God is omniscient. This means He is all knowing. He is omnipresent - everywhere and omnipotent - all-powerful.
God is also seen as kind and good. He has perfect goodness and He has no badness. He is loving, the love God has for people is Agape this is unconditional love, (loving people no matter who they are or what the have done.)
He is also immutable this means He is unchangeable. He always looks the same and always will be the same. He is also the creator, He made the world the way it is and man in His image.
I have mentioned thirteen traditional attributes of God in the Christian religion. I will now pick five of these and explain how these attributes may cause a problem for 21st century believers and how they may be resolved.
Since God is seen as omniscient, this means that He knows everything. Some people may feel that this means they have no freedom of choice, or if the do have the freedom of choice they may be pressured into what they decide because they feel that because God knows everything, He may judge them in the next life on the choices they make in this life. Also if God knows everything then He must know what will happen in the future and if this is the case then He is powerless to change it. If God knows everything then He cant feel emotion because there is nothing that can be revealed to Him that will make he react emotionally.
As He is omnipotent, all powerful, by knowing what will happen in the future and not having the power to change it means that He is not an all powerful God. If He were all-powerful then surely He would change the future outcome so everything was good rather than evil happening. Also if He was all-powerful then why is there all the evil and suffering in the world there is, if He has the power to do something about it. Could this mean that He isn't the all-loving God many people believe Him to be? Also if He is all-powerful can God create a stone big enough so He can't lift it? If He can't create it He is not all-powerful and if He cant lift it He is not all-powerful.
Also many Christians believe that God is kind and good. He only does perfect goodness and never bad. This means that because God is so good He cant do anything which violates His own character. God can't be all-good because He commits people to a life in hell for doing wrong. Doesn’t this mean that by sending a person to hell for a offence that was a limited crime, He is doing evil as Hell in an unlimited punishment, and therefore going against His own character. If He does send people to hell for an offence then surely He isn't all loving, as agape (the love God shows) is unconditional no matter what someone has done.
He is said to be transcendent and unique. By unique this means that He cannot be compared to anybody else. In the Bible it says that we are made in the image of God so therefore does that not mean in appearance we can compare ourselves to God if we look like what He looks like? By God being transcendent and beyond our thinking and imagination then how can we believe in Him if we don’t know who or what He is. Also it says that He is not like man or anything else He created. Surely this is wrong as He created man in His image and we are all made in the image if Him therefore cant we compare him to ourselves in a way?
He is personal. He is not an 'it'' but a person with a personality. If this is the case then why is He unseen and will He reveal Himself, and can people actually believe in something they cant see?
I feel that really the problems for a modern day Christian cant really be resolved due to the fact that all these attributes are written in the Bible aswell as the explanations. I feel that to try and change these would be like re writing the Bible. This cannot be done as it is the word of God and changing it would mean changing millions of Christian's views towards God and their religion as a whole. I feel that modern day Christians should just be able to take these attributes as any other Christian has done in the thousand years before them. If they are a true Christian then really their view towards the religion shouldn’t be determined on a few things written in the Bible, as this is not what their entire religion is based on.
