How Great Is Our God?

(Monroe, Michigan)

I meditate on the greatness of God. As best I can (because an infinite mind can only be understood by itself).

How great is our God? 

As a description of the greatness of God, the essentia Dei (essence of God), Dallas Willard often uses Adam Clark’s portrayal of God. 

Clark states God can be conceived as,

"The eternal, independent and self-existent Being; 

the Being whose purposes and actions spring from himself, without foreign motive or influence; 

he who is absolute in dominion; 

the most pure, 

the most simple, 

the most spiritual of all essences; 

infinitely perfect; 

and eternally self-sufficient, 

needing nothing that he has made; 

illimitable* in his immensity, 

inconceivable in his mode of existence, 

and indescribable in his essence; 

known fully only to himself, 

because an infinite mind 

can only be fully comprehended by itself. 

In a word, a being who from his infinite wisdom, 

cannot err or be deceived 

and who from his infinite goodness can do nothing 

but what is eternally just and right and kind."

From Clark’s description, Willard suggests the key characteristic—perhaps the only vital characteristic—of God’s character is the eternally manifesting presence and effluence** of agape.

(See Gary Black Jr., The Theology of Dallas Willard: Discovering Protoevangelical Faith, pp. 88-89)

* unbounded; unlimited

** a substance (in this case, agape love) that flows out of something (in this case, out of the being of God)