Question
What is God's infinity?
Answer
To say that God's infinite means he's free of all qualitative limitations. That means anything that's true of God is true without limit. It doesn't mean, as sometimes people think, that everything's true of God. He's not infinitely rock-like, he's not infinitely dishonest. But anything that's true of him is true without limits. So, he's infinitely gracious, infinitely loving, infinitely wise, infinitely knowing. In some ways his infinity is a meta-attribute. It's one of those ways of describing all of his attributes. So, his eternity is his infinity in relation to time; his omnipresence is his infinity in relation to space; his omniscience is his infinity in relation to knowledge. So, God's infinity is this wonderful truth of him that he never runs out of resources, he's not limited to anything that's true about him. It's one of the main ways we're radically different than God, because we as creatures are by definition finite. We're limited in everything and dependent on God for everything. And that's a wonderful thing to acknowledge when we know that the God who cares for us has unlimited resources to do that.
Dr. Erik Thoennes is Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Talbot School of Theology