Thoughts on the Attributes of God
Creation is such that God is the ultimate good for it. Good is thus absolute with respect to creation as we know it. But is it absolute with respect to God? That is, could God create something such that God Himself is not its ultimate good?
Don’t get me wrong; this is not a “Can God create a rock so big…” question, which is a logical contradiction in that if God has sovereignty to create such a rock, such is greater than the sovereignty to manipulate it in any way. Neither is the answer so obviously ‘yes’, pointing to the unsaved, whose fate was ultimately ordained by God. Though their fate was ordained by God, it does not follow that God is not for them the ultimate good. Their fate is a result of God withholding Himself from them, and He is still for them the ultimate Good, even as they suffer the lack thereof.
Ultimately, however, the question rests on free will. Free will requires God to delegate some degree of His sovereignty to humanity in order to come to Him of their own accord. However without free will, then it doesn’t even make sense to think that God could delegate His sovereignty.
This might seem to be an unrelated thought, but the answer to the first question rests on whether God can delegate His attributes. If God can create something such that its ultimate good was not its creator, then its ultimate good must be found in something else - something created. This requires God to delegate some degree of His goodness.
I think most Christians would be wary to answer that God could indeed create something of that sort, and for good reason. It requires God to be less than an absolute good for everything. Why then is free will such a sacred cow in peoples’ minds? In just the same way, it requires God to be less than sovereign with respect to the outcome of history and the salvation of the Elect - an equally unacceptable belief.
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-It’s pretty common to hear that creation exists for the glory of God. I believe this is a much better answer than any human-centric answer, such as that God needed an object of His love that could love Him back.
-But if creation exists to increase the glory of God, does that mean God changes? An unchanging God cannot become more glorious from one moment to the next, or be less glorious at creation than at its destruction.
-Creation can therefore not be for the purpose of increasing the glory of God.
The alternative makes that last statement much more palatable: creation is not the cause of any amount of God’s glory, but rather the effect of it - the natural outcropping thereof. God is glorified in the display of all of His attributes, and creation exemplifies each one of those: justice, mercy, and goodness in His relation to mankind; power, enormity, and transcendence in the rest of creation. Creation declares the glory of God (Psalm 19:1); it does not - it cannot - increase it. This is hardly an exhaustive list; any attribute of God can be seen to be wonderfully exemplified in creation and history.
We can thus not be the cause of any amount God’s glory, but are the result of it as it existed before the foundation of the world.