Tried With Fire

Yesterday I posted a list (not exhaustive) of my wrong concepts of God that were the result of a weak and probably nonexistent doctrine of God. I picked up these erroneous ideas from different sources and at different times in my Christian life, but they all have a common denominator. Each one takes away from God's perfection . In None Greater , Matthew Barrett introduces the reader to Anselm (1033-1109) who asked the questions - Is God the most perfect being? "Perfect" meaning "that than which it is impossible to think anything greater." If he is, then what must he be like? Notice where Anselm begins. He begins with God, not  his experience of God.  Given the Fall, our thinking and perspectives are warped. Rather than God being the starting point, we take that on ourselves. "Man is the measure of all things." Umm, no. But this faulty baseline is the reason why the Greek gods were just super-sized versions of people with super-sized sins. Thi...

I am listening to an audio version of None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God by Matthew Barrett and following along with a written copy. Many books have been written on the attributes and doctrine of God, but this one is a little different. It tackles the attributes that are harder to wrap our minds around such as impassibility, aseity, and simplicity and how they interrelate as a cohesive whole. (To make them standalone would be denying simplicity right there.)  These less intuitive attributes are also crucial to get God right so the mental and spiritual stretching is necessary but good. I'm only in the 5th chapter and I find myself recalling many of the wrong ideas I had as a Christian . Some were from childhood, but several were from my adult years. Why did I believe those things? Because I had a very weak doctrine of God. So without any further ado, here are a few of my not-so-favorite heresies and heterodoxies: God was lonely so he created people. God needed...

There are some pretty bad ideas about God out there. An obvious one is "God" as the indulgent Santa Claus who will give us whatever we want as long as our faith is strong enough. But as we humans are wont to do, it is possible to swing to an opposite but equally wrong extreme - "God" who only deals with his children by withholding. So on the one hand you have indulgence and on the other hand you have deprivation. Neither is correct, and as my pastor pointed out, both of these "gods" are passable. Their moods and dispositions toward us are changeable depending on what we do. Do right = we get what we want. Do wrong or not do enough = retribution, displeasure, and suffering. Two possible and opposite outcomes, but essentially the same root. "Do this and live" AKA the covenant of works. My natural bent is toward the deprivation side which is probably a combination of having weak theology most of my life and personal temperament. But circumstances ...

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere.' I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel, my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light... Or see them [the stars] with the greater eye of Palomar , rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvellous [sic] is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it?" ~ Richard Feynman I agree with the eminent Dr. Feynman that science does not detract from the beauty of nature. But I would add that knowing Who created it doesn't diminish the wonder of science. As David wrote in Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of...

In All That Is In God, James Dolezal critiques "theistic mutualism" or "theistic personalism." He argues that it deviates from the classical theism of the reformed creeds and the works of earlier theologians such as Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. 1  The premise of theistic mutualism (TM) is that in order for God to be relatable, there needs to be give-and-take with His creation. Without this, God is reduced to a cold and distant deity. For example: We will have to teach the following: that not only does humanity change in its relation to God, but the living relations of God to humanity... also undergo changes, as both are manifest in the world... Without reciprocity between God and world such vital relations would have no authentic reality. 2 ... if God should not experience change over time in His "intimate actual relationships with His people" then God's love would be reduced "to the frozen wastes of pure speculative abstra...

This book arrived yesterday, and I immediately started reading it. The following excerpt is from the preface. If underlining practically everything in the introductory section is any indication, there is much more good stuff to come... "I readily affirm that biblical theology has been a profound catalyst for improving and enriching our understanding of the progress of redemption. But it seems to me that biblical theology, with its unique focus on historical development and progress, is not best suited for the study of theology proper. The reason for this is because God is not a historical individual, and neither does His intrinsic activity undergo development or change. This places God beyond the proper focus of biblical theology. God is not changed by what He does - though what He does certainly brings about progress in history, creatures, and salvation. In an attempt to understand God as one of the historical characters in the narrative of redemption, many have fallen in...

"What the Christian goes on to confess about that God is not summarized by him in a number of abstract terms, but is described, rather, as a series of deeds done by God in the past, in the present, and to be done in the future. It is the deeds, the miracles, of God which constitute the confession of the Christian. What the Christian confesses in his creed is a long, a broad, and a high history. It is a history which comprises the whole world in its length and breadth, in its beginning, process, and end, in its origin, development, and destination, from the point of creation to the fulfillment of the ages. The confession of the church is a declaration of the mighty deeds of God. Those deeds are numerous and are characterized by great diversity. But they also constitute a strict unity. They are related to each other, prepare for each other, and are interdependent. There is order and pattern, development and upward movement in it. It proceeds from creation through redemption to san...

God, having all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself, is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creature which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them; he is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things, and he hath most sovereign dominion over all creatures, to do by them, for them, or upon them, whatsoever himself pleaseth; in his sight all things are open and manifest, his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain; he is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands; to him is due from angels and men, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience, as creatures they owe unto the Creator, and whatever he is further pleased to require of them. ( John 5:26 ; Psalms 148:13 ; Psalms 119:68 ; Job 22:2 , 3 ; Romans 11:34-36 ; Daniel 4:25 ...

The Jewel of the Solar System I am thankful for: - The recent sermon series on the Doctrine of God . I've been convicted of where my thoughts of God were too small. I've been challenged to realize how other He is. I am rather sad that this series has ended, but it doesn't mean that I can't continue to dig into theology proper. - God as Creator. The complexity of creation makes perfect sense when you realize that its Creator is an infinite God. My daughter and I have had numerous discussions about particle physics in the light of Christ holding all things together by the word of His power. We've gotten teary eyed over the wonders of the heavens that declare the glory of God. The study of the sciences takes on fresh meaning when each new discovery is God's common grace in pulling back the curtain to reveal more of what He has made. - God's impassibility. I am so thankful that God is not a responder to or bound by man's actions. He is pure act. H...

I am posting at Out of the Ordinary today: When I was a child, there were times when I would lie awake at night and think about God after my parents tucked me into bed. I knew a little about Him from Bible stories and Sunday school, but I still wondered what He was really like. Having been taught that God was already  there  before Genesis 1:1, I imagined going back in time just prior to Creation or traveling into deep space to find Him. Needless to say, it was more than my young mind could handle. God was so completely  other  that I felt very small, not just in age but in significance. Well, I had a similar feeling of smallness this past Sunday... Read the rest of the post here.

... [T]he doctrine of God is a more complicated matter than the authority of Scripture. When someone starts to tinker with the doctrine of Scripture, many Christians instinctively feel that something nefarious is being done. But when someone starts to tinker with the doctrine of God, many simply assume that very clever people are engaged in improving the tradition. After all, many of the terms used in classical understandings of God - impassable, immutable, simple - have an abstract quality which seems to remove them from the life (and the conscious concern) of the ordinary believer. These concepts have the aura of academics about them: abstract, impersonal, pedantic, practically irrelevant. Yet history teaches us that it is precisely these concepts which safeguarded the Christian faith over time and that it was the repudiation of these which led to the collapse of orthodoxy... Peter Taylor Forsyth once commented that every theological teacher should reflect on what his teaching w...

This true/false quiz is courtesy of  Dr. James Renihan : 1. The sovereign God exercises sovereign control over Himself. True or false? 2. The doctrine of God's aseity teaches us that God has His being from Himself. True or false? 3. Since man is made in the image of God, we may say that in certain ways God's being is like man's being. True or false? 4. Christian monotheism teaches that God progressively reveals Himself first as Father, then as Son, and finally as Holy Spirit. True or false? 5. The incarnation binds the eternal God to the timeline of His people. True or false? So how did you do?

" This speaks to me, because this is where I am ." I'm borrowing the line from a Tim Hawkins' routine , but how often have we heard or used that very line.  Sure, we may be at a certain phase in our sanctification, provided one is a Christian, but where I am  doesn't give me the right to tweak God or twist His Word to fit nicely where I am .  By His very nature, God is unchangeable.  So guess who needs to do the changing?

We know that God knows more than we do, and that he's morally superior - "better".  But we still assume that God, broadly speaking, shares our sense of justice and morality, our view on love and sex, our politics and passions, our idea of an evening well spent and a life worth living.  He's basically like us ... like me. It is this assumption that's at the heart of what the Bible calls our sin. The Serpent promised that we could be "like God," which is really just another way of saying, "God is like you, so do as you please."  And we have believed this lie ever since. Over and over the Bible has to say he's not like us because we repeatedly try to make him like us.  We squeeze God into our own mental universes.  We domesticate him and fashion hm after our image, but what foolishness!  This is the God who created the universe with words.  This is the God who destroyed the world with a flood.  This is the God who sruck down two priests fo...