God’s Essential and Contingent Attributes
I’m writing a systematic theology. As a small part of the task, I’m comparing and contrasting my view of God with other systematic theologies.
Most theologies prioritize a different list of divine attributes than what I prioritize. A common way to prioritize one or some divine attributes identifies those the theologian thinks are essential to God and those she thinks are contingent. Essential attributes are necessary aspects of God’s nature; contingent attributes are not.
Essential vs Contingent
By definition, the essence of a thing identifies what makes it what it is. Essential divine attributes make God who God is, no matter what.[1] Contingent divine attributes are properties that God does not need to be divine. God can be God without these contingent attributes.
For instance, if God exists necessarily and nothing could terminate deity, existence is essential to God. If God can exist without creating and relating with creatures, by contrast, creating and relating is contingent to the divine.
If God exists necessarily as an incorporeal Spirit, nothing and no one could destroy deity’s spiritness. If God can exist without loving creatures, however, love for creatures is contingent to God.
Usual Lists of Attributes
The list of essential attributes includes those God everlastingly manifests, with or without creaturely others. That list typically includes independence, omnipotence, omniscience, immutability, impassibility, eternality, timelessness, freedom, goodness, glory, unity, and holiness. Most theologians say these attributes are true of God in isolation from creation.
The usual list of contingent attributes includes love, creating, providence, miracle-working, communicating with creatures, compassion, wisdom, mercy and grace, patience, forgiveness, justice, anger, and empathy. According to most theologies, God only takes on these attributes or does these activities if creatures or creation exist.
In fact, some theologies say God never expresses some of these attributes. The impassible God of traditional theology, for instance, would never have compassion, show empathy, forgive in response to creatures, get angry, etc.
The Social Trinity Makes a Difference
Some attributes on the contingent list are added to the essential list by theologians who embrace a social doctrine of the trinity. (For reasons the idea of a social trinity is attractive to some theologians, see this blog essay.)
For instance, most social trinitarians will say God essentially and everlastingly communicates and loves among triune persons. If so, internal communication and love for Godself are necessary. But divine communication with and love for creation is contingent.
The result: God loves Godself no matter what; God may or may not love creatures. (For reasons some theologians reject the idea of a social trinity, see this blog essay.)
Love is Not Essential for Most
Notice that the usual accounts of God say love for creation and various love forms are not essential to God. These attributes are contingent, and, therefore, they don’t tell us who God essentially is. In traditional theologies, God could exist without ever loving or relating with creatures.
The usual accounts also say God existed without creation and then, for some reason, created others from nothing. If true, this means creating is not an essential feature of what it means to be divine. According to most systematic theologies, God is essentially independent and not essentially a creator.[2]
My Alternative View
The systematic theology I’m writing differs from traditional systematic theologies. It considers love for creation an essential divine attribute. Creating and relating are also essential and everlasting divine activities. Loving, creating, and relating are inherently time-related, which means God has an essentially time-oriented relation to creation too.
In these and other ways, my systematic theology reconfigures the usual lists of essential and contingent attributes. This will become evident in the various chapters I’m writing for this new book. But I note early that what I consider necessary divine attributes is not the typical list systematic theologians offer.
[1]. R. T. Mullins explains in an accessible way essential and contingent attributes in Eternal in Love: A Little Book about a Big God (Eugene, Or.: Cascade, 2024).
[2]. R. T. Mullins seems to take the traditional view on God as creator. “God would certainly not be the creator if he refrained from creating anything at all,” says Mullins. Ibid., 5.
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Comments
Does this mean you are writing a book about this other than Pluriform Love pictured above?
I’m getting to this a little bit late. Spring break skiing and all
. I need to read your other two blog posts that you referenced on the social Trinity; however, I think we must insist on love as an essential part of God‘s nature as God is definitionally equated with love in 1 John 4:8. Personally, my verdict is still out on whether creating is essential or contingent. You have been very helpful in helping me wrap my head around this, so I probably need to reread your work some more. 
I can’t escape this nagging intuition that if creation is essential to God, then we are pushing the ground of all being further down in an infinite regress of contingent things. Turtles all the way down. I haven’t thought about this anywhere as deeply as you have, but it seems logical to me that the ground of all being must be outside of our existence, or else they are just another part of the contingent chain in creation. I don’t think that prevents monism, because Christ can still be present in all things in the very act of creation. But I do think that maybe a God who holds all of existence, yet is outside of existence, could at least face the logical possibility of not creating anything at all. But I want to weigh this comment with a heavy dose of, “I am really not sure.” 
I mean, Brahma dreams different dreams throughout eternity. Perhaps the act of dreaming is indeed essential.
I believe it’s essential to recognize that everything, including God, exists within relationships. This idea is evident when we consider both essential and contingent qualities. To truly understand or quantify concepts, we must measure them against a standard. For example, ideas like unconditional love, justice, mercy, evil, goodness, sacredness, and secularism gain meaning through comparative measurement. For instance, essential, uncontrolling, and unconditional love can only be fully appreciated when there is both an object to love and a standard to understand that love. Exploring these relationships can deepen our understanding of these complex concepts.
I find it interesting that the classical essential attributes are “inward-looking” – i.e. about God themself – while the attributes of love, relation and creativity are “outward-looking” and presuppose each other (love-towards something, relation-to something, creating something”). One question I have though is “does this always presuppose that God loves/relates to/creates things”? While that’s consistent with a things-based ontology, does it still provide room for process thought? So, God loves/relates to/creates a physical tree, but presumably also loves/relates to and creates the idea/formation/potential of a tree. Is the distinction between thing and process something you plan to explore (and is there value in its exploration)?
Hi Tom,
Thank you for this. What you have written leaves me with a question. It may be that I could pull your book off my shelf and find the answer myself, but you have kindly provided this comment space, so I’ll make use of it!
You write that “Essential divine attributes make God who God is, no matter what.[1] Contingent divine attributes are properties that God does not need to be divine.”
Elsewhere, you write that “love for creation [is] an essential divine attribute.”
Are you saying that, without love of Creation, God cannot be the God we refer to as God? Or that God cannot be any kind of god, cannot be divine, at all? Or would you argue that the only kind of god that is possible, is the God we know?
For example, it seems to me that I can be a person without loving cats, but I cannot be this specific person – Tim Bowman – without loving cats.
Thanks!
Good morning,
Thank you for this intellectually rigorous and theologically rich exploration of God’s essential and contingent attributes. Your nuanced distinction between what is necessary to God’s nature and what flows from divine freedom offers a compelling framework for rethinking classical theism in light of relational and open theology. This piece reflects both academic depth and pastoral sensitivity—an invaluable contribution to contemporary theological discourse.
Thanks, Alvin!
Great question, Tim. I think God must love creation. God without creation is like a unicorn: it’s an idea but not a reality.
Does that help?
Great question, JG Wakefield. I think God loves creaturely others, and I think creaturely others are always experiences in process. I plan to make a great deal of this when rejecting substance ontologies.
I agree, Steven!
I like your ponderings, Matthew! I’d say God has contingent aspects and necessary aspects. So God can transcend creatures in some ways but is similar in others. And I hope to convince you that an ever creating God is preferable to a maybe creating God!
Yes, sorry for the confusion, Drew.