multiple ways to classify the attributes of God:
- Communicable and Incommunicable (Berkof; Shedd; Grudem)
- Natural/Metaphysical/Constitutive and Moral (Thiessen; Dabney; Feinberg)
- Greatness and Goodness (Erickson; McCune)
- Absolute/Necessary and Relative/Voluntary (Strong)
- Summary, Transcendent, and Manifest (Reymond; Morton Smith; Grudem)
- Power, Knowledge, and Goodness (Frame)
The fact that debate persists here (and criticisms can rightly be raised against each schema) is chiefly due to the simplicity of God. None of God’s attributes can rightly be discussed in isolation from the rest; instead, they together form a tight web of mutually intersecting qualities so interconnected that the parts can scarcely be distinguished in the whole. To say “God is what his attributes are” is not to say that God is comprised of 12 or 14 independently classifiable parts, but rather that he is a unique conflation of them all.
Stand Firm! 