To say wrath is not a divine perfection because there are no objects of wrath toward which wrath may be expressed within the self-existing ontological Trinity proves too much. Such a criterion would undermine other divine perfections such as holiness, mercy, creativity, patience etc.

God is a simple being or he is not. If God is not a simple being, then he is a composite of parts, in which case God’s attributes would be what he has rather than is, making his attributes abstract properties that self-exist without ultimate reference to God. God would be subject to change and evaluation against platonistic forms without origin. Yet if God alone self-exists, then God is a simple being. As such, God is identical to what is in God.
There are at least four traps or ditches we must avoid when considering divine simplicity. One is to say that each attribute is identical to each other because God is his attributes. Another trap to avoid is the denial of divine simplicity on the basis that “God is love” obviously means something different than “God is holy.” A third trap to avoid is trying to resolve the conundrum presented by the first two ditches by positing a kind of penetration or infusion of attributes using propositions like, God’s holiness is loving holiness. Although helpful and in a sense unavoidable to a point, the infusion of attributes eventually breaks down when we consider, for instance, omniscience and spirituality, or more strikingly love and wrath. Attempts to qualify attributes with other attributes do not save divine simplicity but instead, if taken too far, end in its denial. And finally, a fourth trap to avoid, which is an advancement of the first, is that of saying x-attribute is identical to y-attribute in God’s mind even though the transitivity of attributes is unintelligible to human minds. That particular mystery card reduces each attribute to meaningless predicates when played. Attributes become vacuous terms. The law of identity was never intended for such abuse.
Like creation ex nihilo divine simplicity is derived negatively, not positively. (Creation ex nihilo is deduced by the negation of eternal matter and pantheism.) Given that divine simplicity is entailed by God’s sole eternality, God is not comprised of parts. Accordingly, God’s revelation of his particular attributes is an accommodation to our creatureliness. It’s ectypal and analogical, not archetypal and univocal.
When we consider God’s attributes we must be mindful that we are drawing theological distinctions that pertain to the one undivided divine essence that eternally exists in three modes of subsistence or persons.
Given our finitude we cannot help but draw such theological distinctions, but we should be mindful that such doctrinal nuance, although proper, does not belong to any division in God.
As a simple being, God has one divine and univocal attribute, which is his essence. Notwithstanding, the God who is not composite we only know analogically, discretely and in part, but that is because God’s simplicity is too complex to take in all at once due to the creator-creature distinction. God is knowable and incomprehensible.
With that as a backdrop, we may consider that many of God’s revealed attributes are further distinguished by their relation to creation, which are sometimes called relative attributes (or secondary attributes, which is not the happiest of terms). Although all God’s attributes are eternal and ultimately one, at least some of God’s revealed perfections are inconceivable to us apart from considering them in relation to something other than God. For instance, God is long-suffering, but what is it to be pure patience in timeless eternity without objects of pity? That an attribute such as long-suffering is revealed in the context of created-time and patience toward pitiful creatures does not imply that God is not eternally long-suffering in his being. The same can be said of God’s holiness, for what is holiness without created things? God cannot be separate from himself; yet God is eternally holy. That is to say, God does not become holy through creation, or long-suffering through the occasion of sin and redemption. Is omnipresence a spatial consideration dependent upon creation or is it an eternal reality that is expressed or not expressed apart from creation?
We are limited in our creaturely understanding, but we can be certain God’s Trinitarian self-love includes love of his relative attributes, such as his patience towards sinners he’d instantiate, and his creativity apart from having yet created. God loves himself for who he is, not what he does (or what we might imagine he was eternally doing).
We understand this even by analogy. One reason I love my wife is because she is a self-sacrificing servant of God and his people. My love for her as a servant isn’t released by her actions of serving. I love her as the servant she is even when she is not serving or even being served. I love her for who she is, not what she does.
Wrath is an attribute no less than long-suffering and holiness. It’s a perfection of God without which God would not exist. If it is not, then what is it?
I’ll now try to address some common rejoinders:
1. To say wrath is not a divine perfection because there are no objects of wrath toward which wrath may be expressed within the self-existing ontological Trinity proves too much. Such a criterion would undermine other divine perfections such as holiness, mercy, creativity, patience etc.
It also confuses God as timeless pure act with a notion of God’s timeless doing. That there’s no potential with God does not mean God’s existence entails an eternal expression of his divine attributes – for our only conception of expression entails time-sequence, which in turn entails creation! So, that God does not “express” wrath in the ontological Trinity in a way that we can understand does not undermine wrath as a divine perfection, for neither can we begin to conceive how love is expressed in a timeless eternity! So, just as relative attributes are only understood in relation to things outside of God, what are classified as absolute attributes (e.g., Love) cannot be conceived other than analogically and relatively.
Since time is created, and eternal expressions of love in the ontological Trinity are human contemplations of the eternal in temporal terms, it’s special pleading to dismiss wrath as an eternal perfection while simultaneously affirming love as an eternal perfection. To do so on the basis of analogical contemplations of time-function intra-Trinitarian expressions of non-temporal Trinitarian existence is philosophically arbitrary and inconsistent. It ends in Social Trinitarianism by introducing time into the eternal life of God.
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As John says, a complete record of Jesus’s ministry would be impossible. To write them down one by one would be a mammoth task. John could’ve recounted another seven miracles—or another seventy. He could’ve included dozens of volumes of sermons, like we have for Charles Spurgeon and some of the other great preachers. If he wanted to, John could have told us what Jesus was like as a child: “He did many other things…” Yet John has told us about what is most important: the saving work of Jesus.

We want to know more about the bad stuff sometimes: the gossip, the bad news, someone’s dirty secrets. Other times we want to know about good things like the intricacies of creation or the complexities of God’s Word.

When it comes to Jesus, we might also be curious. What was it like for him to grow up in Nazareth? How did He get along with his siblings? You can Google “childhood stories of Jesus” and find a whole collection of apocryphal tales. About his ministry too, we’re curious: What was Jesus really like? We know that He cried—but did He laugh? Or what was He doing between the day that He arose from the dead and when He ascended?
If we can’t let go of such questions, we should read John 21:25. There John writes,

Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

This verse comes at the very end of the Fourth Gospel as an editorial aside. John wants us to know something about the story that he’s told as a witness of Jesus’s ministry. He acknowledges that in telling the story, he has had to be selective. When it came time to put pen to papyrus, he had to pick and choose.
When we place John’s Gospel alongside Matthew, Mark and Luke, we see how accurate his comment is. For among these four Gospels, John’s is quite different. For instance, he records only seven specific miracles, while the others record many more. There are important things absent from John’s gospel, like Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem, and his parables, the first Lord’s Supper and the risen Jesus’s departure from earth. Compared to the other three Gospels, it’s obvious that John is only a partial account.
This is even more obvious when we set John’s 21 chapters alongside Jesus’s life. Just consider how long Jesus’s ministry was: roughly three years, more than a thousand days. Jesus used those years as full of opportunities to do his Father’s will: teaching, healing, helping, interacting with his disciples and crowds and Jewish leaders.

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Beloveds, when we see our dear Christ like this—adorned with the many-colored coat of God’s own works—we will immediately see something else: the ugliness and  futility of our sinful obsession with our own! Like the apostle we will therefore cry out, “God forbid that I should ever again boast in my own works, lest, in so doing, I find myself boasting against the Lord’s!” Such a man—who has now begun to understand the meaning of worship—could actually be quite useful to his Lord.

And the LORD said to Gideon,“The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands,lest Israel claim glory for itself against Me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’”
(Judges 7:2)
 
Fantasy # 1
I have just died (hopefully it didn’t hurt too much). There is a small gathering at church, with friends and family in attendance.
The presiding pastor opens the meeting for comments. My dear friend Lawrence steps up to the podium, offers some gracious remarks, and closes with this:
“You know, whenever I would call Dean and ask how he was doing, he would say, ‘Pretty good for a guy who’s still trying to figure out what he’s going to be when he grows up.’
“Well, now he knows.”

Don’t laugh. I can’t begin to count the times I’ve found myself in the fetal position—spiritually AND physically—groaning before God, wishing, hoping, praying that I might see a straight path—a clear life course—spreading out before me. Alas, it’s going on 40 years since I first met the Lord; and yes, by his precious grace I’ve definitely had the pleasure of doing a few things in his name. Yet somehow I still don’t feel I’ve gotten the complete picture; that I have seen, or said, or accomplished . . . enough.
Do you ever experience this malaise? If so, our text from Judges—and a few others like it—may be of some help.
What exactly is its message? In essence, it’s this: There is something sinful in sinful man—something dark and deep—that inclines his entire fallen being to orbit around himself, and because of that to glory before God in his own accomplishments.
God clearly dislikes it.
But why? The text itself supplies the profound answer: He dislikes it because when we claim glory for ourselves, we are actually glorying against him! In other words, when we boast of our power to save ourselves, we are boasting against the truth: the truth that salvation never ever comes from man, but always and only from the Lord.
And so, to help Israel get the point—and to memorialize it forever for us, upon whom the ends of the ages have fallen—God used a mere 300 men to defeat an army whose numbers were like the sands of the seashore for multitude.
Our Gideon
In these last days, when the great mystery of God has at last been unveiled, God has done something even greater: he has used one man to rescue us from every enemy we ever had—including his own wrath and retribution—and to bring us home safely to himself.
Listen to these rich New Testament passages which teach this very thing, warning the saints to boast, not in themselves, but in God’s very own Gideon:
But by his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption—so that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.” –-1 Corinthians 1:30
By grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, and not of works, lest any one should boast. — Ephesians 2:8-9
Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, by a law of faith. — Romans 3:27
I could go on, but you get the picture. Just as in the days of the judges, so now: God takes no pleasure in the self that revolves around itself; in the self that is consumed with its own labors, its own accomplishments, its own merits; the self that subtly seeks—whether in pride, or fear, or some strange mixture of both—to commend itself to God on the ground of its own good works, even if they are works that God himself has enabled the self to do!
Why So?
Why are the Scriptures so emphatic on this matter? Well, now that Jesus has come, we can finally understand: He is emphatic about it because  to glory in one’s own works is to glory against the finished work of Christ. But He who loves the Son—and He who desires all to honor the Son even as they honor him—will have none of it.
Therefore, in love and faithfulness, God must sometimes cast us into a sick bed—into the absolute immobility of the fetal position—where we groan and writhe and pray and plot and plan and connive and capitulate, over and over again, until—at long last—the dreadful fever to justify ourselves finally breaks, and the compulsion to win God’s love through our own good works finally spends itself like a hurricane crashing into the mainland.
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