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that this substantial Being is immaterial, invisible, and without composition or extension. It
includes the thought that all the essential qualities which belong to the perfect idea of Spirit are
found in Him: that He is a self-conscious and self-determining Being. Since He is Spirit in the
most absolute, and in the purest sense of the word, there is in Him no composition of parts.
The idea of spirituality of necessity excludes the ascription of anything like corporeity to God,
and thus condemns the fancies of some of the early Gnostics and medieval Mystics, and of all
those sectarians of our own day who ascribe a body to God. It is true that the Bible speaks of
the hands and feet, the eyes and ears, the mouth and nose of God, but in doing this it is
speaking anthropomorphically or figuratively of Him who far transcends our human knowledge,
and of whom we can only speak in a stammering fashion after the manner of men. By ascribing
spirituality to God we also affirm that He has none of the properties belonging to matter, and
that He cannot be discerned by the bodily senses. Paul speaks of Him as “the King eternal,
immortal, invisible” (I Tim. 1:17), and again as “the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who only
hath immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to
whom be honor and power eternal,” I Tim. 6:15,16.
B. Intellectual Attributes.
God is represented in Scripture as Light, and therefore as perfect in His intellectual life. This
category comprises two of the divine perfections, namely, the knowledge and the wisdom of
God.
1. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.
The knowledge of God may be defined as that perfection of God
whereby He, in an entirely unique manner, knows Himself and all things possible and actual in
one eternal and most simple act. The Bible testifies to the knowledge of God abundantly, as, for
instance, in I Sam. 2:3; Job 12:13; Ps. 94:9; 147:4; Isa. 29:15; 40:27,28. In connection with the
knowledge of God several points call for consideration.
a. Its nature.
The knowledge of God differs in some important points from that of men. It is
archetypal, which means that He knows the universe as it exists in His own eternal idea
previous to its existence as a finite reality in time and space; and that His knowledge is not, like
ours, obtained from without. It is a knowledge that is characterized by absolute perfection. As
such it is intuitive rather than demonstrative or discursive. It is innate and immediate, and does
not result from observation or from a process of reasoning. Being perfect, it is also
simultaneous and not successive, so that He sees things at once in their totality, and not
piecemeal one after another. Furthermore, it is complete and fully conscious, while man’s
knowledge is always partial, frequently indistinct, and often fails to rise into the clear light of
consciousness. A distinction is made between the necessary and free knowledge of God. The
former is the knowledge which God has of Himself and of all things possible, a knowledge