"Every attribute of God is identical with His essence?"

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The Bible:
“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness."

Some theologians: "Just anthropopathisms. God doesn't really mean it.
God really does love and have anger and those emotions are what he created in Us when we were made in his image, as we cannot share at all with His divine nature/attributes, but can know and feel and think like he can and does, correct?
 
Perg,
What "this side" is trying to communicate (if I may so say) is that God and His being and behavior is not like ours. That anthropomorphic (physical) and anthropopathic (behavioral) language is used does not diminish God's love, for example, to His people. This is manifest in Christ. God, most certainly, loves us! What greater love is this? What we understand in the very idea of such categories, is to keep us from making God in our image, which both our confessions have grave warnings about. What we can say with certainty and with joy, is that God's love for us is not subject to the fickle-ness of human love...and praise Him for that. If God were to "love" me in the same way that humans do, I would be forever damned.

There is enough communicated in the language for us to understand His intent, but we can't import our limited and poor understanding of these things to God, lest we see Him as a glorified human.:2cents:
God, if He indeed has all of the emotions that he created us to have, would possess them to an absolute and perfect non alterable degree, so His jealously for his people is rooted in Him knowing that he alone must be our God, and His anger towards sin is in perfect accord with his Holiness.
 
God, if He indeed has all of the emotions that he created us to have, would possess them to an absolute and perfect non alterable degree, so His jealously for his people is rooted in Him knowing that he alone must be our God, and His anger towards sin is in perfect accord with his Holiness.

It seems you have not read any of the above posts. God is a different type of being than we. To attribute a one-for-one relationship between our contingent being and His immutable aseity is to make God in our image, which is idolatry.....
 
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It is fanciful to equate our irregular and fitful emotions with the serene, complacent and immutable nature of holy Deity. Affections as wrath, anger and repentance according to Owen, are incomplete, imperfect acts of the will or volition. And are tumultuary, and accompanied with change and mutability, which obviously deprives God of His blessedness and perfectness. Whereas of course He is the Lord and changes not, and in Him is no shadow of turning.
When scripture speaks of the anger, fury,and wrath of God it cannot be parallel with our experience. For such emotions express “perturbation of mind, commotion of spirit, corporeal mutation of the parts of the body, and distempers acting under the power of passions.”
Anger with God denotes His vindictive justice which would arise I think from the righteousness and holiness of His nature. And Owen makes the point that these emotions denote the EFFECTS of His judgments. ie the day of judgment is called “the day of wrath.”
A point to remember is that Is27:4 expressly states “that fury is not in Him.” Therefore all other uses must be subject to another meaning when it is used. Similarly respecting God repenting, 1Sam15:29 affirms, He ”knoweth no repentance.” So when scripture speaks of Him repenting, it speaks of the things that He does, and not of His nature. In assigning wrath, and anger to God we speak metaphorically of His outward works and dispensations.
Respecting love, mercy and grace they essentially denote His goodness and kindness and are eminent amongst His infinite perfections. If anyone would want to consult Owen, on his treatment of The Attribution of Passions and Affections to God, it is found in Volume 12 of the Banner production of his works.
 
It seems you have not read any of the above posts. God is a different type of being than we. To attribute a one-for-one relationship between our contingent being and His immutable aseity is to make God in our image, which is idolatry.....
I am not suggesting here that God and us have identical emotions, but that God indeed has real emotions, and that He has every one of them at a perfect level. Hewill never get angry without a just cause, will never cease to love His own, will never have jealous feelings like we do being sinners, but due to Him having a loviong and holy regard for those under his own affections.
 
It is fanciful to equate our irregular and fitful emotions with the serene, complacent and immutable nature of holy Deity. Affections as wrath, anger and repentance according to Owen, are incomplete, imperfect acts of the will or volition. And are tumultuary, and accompanied with change and mutability, which obviously deprives God of His blessedness and perfectness. Whereas of course He is the Lord and changes not, and in Him is no shadow of turning.
When scripture speaks of the anger, fury,and wrath of God it cannot be parallel with our experience. For such emotions express “perturbation of mind, commotion of spirit, corporeal mutation of the parts of the body, and distempers acting under the power of passions.”
Anger with God denotes His vindictive justice which would arise I think from the righteousness and holiness of His nature. And Owen makes the point that these emotions denote the EFFECTS of His judgments. ie the day of judgment is called “the day of wrath.”
A point to remember is that Is27:4 expressly states “that fury is not in Him.” Therefore all other uses must be subject to another meaning when it is used. Similarly respecting God repenting, 1Sam15:29 affirms, He ”knoweth no repentance.” So when scripture speaks of Him repenting, it speaks of the things that He does, and not of His nature. In assigning wrath, and anger to God we speak metaphorically of His outward works and dispensations.
Respecting love, mercy and grace they essentially denote His goodness and kindness and are eminent amongst His infinite perfections. If anyone would want to consult Owen, on his treatment of The Attribution of Passions and Affections to God, it is found in Volume 12 of the Banner production of his works.
God never changes how He is towards sins and evil, and towards His own people, so that stays forever the same, but He can actually feels and loves and hates. correct?
 
I am not suggesting here that God and us have identical emotions, but that God indeed has real emotions, and that He has every one of them at a perfect level. Hewill never get angry without a just cause, will never cease to love His own, will never have jealous feelings like we do being sinners, but due to Him having a loviong and holy regard for those under his own affections.

My Confession (and I believe yours) State otherwise......
 
I believe that both state to us that God never changes,but does that also mean that He cannot have real emotions though?

WCF 2.1 talks about God being without passions. It is more than "God never changes". Someone posted a link to a sermon titled "God Without Passions", I think....probably worth a look-see.
 
David, when scripture tells us that “God is love,” it is not God has love, but He is love that is His nature his Being. Similarly with mercy and grace. This is what He is in Himself. But with fury ,anger and wrath, they are not in him but rather they are the outworking of His justice and judgment. If you reread, my previous post it is impossible that he can have these passions. They cannot be part of His ever blessed nature, otherwise He is imperfect by having arousals of fitful passions. Although God is called a jealous God, surely it must mean something else as He is self sufficient and complete in Himself, and has no competitors to be jealous of! There is an eternal equilibrium in His Being, nature and essence which cannot be disturb by any commotions that corresponds to ours.
 
David, when scripture tells us that “God is love,” it is not God has love, but He is love that is His nature his Being. Similarly with mercy and grace. This is what He is in Himself. But with fury ,anger and wrath, they are not in him but rather they are the outworking of His justice and judgment. If you reread, my previous post it is impossible that he can have these passions. They cannot be part of His ever blessed nature, otherwise He is imperfect by having arousals of fitful passions. Although God is called a jealous God, surely it must mean something else as He is self sufficient and complete in Himself, and has no competitors to be jealous of! There is an eternal equilibrium in His Being, nature and essence which cannot be disturb by any commotions that corresponds to ours.
But with fury ,anger and wrath, they are not in him but rather they are the outworking of His justice and judgment

This part of your reply really spoke to me, as I now suddenly realized just how I was just assuming that God had to feel the same way that we do on all things, but this point of Him dealing with sin and sinful activitires due to Him being God was not what I had been thinking until now.
 
This part of your reply really spoke to me, as I now suddenly realized just how I was just assuming that God had to feel the same way that we do on all things, but this point of Him dealing with sin and sinful activitires due to Him being God was not what I had been thinking until now.

I understand why you might have been reticent to grasp this. There are crude ways of framing divine simplicity:

essence = attribute = property; God is identical with his essence; ergo, God is a property!

That just seems intuitively wrong. I understand the difficulty with it. Some Western phrasings of divine simplicity almost made me go Eastern Orthodox.
 
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