What does it mean to say, “God is good”? This is not merely a theological question; it is, at its very heart, a deeply personal one. We experience sorrow and heartache; we sin and we suffer; and in those moments we want to know—truly know—who God is. Christian counseling requires a way of speaking truthfully about God that neither claims exhaustive knowledge of Him nor reduces Him to a single attribute shaped by experience. The doctrine of predication—grounded in the Triune being of God—provides a framework for naming the fullness of God’s character in a way that preserves both divine mystery and pastoral clarity in the care of souls.
The Problem
All theological work is troubled by two related questions:
(1) How can we say anything true about the supreme divine being?
(2) How can the one God of Scripture be described in so many diverse ways?
Some theologians have contended that because God is God, all our language about Him is at best an expression of our perception or experience of God and cannot be strictly true of His nature. If we could speak truly about the divine being, the argument goes, then God would no longer be truly incomprehensible. At the same time, Scripture presents us with the puzzle of divine unity and diversity. “The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4). Yet this one God is described as good, just, faithful, loving, merciful, and near. If we predicate such diverse attributes of God, are we implying that God is composed of parts or qualities? Are we, in effect, undermining the doctrine of divine simplicity by treating God as complex rather than simple in nature?
These are not merely abstract problems for theologians. They shape how we understand God in the midst of suffering, guilt, and confusion. The concept of predication offers a way of addressing these doctrinal tensions without sacrificing either theological integrity or pastoral realism.
The Solution
We need a way of speaking genuinely true things about God, even though we can never speak exhaustively of Him. We also need a way of affirming multiple true things about God without dissolving His unity or fragmenting His being into parts. The theological category of predication offers such a framework—but only when it is grounded in the Triune nature of God.
Theological reflection has long used the category of predication to describe how we meaningfully speak about God. Predication refers to the act of saying something true of a subject—such as “God is good” or “God is faithful.” When we say, “God is good,” we are making a real claim about who God is. That claim only makes sense if the predicate “good” is genuinely meaningful and if its application to God is not deceptive or empty. Our language about God, therefore, draws analogically upon creaturely experience. We know what “good” means because we use that predicate meaningfully within our lived world.
Yet predication cannot finally be grounded in human analogy or experience alone. While everyday language shows that one subject can bear many predicates, such linguistic practice presupposes a deeper metaphysical coherence between unity and diversity. Philosophers have long wrestled with the problem of “the one and the many”: how can unity and diversity coexist without one dissolving the other? Predication appears to offer a way through this tension, but if unity and diversity are not equally ultimate in the structure of reality, predication itself lacks a stable foundation.
Christian theology locates the resolution of this tension in the Triune being of God. In God, unity and diversity eternally coexist: one God in three persons. The world God created reflects this Trinitarian pattern of unity and diversity (Rom. 1:20). As such, the possibility of predicating many true things of one subject is not a mere linguistic convenience; it is rooted in the very nature of the God who created all things. Predication serves our theological reflection on the divine attributes precisely because it is grounded in the Triune God, whose own being holds unity and personal distinction together without contradiction. This metaphysical grounding may seem abstract, but it quietly underwrites our confidence that when we speak to suffering people about God, we are not offering poetic comfort but naming a real and living Lord.
The Value
Why does any of this matter? Why wade into these deep philosophical waters? This is not theological fastidiousness. The practical payoff of predication in biblical counseling is this: it gives us a theological grammar for resisting the tendency of sin and suffering to reduce God to a single attribute or impersonal force, and it restores a relational encounter with the living God in the fullness of who He is.
Our life experiences often shrink our world, and with it, our theology. In the counseling room, suffering and sin tend to compress our vision of God into a single dimension. In our sin, we may come to think of God primarily as a Judge to be feared, subtly depersonalizing Him into a verdict rather than relating to Him as a living Lord. At other times, we may cling to God’s mercy in a way that flattens Him into permissiveness, minimizing the seriousness of our sin. In suffering, God’s sovereignty may feel less like the rule of a personal Father and more like the cold operation of an abstract force. Even God’s goodness can be experienced merely as tangible blessing, rather than as the character of a God who remains good when blessing is absent. In each case, God is reduced to a single attribute detached from His personal being.
Predication offers a gentle but theologically grounded resistance to this reduction. It reminds us that a single subject can bear many true predicates. We can—and must—say more than one true thing about God at the same time. God is just and merciful; sovereign and tender; holy and compassionate; faithful and near. No single predicate exhausts who God is, and no single experience is authorized to redefine Him.
In this way, predication also re-personalizes God. If sin and suffering incline us to relate to God as a force, a verdict, a blessing, or a principle, predication calls us back to the grammar of relationship: all predicates have a subject. We are not making claims about a “what,” but about a “who.” Predication is therefore not merely a linguistic tool but a personalizing discipline. By continually naming God as the subject of multiple true predicates, counselors help sufferers reorient toward the living God Himself, rather than toward a flattened theological construct shaped by pain or guilt.
Conclusion
Predication, grounded in the Triune being of God, gives biblical counselors a way to speak truthfully about God without reducing Him to a single attribute shaped by experience. In doing so, it re-expands the sufferer’s vision of God and restores a relational encounter with the living, personal Lord who is always more than any one true thing we can say about Him.
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 