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As beings created in God’s image, we share some of his attributes. Those attributes that we share are called communicable attributes. We, of course, possess these attributes incompletely and imperfectly, while in God they are seen in all their complete perfection. But there is a more important, more fundamental difference in the way we possess these communicable attributes. While we are said to possess them because they are communicated, or added, to us, they are not added to God. Charnock wrote:
 [T]he wisdom of God is the same with the essence of God. Wisdom in God is not a habit added to his essence, as it is in man, but it is his essence. It is like the splendour of the sun, the same with the sun itself; or like the brightness of crystal, which is not communicated to it by any thing else, as the brightness of a mountain is by the beam of the sun, but it is one with the crystal itself. It is not a habit superadded to the Divine essence; that would be repugnant to the simplicity of God, and speak him compounded of divers principles; it would be contrary to the eternity of his perfections: if he be eternally wise, his wisdom is his essence; for there is nothing eternal but the essence of God. As the sun melts some things, and hardens others; blackens some things, and whitens others, and produceth contrary qualities in different subjects, yet it is but one and the same quality in the sun, which is the cause of those contrary operations; so the perfections of God seem to be diverse in our conceptions, yet they are but one and the same in God. The wisdom of God, is God acting prudently; as the power of God, is God acting powerfully; and the justice of God, is God acting righteously: and therefore it is more truly said, that God is wisdom, justice, truth, power, than that he is wise, just, true, &c. as if he were compounded of substance and qualities. All the operations of God proceed from one simple essence; as all the operations of the mind of man, though various, proceed from one faculty of understanding. —Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Baker Books, 2005), 1:509.
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