The Fire That Burns Without Consuming: Exploring the Divine Nature

J. Neil Daniels

Introduction: The Weight of a Single Thought

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” A. W. Tozer’s famous line is more than a preacher’s flourish; it is a distillation of centuries of theological wrestling. It suggests that our concept of God is not a private opinion but a shaping force, bending the arc of our lives and even our civilizations. Augustine would have agreed. “You have made us for yourself,” he wrote at the dawn of the fifth century, “and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” The question “What is God like?” is not an idle curiosity. It is a question that reaches into the marrow of what it means to be human.

But the question is notoriously difficult. God is not a specimen we can place beneath a microscope, nor a planet we can observe through a telescope. As John of Damascus warned in the eighth century, “God is without beginning, without end, eternal and everlasting, uncreated, immutable, unchangeable, simple, non-composite, incorporeal, invisible…”—and the list goes on until language itself begins to fray at the edges.^1 We are creatures of finitude trying to speak about the Infinite. Yet speak we must, for revelation invites us to do so. Scripture and the long tradition of the Church dare to name what can be named, even if only by analogy and negation.

This essay attempts, however falteringly, to trace the contours of that divine mystery: to say something of God’s essence, attributes, and triune life; to listen to the great voices of the past; and to let the biblical witness illumine our words. It is a venture into the fire that burns without consuming.

1. The Incomparable God: Being Itself

The biblical confession begins not with a proof but with a proclamation: “In the beginning, God…” (Gen 1:1). Everything else depends on that primal subject. God is not merely the most powerful being within the universe; He is the ground of all being, as Tillich put it, the ipsum esse subsistens of Aquinas—the sheer act of to-be itself.^2 Jonathan Edwards called Him “the sum of all perfection… the prime original being, the first and the last, the pattern of all.”^3 Susanna Wesley, writing in the early eighteenth century, waxed even more rhapsodic: “One pure essence! Fullness, perfection of being! Self-existent, necessary, infinite, eternal… absolutely separated from all moral evil…”^4

Such language is not rhetorical excess. It attempts to articulate the radical difference between Creator and creature. Everything else in the universe has being; God is being. Everything else participates; He simply is. That is why Exodus 3:14 is so foundational. When Moses asks the divine Name, the voice from the bush replies, “I AM WHO I AM” (ehyeh asher ehyeh). Centuries later, Jesus would echo that Name in a startling self-reference: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).

A. H. Strong captured this reality succinctly: “God is the infinite and perfect spirit in whom all things have their source, support, and end.”^5 He is the fountainhead, the one “of whom and through whom and to whom are all things” (Rom 11:36). Philosophers have given this reality many names—arche, prime mover, necessary being—but the biblical witness calls Him simply YHWH, “the One who is.”

2. The Living God: Personality and Presence

Yet this Being is no cold abstraction. The God of Scripture is not a principle but a person—indeed, the fountain of all personality. “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24), but not an impersonal force. He is living (Deut 5:26), intelligent (1 Sam 2:3), purposive (Isa 14:26), active (John 5:17), free (Dan 4:35), and self-conscious (Exod 3:14). The prophets speak of Him grieving, rejoicing, loving, and judging. The psalmists cry to Him as to a friend.

Lewis Gordon’s classic taxonomy of divine attributes captures this personal vibrancy. Metaphysically, God is self-existent, eternal, and unchanging; intellectually, He is omniscient, faithful, and wise; ethically, He is just, merciful, and loving; emotionally, He detests evil and shows compassion; existentially, He is free and omnipotent; and relationally, He is both transcendent and immanent.^6 In short, the God of Israel is not merely there—He is with.

This is why the biblical narrative is less a metaphysical treatise than a history of encounters. Abraham hears his voice, Moses beholds his glory, Isaiah trembles before his holiness. And supremely, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The God who is utterly beyond is also the God who draws near.

3. The One God: Unity and Simplicity

Israel’s most fundamental confession resounds still: “Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one” (Deut 6:4). Against the backdrop of polytheistic pantheons, the biblical God is one—not merely numerically, but in essence and simplicity. He is not a composite of parts, nor a patchwork of attributes. As the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571 declare, God is “without body, parts, or passions.”^7 The Westminster Confession echoes: He is “a most pure spirit… immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible…”^8

This doctrine of divine simplicity—often misunderstood or ignored today—matters deeply. It means that God’s attributes are not components He possesses but perfections He is. He does not have love as one quality among others; He is love (1 John 4:8). His justice is not something added to His essence; it is identical with His essence, which is identical with His goodness, wisdom, and power. As Augustine observed, “What he has, he is.”^9

It is here, too, that divine immutability follows naturally. If God is simple, He cannot change, for change implies a movement from potentiality to actuality. But God is actus purus, pure actuality. “I the LORD do not change,” He declares through Malachi (3:6). James calls Him the “Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (1:17). His unchangeableness is not rigidity but the fullness of a being who lacks nothing.

4. The Greatness of God: Infinity and Omnipotence

Once we have glimpsed the simplicity of God, we begin to see why Scripture lavishes such superlatives upon Him. He is self-existent, “with life in Himself” (John 5:26), eternal, “the everlasting God” (Deut 33:27), unchangeable (Mal 3:6), omnipresent (Ps 139:7–10), omniscient (1 John 3:20), omnipotent (Rev 19:6), perfect (Matt 5:48), infinite (Ps 147:5), and incomprehensible (Rom 11:33).^10 These are not mere adjectives; they are attempts to render in human language the unboundedness of divine reality.

Michael Bird puts it with characteristic verve: God “is the reality upon which all realities rely… the mind before all matter, the word before all worlds… not cosmic consciousness, not existential angst, not a Freudian projection… but the theory of everything, the hypokeimenon, the underlying reality of all things.”^11 One hears an echo of Anselm’s classic formula: that than which nothing greater can be conceived.

The psalmists reach for metaphors that strain at the edges of language: “His understanding is infinite” (Ps 147:5), “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (Ps 145:3). Even Paul, that most rigorous of theologians, breaks into doxology when contemplating God’s wisdom and knowledge: “How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways!” (Rom 11:33).

5. The Goodness of God: Holiness, Truth, and Love

The greatness of God would be terrifying were it not matched by His goodness. Scripture unites these two notes—majesty and mercy—like thunder and song. God is holy (Isa 6:3), true (John 17:3), righteous (Ps 145:17), faithful (Deut 7:9), merciful (2 Cor 1:3), and, most centrally, love (1 John 4:8).

Holiness is perhaps the fountain attribute here. It denotes not only moral purity but utter otherness—God’s set-apartness from all that is common or profane. Isaiah’s vision of the seraphim crying “Holy, holy, holy” (Isa 6:3) captures this awe. Yet God’s holiness is not aloof; it is active, purifying, and redemptive.

Truth, too, belongs to His very being. “God is light,” writes John, “and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Because God is true, His promises stand firm. Because He is faithful, His people need not fear. The covenantal refrain “steadfast love endures forever” (Ps 136) is not sentimental but ontological—it flows from who He is.

And then there is love. Augustine once remarked that the whole Trinity could be described as “Lover, Beloved, and Love.”^12 This is no mere metaphor. The cross of Christ is not an afterthought but the eternal expression of God’s character: “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). In that moment, omnipotence stooped low, holiness bore sin, and eternity entered time. The One who thunders from Sinai also weeps at Lazarus’ tomb.

6. The Revealing God: Christ as the Perfect Image

It is tempting to speak of God’s attributes as though they were abstract qualities on a chart. But the New Testament refuses such detachment. “No one has seen God at any time,” John writes, “but the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:18). Jesus does not merely reveal something about God; He is the definitive self-revelation of God. “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

This is why the New Testament authors freely apply Old Testament Yahweh-texts to Christ. The “I AM” of the burning bush (Exod 3:14) speaks from Jesus’ lips in John’s Gospel. The “First and the Last” of Isaiah (44:6) is echoed in Revelation’s vision of the risen Christ (1:17). The Lord who “rides on the clouds” (Ps 104:3) appears on the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62).

The point is not merely Christ’s divinity (though that is foundational) but the character of that divinity. God is like Jesus. The meekness that washes feet, the compassion that touches lepers, the righteous anger that overturns tables—all of it is the outshining of divine glory. Athanasius put it simply: “He became what we are that he might make us what he is.”^13

7. The Triune God: Unity in Three Persons

All that has been said thus far finds its fullest coherence in the mystery of the Trinity. The God who is one in essence is three in persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Westminster Confession summarizes the classical doctrine: “In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.”^14

This is no later philosophical add-on. The New Testament is saturated with trinitarian patterns: the baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19; Paul’s benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14; the Spirit’s descent upon the Son as the Father speaks in Luke 3:22. The Father sends the Son; the Son accomplishes redemption; the Spirit applies it. Three who act distinctly, yet never separately.

The church’s creeds and confessions labor to guard this delicate balance. The Nicene Creed (325/381) speaks of the Son as “begotten, not made, being of one substance (homoousios) with the Father.” The Athanasian Creed warns that “neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance” is permissible. The New Hampshire Confession (1833) affirms “three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; equal in every divine perfection.”^15

At stake is nothing less than the gospel. Only if the Son is truly God can His cross reconcile us. Only if the Spirit is truly God can He indwell and transform us. And only if the Father is truly God can we be adopted as His children.

8. The Unfathomable God: Mystery and Worship

We return, finally, to where we began: the limits of language and the necessity of worship. John of Damascus, in his apophatic litany, confessed God as “ungraspable, incognizable, unfathomable.”^16 The more theology presses toward precision, the more it must acknowledge mystery. As Gregory of Nazianzus quipped in the fourth century, “It is difficult to conceive God, but to define Him is impossible.”^17

Yet mystery is not ignorance. It is the horizon beyond which our finite minds cannot pass, even as revelation gives us true knowledge within those bounds. Like Moses, we may not see God’s face, but we glimpse His back as He passes by (Exod 33:23). Like Job, we place our hands over our mouths (Job 40:4). Like Paul, we fall into doxology: “To the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever” (1 Tim 1:17).

Theology, then, ends where it began: in awe. Its task is not to dissect God but to adore Him, to name what He has revealed and to bow before what He has not. And perhaps Tozer’s aphorism is truer than we first realized. What comes into our minds when we think about God is not only the most important thing about us; it is the most decisive. For it is there, in the blazing mystery of the One who is, that our hearts find their rest.

Conclusion: Toward the Burning Center

To ask “What is God like?” is to approach a mountain that cannot be climbed and a fire that cannot be contained. Yet the climb is worth the breath, and the fire worth the burn. Across centuries and confessions, the Church has confessed one living and true God—eternal, infinite, unchangeable, holy, loving, just, and free—revealed most perfectly in Jesus Christ and present still through the Holy Spirit.

The journey ends not with a definition but with a doxology. “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!” (Ps 8:1). Theology can do no better than that.

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Endnotes

1. John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith, 61.

2. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

3. Jonathan Edwards, Works of Jonathan Edwards, 21:13, 131, 147.

4. Susanna Wesley, The Complete Writings, ed. Charles Wallace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 437.

5. A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology: A Compendium Designed for the Use of Theological Students, Rev. ed. (New York: Revell, 1907), 52.

6. Gordon R. Lewis, “God, Attributes of,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 451.

7. Articles of Religion (Thirty-Nine Articles) (1571).

8. Westminster Confession of Faith (1643–46), ch. 2.

9. Augustine, De Trinitate, V.4.

10. See Ps 36:9; Deut 33:27; Mal 3:6; Ps 139:7–10; Job 37:16; Rev 19:6; Matt 5:48; Ps 147:5; Rom 11:33.

11. Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology: A Biblical and Systematic Introduction, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020).

12. Augustine, De Trinitate, VIII.10.

13. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54.

14. Westminster Confession of Faith (1643–46), ch. 2.3.

15. New Hampshire Baptist Confession (1833), II.

16. John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith, 61.

17. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 28 (“Theological Oration 2”), 4.