Book Club Questions for None Like Him

1.Wilkin opens with the idea that we are transformed into what we behold and worship. In your own words, what does she mean by that, and why does it matter which version of God (or which false god) we are beholding?

2.She draws a distinction between God's communicable attributes (those he shares with us, like love and mercy) and his incommunicable attributes (those he alone possesses, like omniscience and eternality). Why is it important to keep that distinction clear? What happens in our thinking — and our living — when we blur it?

3.Wilkin locates the origin of humanity's grasping at God's incommunicable attributes in the garden of Eden. How does the serpent's promise in Genesis 3 — 'you will be like God' — connect to the specific attributes she plans to examine in this book?

1.Wilkin defines God's infinity as the absence of any limit or boundary on his being and perfections. How is this different from simply saying God is 'very big' or 'really powerful'? Why does the distinction matter theologically?

2.She points out that humans continually bump up against their limits — in energy, attention, capacity, and time — and that we often experience this as failure or inadequacy. Can you think of a recent situation where hitting a limit felt like a personal flaw rather than a created boundary? What was that like?

3.Wilkin describes the way we tend to project our own limits onto God — assuming, for example, that he gets tired of our prayers or that his patience will eventually run out. Where do you see this kind of projection in your own prayers or assumptions about God?

1.Wilkin distinguishes between God being knowable and God being comprehensible. What is the difference, and why is it important not to collapse these two ideas into one?

2.She points out that when God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind in Job 38–39, he doesn't answer Job's questions — he asks his own. What does God's response to Job reveal about how he feels about our demands for exhaustive explanations?

3.Wilkin observes that we live in a culture that assumes all things can and should be explained, Googled, and understood. How has this cultural expectation of total comprehensibility crept into your relationship with God? Are there things about God you find yourself unwilling to simply sit with as mystery?

1.Wilkin explains that God's self-existence (or aseity) means he has no cause, no source, and no need — he is the uncaused cause of everything else. How does God's revelation of his name to Moses — 'I AM WHO I AM' — capture this idea? What does that name say about everything else that exists?

2.She contrasts God's self-existence with our derived existence — we exist only because he wills us to, and we are sustained moment by moment by his ongoing decision to keep us alive. How does that truth land for you? Does it feel unsettling, comforting, or both?

3.Wilkin argues that one of the most common ways we grasp for self-existence is by building our identity around things that feel permanent and self-sustaining — our career, our reputation, our family, our health. What do you tend to build your sense of 'I am' around? What happens when that thing is threatened or taken away?

1.Wilkin distinguishes between God's self-existence (he has no cause) and his self-sufficiency (he has no need). How would you explain that distinction to someone in your own words? Why does the difference matter?

2.Psalm 50 contains God's striking declaration: 'If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.' What does this say about the nature of our worship and sacrifice — if God doesn't need them, why does he ask for them?

3.Wilkin points out that we often relate to God transactionally — as if our obedience, church attendance, or generosity places him in our debt or earns us a right to his favor. How have you seen this transactional mindset at work in your own spiritual life?

1.Wilkin explains that God's eternality means not just that he has existed for a very long time but that he exists outside of time altogether — he is not subject to sequence, past, or future. How does this differ from a merely 'very old' God, and why does the distinction matter?

2.Psalm 90, Moses's prayer, opens with God as a dwelling place from everlasting to everlasting, and then pivots to the brevity of human life — 'like a dream,' 'like grass that is renewed in the morning.' How does holding those two realities together — God's eternity and our brevity — affect the way you pray?

3.Wilkin observes that we often grasp for eternity by trying to make our lives, legacies, or names last forever — building things that will outlive us, obsessing over our impact and memory. Where do you see this kind of legacy-grasping in yourself or in the people around you?

1.Wilkin defines God's immutability as the teaching that God does not change in his being, his character, or his will. How does this connect to the other attributes already discussed — his self-existence, self-sufficiency, and eternality? Do they require each other?

2.She acknowledges that some passages in Scripture seem to describe God 'changing his mind' — such as when he relents from judgment. How does she address this tension? Are you satisfied with her explanation, or does it raise further questions for you?

3.James describes God as the Father of lights 'with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.' In your own experience of God, have there been seasons when he felt inconsistent or unpredictable? What was actually changing — God, or your perception of him?

1.Wilkin explains that omnipresence doesn't mean God is spread thinly across the universe, but that he is fully present in every place simultaneously. Why is that distinction important? How does it change what it means to say 'God is with me'?

2.In Psalm 139, David asks where he could flee from God's presence — to heaven, to Sheol, to the ends of the sea — and concludes that there is nowhere. Is God's omnipresence experienced in this psalm as comforting, or as something more unsettling? How can the same truth be both?

3.Wilkin argues that we grasp for omnipresence when we try to 'be present' everywhere at once — the parent who attends every event, the professional who is always available, the person who cannot say no to a single request. Does this resonate with you? What does the inability to be in two places at once reveal about the goodness of your limits?

1.Wilkin defines omniscience as God's complete and perfect knowledge of all things — past, present, and future, actual and possible — without learning, forgetting, or being surprised. What aspect of this definition most stretches your imagination? What are its implications for prayer?

2.She argues that we grasp for omniscience in several recognizable ways: the compulsive need to research everything before deciding, the inability to act without total information, the anxiety of not knowing what will happen. Which of these patterns do you recognize in yourself?

3.Psalm 139 opens with 'O LORD, you have searched me and known me' — a declaration that God knows the psalmist more fully than the psalmist knows himself. Is it comforting or uncomfortable to be that thoroughly known? What makes the difference between being known feeling safe versus threatening?

1.Wilkin clarifies that God's omnipotence doesn't mean he can do literally anything (for example, he cannot lie or deny himself), but that he can do anything consistent with his perfect character. Why is this clarification important? What would an omnipotent-but-unprincipled God look like, and why would that be terrifying rather than comforting?

2.Job's final response to God is one of the most striking in all of Scripture: 'I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted' (Job 42:2). This confession comes after devastating loss and unanswered questions. What made it possible for Job to say that? What does his journey suggest about the pathway to genuine trust in God's power?

3.Wilkin describes the ways we grasp for omnipotence — through control, force, domination, manipulation, or the desperate need to 'fix' everything around us. What does your own power-grasping tend to look like? Does it show up as overt control, or in more subtle ways?

1.Wilkin presents sovereignty as the culminating attribute — in some ways, the one that all the others serve to support. Why does it make sense to end with sovereignty? How do the nine preceding attributes (infinity, incomprehensibility, self-existence, self-sufficiency, eternity, immutability, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence) each underwrite or require God's sovereignty?

2.Nebuchadnezzar's testimony in Daniel 4 — written after he lost his mind and spent seven years living like an animal — is one of the Bible's most dramatic confessions of God's sovereignty: 'He does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand.' What did it take to bring the most powerful human ruler of his age to that conclusion? What does that suggest about how we typically learn to submit to God's sovereignty?

3.Wilkin addresses the most difficult question sovereignty raises: if God governs all things, what about suffering, evil, and tragedy? How does she handle that tension? Do you find her answer satisfying? What questions remain for you?

1.Wilkin argues throughout the book that beholding God as he truly is — not as we wish him to be or fear him to be — is the primary means of spiritual transformation. As you look back across all ten attributes, which one most disrupted your previous image of God? Why?

2.She suggests that the ten incommunicable attributes are not a burden but a relief — they are God's job, not ours. Which of the ten have you been most exhausted by trying to carry yourself? What does it look like, practically, to lay that down?

3.The book began with the garden and the serpent's promise: 'You will be like God.' The conclusion brings us back to that promise. How has reading this book changed your understanding of what went wrong in Eden and what is being set right in the gospel?

1.Of the ten incommunicable attributes Wilkin examines — infinite, incomprehensible, self-existent, self-sufficient, eternal, immutable, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and sovereign — which one had the most significant impact on you, either intellectually or personally? What made that chapter land so powerfully?

2.Before reading None Like Him, how would you have described God's attributes? How has your understanding of the distinction between his communicable and incommunicable attributes changed or deepened?

3.Wilkin's central argument is that all sin is, at root, a grasping for attributes that belong to God alone. Looking back at the whole book, do you find that framework convincing? Has it changed the way you diagnose your own sin patterns?