A lecture and Q&A session by Davenant Teaching Fellow Ryan Hurd entitled "What are the Divine Attributes?"

What are the divine attributes?

Theologians have always had a rough idea: their names are taken from our creaturely spiritual or intellectual perfections (goodness, wisdom etc.) Yet this insight acquired significant nuance throughout the tradition of theology, nuance woven into the use of these terms in the church's praise and worship.

Today, this very basic insight, common to both natural and supernatural theology and its especially significant development throughout the Latin tradition, has largely been obscured; things that were never really attributes, like the "negative names" (simplicity, infinity etc.) are now treated like they are, enervating the very life of the discipline; and other names once regulated to other areas of theology (e.g. reasoning, humility) have been placed among the divine attributes, to much error.

A truly catholic theology must be anchored by both what creatures are and what God himself is. It must normed by exactly what creature is being used to speak of God and its actual relation to Him - whether as a name for something that God is, or is not, or both. Clarity is sorely needed on all these issues, in order to promote a clear and intentional recovery and expansion of the method and procedure for incorporating all of goodness and being among creatures into the intelligent exposition of the holy God.

In this lecture, Ryan Hurd will seek to clarify the traditional, catholic Christian view on what the divine attributes are, with special reference to Thomas Aquinas, the high medievals, and the neoscholastics.