Chapter 04.2 - Who is God?

Who is God? (Part II)

God asRighteous

The expression "righteousness of God" is capable of radical misunderstanding. With reference to God it can be used in two diverse senses. First, God is righteous in the sense of being holy. God is without sin. It was this sense that drove Martin Luther to question, before his conversion, whether God was really loving. This sets forth righteousness as a standard. God alone is righteous. In the period of Luther’s discovery of a different concept of God, the popular mind was set on thinking of God as the righteous judge. Therefore, it was difficult to conceive of Christ as sympathetic and compassionate.³⁹ The idea of God’s right actions goes back deep into the Old Testament. We meet with it early in the book of Genesis in which Abraham, in questioning God concerning Lot in Sodom, asked the question, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen 18:25). The other extreme of the expression is in the passages on judgment in the New Testament in which God will judge righteously. The wicked shall not escape from his deeds and impenitence (John 17:25, 2Ti 4:8; 1Jn 2:291Jn 3:7; Rev 16:5). Second, God is righteous in redemption. At this point the word "righteous" does not convey the meaning of the Scriptures. Righteousness used in this second sense is a gift of God (Mat 6:33) which is accorded the believer by his faith in Christ (Rom 4:5; Rom 5:17-21). One would have the meaning if one spoke of this as "righteousness from God," as Nygren does.⁴⁰ The mighty act of salvation is God’s intervention in man’s sinful life to give his righteousness, whereby man is accepted by God because of Christ’s death. Thus, because this meaning of God’s righteousness is disclosed, one is able to declare that God helps, saves, and forgives sin.⁴¹ When Paul states the theme of his epistle to the Romans, he says that in the gospel (Rom 1:16) "the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith" (Rom 1:17 ) . "Through the atonement on the Cross of Christ God realizes in sinful man, and in sinful humanity, His Holy and Merciful plan for humanity as a whole. This is the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ."⁴² The fuller impact of this can be seen in the question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism.

“How art thou just before God? Only by faith in Jesus Christ, that although my conscience accuses me, telling me that I have grievously sinned against all commandments of God and have never kept a single one of them, but have always been inclined to evil, yet God, without any merit on my part, of pure grace has granted and imputed to me the complete satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ, as though I had never committed any sin and had myself performed all the obedience which Christ has rendered for me, if only I will accept these benefits with a believing heart.”⁴³

    The recovery of this Pauline doctrine in Romans was one of the great features of the Reformation. This is one of the great Scripture truths that warm the heart of sinful man. It promises hope where man could have no hope otherwise.

God as Knowledge and Wisdom

The knowledge of God is incomprehensible to human understanding. The Bible describes his knowledge in inclusive terms. God knows the past, the present, and the future. There is nothing hidden from him. He knows intimately the world in which we live, for he is its Creator. But his knowledge of the world is not expressed as the main element in the Bible. The more important knowledge relates to the needs of man in redemption. We are to rejoice in God’s knowledge of us, for when the Bible speaks of God’s knowing us it implies his redemption of us, or entering into fellowship with us. God knows our needs before we pray (Mat 6:8), he knows us by name (Rev 21:27), and knows the future day of the coming of the Lord (Mark 13:32). To know the past and possibly the present would not be too difficult to comprehend, but to speak of the future knowledge that God has we are bereft of understanding. Yet this is the biblical description that God has given of himself. What is more mystifying is the assertion that God knows past possible actions if certain other possibilities had been available (cf. 1Sa 23:9-14). The omniscience, or all-knowledge, of God must not be imposed upon the free will of man to imply a lack of freedom. Sometimes people reason that since God knows all the actions of people before hand, these actions must come to pass, since he foreknew. This is to put the cart before the horse. The foreknowledge of God has nothing to do with bringing certain actions to pass. God can know what a free creature can and will do. His knowledge is not the cause of subsequent actions. Buswell treats prayer briefly in the area of the foreknowledge of God. Because God knows of our prayers beforehand, he has thus "built the answer to our prayers into the very structure of the universe. He knows that we will pray and that we will pray in a spontaneous manner, as a child cries to his father. God has put the universe together on a principle of personal relationships in which He answers prayer, and we can, in a measure, understand his loving provision only on the basis of His omniscience."⁴⁴ One must not conclude from such a statement that one is predestined to pray. Instead, God simply knows beforehand that we will pray. One other implication of God’s knowledge is that God’s knowledge is intimately related to his redemptive purposes. When the Bible speaks of God’s "knowing" men, it generally means that he loves men. We must remember that God does not know something because it is, but it is something because God knows it: "Everything does not exist in itself but in God, in His knowledge of its possibility and its actuality." ⁴⁵ Associated with the area of the knowledge of God is the wisdom of God. Barth speaks of the wisdom of God as "the inner truth and clarity with which the divine life in its self-fulfillment and its works justifies and confirms itself and in which it is the source and sum and criterion of all that is clear and true." ⁴⁶ Berkhof is more to the point. He speaks of the wisdom of God as a perfection, "whereby He applies His knowledge to the attainment of His ends in a way which glorifies Him most."⁴⁷ There can be little comparison between human and divine wisdom. Human wisdom relates to the living of life in a manner compatible with the Creator’s purpose. Divine wisdom is related to his actions in sustaining his world, in spite of its sin and rebellion, to bring meaning where there was none, and purpose out of a runaway creature. Man is not to glory in human wisdom but in the wisdom of God, who seeks out man to redeem him (Jer 9:23-24). One can hardly understand the patience of God in his dealing with men apart from the standpoint of God’s wisdom. His patience implies his wisdom in dealing with his creatures. A departure from the traditional doctrine of omniscience among evangelicals began in 1994 with the publication of TheOpenness of God: a Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God.⁴⁸ This work contained a group of essays by theologians who questioned God’s knowledge of the future. God certainly had a knowledge of the past and present but could God really know what a creature(man) with freedom would do before he had done it. The argument is made that God’s foreknowledge nullifies man’s real freedom of choice. Moreover, God and man cannot know the future until it comes to pass. There is also the charge that the traditional idea of God’s foreknowledge is influenced by Greek Platonic thought in which God is static, unchanging, and without emotion concerning the world. Their view is akin to process philosophy in which God interacts with the world and makes decisions based on that interaction. In this sense God is growing in his relationship with the world. Part of the motivation for such a view relates to certain Scripture passages in the Old Testament. As far as I know no verses in the New Testament are used. Passages in the Old Testament that are used to support their views relate to statements about God changing his mind, or grieving that he had made man, or appointing Saul as King of Israel. Exo 32:1-35 ( Exo 32:1-14) is a passage in which God threatened to destroy Israel for their disobedient idolatry and Moses pleaded with God not to destroy them because it would mean that the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be broken. In this case God changed his mind and let them live. In I Samuel 1Sa 15:10-11 God said that he was sorry that he made Saul king. In a later episode King Hezekiah is told that his death is imminent, but after his prayer for God’s mercy, the prophet Isaiah is sent to tell Hezekiah that God has heard his prayer and will extend his life by 15 years. 2Ki 20:1-11) In contrast to the comment of repenting that He had made Saul king, Balaam says, “God is not a man, that he should lie, neither the son of man, that he should repent; Hath he said, and will he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and will he not make it good?” (Num 23:19) While these passages are used to suggest that God does not know the future, there are passages that confirm that he does. Psa 139:1-24 explains God’s knowledge of a person as intimate, even before one speaks, God knows what one will say (14), “Before I even speak a word, you know what I will say.” A later Psalm declares that God is great and understands everything (Psa 147:5) “Our LORD is great and powerful! He understands everything” There are passages in which God know the contingent situation, the possibility of what will happen if one pursues a course of action, or not. In 1Sa 23:11 David is in Keilah hiding from Saul. Saul is told David is there and David wants to know if the people of Keilah would turn him over to Saul. God answers yes. The questions is then raised whether Saul would come and the answer is yes. Upon that response, David left, and Saul did not come. In Gen 15:13 God tells Abraham what is going to happen to him and his descendents. “Then the LORD said : Abram, you will live to an old age and die in peace. But I solemnly promise that your descendants will live as foreigners in a land that doesn’t belong to them. They will be forced into slavery and abused for four hundred years. But I will terribly punish the nation that enslaves them, and they will leave with many possessions.” Does God’s knowledge of this slavery mean that his knowledge caused it? This would be the implication for open theists, but not for the traditional view about God’s foreknowledge. In Exo 3:19, God tells Moses about Pharaoh, “But I know that the king of Egypt won’t let you go unless something forces him to.” In Exo 11:1 “God tells Moses that the people will drive them out after the last plague. Then the king will gladly let you leave his land, so that I will stop punishing the Egyptians. He will even chase you out.” The prophet Isaiah embodies some words about God’s knowing the future. Isa 42:9 says, “Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare, before they spring forth. I tell you of them.” (ASV) Isa 44:6-7 says, “Thus saith Jehovah, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, Jehovah of hosts, I am the first, and I am the last, and besides me there is no God. And who, as I shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in order for me, since I established the ancient people? and the things that are coming, and that shall come to pass, let them declare. Remember the former things of old “for I am God and there is none else; I am God and there is none like me. “ In Isa 46:9-10 we have God saying, “I am God and there is none like me declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done; saying, My counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure.” What are we to make of these issues? First, the verses that speak of God’s knowing the future, the contingent,etc., seem straight forward. The only possibility is to deny their validity and truth. There doesn’t seem to be alternative explanations. On the other hand, the verses that seem to relate to God’s not knowing the future are capable of alternate explanations. They may be described as accommodation to man’s ignorance, or rhetorical questions as in the case, “Adam, where are you? or who told you that you were naked?” That even implies some sense of God’s knowledge about things that even Adam did not understand. Second, while the use of theological tradition is not on the level with Scripture, it does have some guidance in some of these issues and the tradition is that God does know the future even before it happens. Sometimes tradition is wrong, but this does not seem to be one of those times. Third, it seems awfully presumptuous of mere mortals to even try to say what God can or cannot know. From the standpoint of Scripture, there are many passages of Scripture based on the idea of “whoever will” that freedom of man is affirmed. To deny this freedom is to diminish humanity. To deny God’s knowledge of the future is to diminish God. On the side of open theism, Gregory Boyd has written God of the possible (Grand Rapids:Baker Books,2001, John Sanders penned The God who Risks, (Downers Grove:InterVarsity Press, 1998. Against Open theism John Frame has written, No Other God, (Phillipsburg,NJ, P &R Publishing, 2001, and Bruce A Ware published God’s Lesser Glory:the diminished God of Open Theism (Crossway Books,,2001).

God as Almighty (Omnipotent)    

There is considerable room for misunderstanding in this heading because the terms used may not carry the meaning intended. Many theologians do not speak of the omnipotence of God because the term is equated with absolute power, potestas absoluta. Omnipotence often means that God can do everything. Consequently, absurd questions can be raised, such as, "Can God make a rock he cannot lift?" or "Can he make the past not to have existed?" The Bible does not speak of the power of God in this manner. Certain things stand out in answering this.First, we must retain a close reading of what the Bible does say about God’s power. Although the Bible does not speak of the word "omnipotence," the word may be used if the philosophical baggage is dropped from its meaning. The Bible speaks of God’s power in a unique way. Second, God’s power is not understood as blind force. If we separate God’s power from his love, we are speaking of a god that does not exist, and who if he did exist would be a despot indifferent to the created world. "We cannot speak of a living God except insofar as his sovereignty is understood as identical with the sovereignty of divine love.⁴⁹ Third, God’s power is always associated with his self-revelation as holy and righteous in all that he does.⁵⁰ His power is not identified with omni-causality in which everything comes to pass in a fatalistic way. He is not a slave to his power. Fourth, omnipotence conveyed the idea of a ruling power over everything, but the Bible speaks of God’s limiting himself in power. God has created man who has power to stand over against God and oppose him. The creature has relative independence. Finally, the power of God is related to his will. There is no difference "between what God wills and what He can do."⁵¹ "Whatever contradicts His being is impossible for Him"⁵² and reduces itself to absurdity. His will is that he be Lord of history, and his power is manifested in its expression and limitation according to his wisdom and knowledge to bring to pass his redemptive plan for mankind. God has power to achieve his will, and apart from his power there is none other.

God as Omnipresent

To say that God is omnipresent is to declare that "there is no place in the world where God is not."⁵³ Wherever God is he is there in "his Whole Being."⁵⁴ This last phrase is important to guard against diffusing God throughout the universe, a little here and a little there. God is where his power manifests itself. There is no place where his power is not manifest, not even is hell without his sustaining force. Hell is necessary to keep people from being forced into heaven. It is the final judgement of people who do not want to have anything to do with God. Omnipresence "is the sovereignty on the basis of which everything that exists cannot exist without Him, but only with Him, possessing its own presence only on the presupposition of His presence." ⁵⁵ Having declared God’s nearness, one must admit that in man’s relationship to God there is a distinct "farness" from him. At times God comes "closer" than at other times. His "closer" relationship to man took place in the Incarnation of the Son of God. When Jesus is designated as Emmanuel, we witness the joining of God’s Son in manhood. The Christian doctrine of the indwelling of the Spirit speaks of God’s presence within the heart and destiny of man that separates the believer from the unbeliever. The latter is sustained by God’s power but is "far" from him. Sin blinds the heart to God’s power, and the alienated creature builds the universe around himself, shutting out God. But he must have God’s power even to do this. While affirming the omnipresence of God, we must not identify the creation with God. The omnipresence of God does not depend upon the universe, although we visualize God’s presence in spatial terms. Omnipresence points up the dependence of the universe on God for its continuing existence. Perseverance is simply the continuous creativity of God in which he holds the created things together. Tillich declared, "God is essentially creative, and therefore he is creative in every moment of temporal existence, giving the power of being to everything that has being out of the creative ground of the divine life."⁵⁶ The Christian faith abhors two things equally well: one is pantheism, in which the creation is identified with God; and the other is deism, in which the world is set in motion and God does not interfere with it. The doctrine of God’s omnipresence in sustaining the world affirms elements of both of these. It affirms with deism that God is not identified with the creation, and it affirms with pantheism that its existence is dependent upon the power of God upholding it.⁵⁷ Theologians usually speak of these two truths under the headings of transcendence and immanence. God is above the world and yet in it. Both ideas are necessary to express the biblical picture. The two can be illustrated by a parable on the beautiful rose in relation to the sun. The rose grows up and puts forth a beautiful blossom because the sun is transcendent, sending forth its rays. At the same time, the rose blossom affirms the immanence of the sun as it takes the rays to itself and puts it forth in beautiful red, yellow, or pink. The sun is both there and here.

God as Glory

The biblical words for glory in the Bible are kabod in the Old Testament and doxa in the New. "Kabod is light, both as source and radiance."⁵⁸ Just by being himself, God is glorious, as light by itself is full of radiance and brilliance. Doxa speaks of honor which God has himself. The glory of God is, therefore, God’s dignity and right in maintaining himself against his creation and its corruptions. God’s glory is "the self-revealing sum of all divine perfections. It is the fulness of God’s deity, the emerging, self-expressing and self-manifesting reality of all that God is."⁵⁹One cannot speak of God without declaring him to be the Lord of glory.⁶⁰ God not only has glory in himself, but desires that man glorify him. If man is to glorify God, he must hear the word of God to turn from his sin and trust in God. To glorify God is to be obedient to his will. The believer glorifies God in obedience. The believer receives the glory of God in Christ (John 17:22). The believer shall behold the glory of Christ in the presence of God when he returns (John 17:24). The climax of creaturely glorification comes in his ultimate transformation in Christlikeness (1Jn 3:2).

God’s Eternity

A usual type of definition of eternity is that it is God’s infinity in relation to time. That is to say, God has been from infinite time backward to infinite time forward. Although this may be a popular type of definition, it is incorrect. There was a time at which time did not exist. This was in eternity. Yet we must not say that eternity is timelessness. God is from eternity to eternity. He is the eternal being. Eternity can be described as pretemporal, supertemporal, and post-temporal. God always existed prior to creation. He is pretemporal: that is, before time began. The term "supertemporal" is used because it expresses the idea that God is above time while it is going on. After time has ceased, God in his eternity is post-temporal. To all of this God "is simultaneous, i.e., beginning and middle as well as end, without separation, distance or contradiction."⁶¹ Time, on the other hand, is a creation of God. It involves the before and after relationships of human existence.⁶² While God yet remains eternal he has relationships in time. God fills time and indwells it but remains eternal also. In the discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity, a term is used that can be helpful here. Perichoresis refers to the interrelationships of the persons of the Trinity, mutually indwelling and yet remaining distinct within one another. The relationship between God in eternality and time is similar. God remains eternal but fills time. God is acutely aware of time. The Incarnation took place in time. The Christian faith cannot conceive of God as mere timelessness. A. E. Taylor makes the blunt comment, "If God does not know the difference between yesterday and tomorrow, He does not know as much as I do." ⁶³ The relationship of time and eternity is one that is difficult to solve, but the biblical assertions of the eternity of God and his appearance in time must be affirmed.

Problems in the Doctrine of God Spatial Terminology

In the upheaval of much modern theology, considerable criticism has been directed toward traditional methods of speaking about God. Bishop John A. T. Robinson and others have rejected terminology which implies spatial relation.⁶⁴ They argue that "up" or "down" for heaven and hell has no meaning to modern minds in the space age. Instead of God up, down, or out there, Robinson makes the transition to the "Ground of our Being."⁶⁵ Just how much this symbolism improves on the older symbolism only time will tell. The real problem relates to whether one should jettison the time honored terminology of the Bible. The return of Christ is described in spatial terms--just as he ascended, so he will return. If we are to speak of God in heaven "up there," it is generally recognized that it is not an abode visible to the naked eye. If it should turn out that God is yet "out there," it is also true that Christian faith has always maintained that God is "down here." The symbolism of God "up there," emphasized his otherness to man and the creation. The symbolism of God "down here" has always meant his nearness in the Incarnation and the working of his Spirit to bring men to himself. The problems associated with space travel point up the problem of symbolism. When an astronaut is outside of the earth’s pull, there is no up nor down. If a meaningful term is substituted, it could well be such a term as "home." Up or down may not mean much when one is between here and the moon or another planet, but the effort to return "home" would be quite meaningful. The comparison may be fruitful for talk in theology. To be in sin is to be away from home--away from fellowship with God--regardless of where one is. To be reconciled is to return to him, to home. The Problem ofEvi1

Nicholas Berdyaev, the Russian existentialist, wrote: "The rationalistic mind of modern man thinks the chief hindrance to belief in God, the chief argument for atheism, is the existence of evil, and the sorrow and suffering it causes in the world. It is difficult to reconcile the existence of God, the all-good and almighty Providence, with the existence of evil, so strong and powerful in our world. This has become the classical and only serious argument."⁶⁶ Speaking in a similar manner, Harold Titus calls the problem of evil the "atheistic fact."⁶⁷ There are several categories of so-called evils. Some speak of natural evils, such as floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other elemental phenomena which destroy life and property. Others speak of social evils involving poverty, war, and hunger. A discussion of the problem of evil calls for distinguishing between evils that man causes to other men and evils that invade man’s life seemingly uncaused by other men. The evils that man causes to other men are more readily understood than the second type. Man is one of the greatest enemies of man. To explain this requires the concept of man’s freedom. Berdyaev wrote, "Evil is inexplicable without freedom. Evil is the child of freedom." ⁶⁸ Freedom of man is a necessary supposition to responsibility. Unless man is free to be disobedient, he cannot be held responsible for his action. A pre-determined creature is not a moral creature. On the other hand, man is not absolutely free. He cannot stop his dying, defy the law of gravity, or go for long without certain physical needs. Freedom, however, is particularly meaningful for moral issues. This freedom to rebel against God, against one another, and against society collectively may help us understand some of the evils of the world. On this, C. S. Lewis has written: "When souls become wicked, they will certainly use this possibility to hurt one another; and this, perhaps, accounts for four-fifths of the suffering of men. It is men, not God, who have produced racks, whips, prisons, slavery, guns, bayonets, and bombs; it is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork."⁶⁹ Without the ingredient of freedom, one could not have a basis for understanding human history. The question may arise concerning the delay of God’s judgment on human actions. Is God helpless, unable, indifferent? The answer rests in what kind of God we conceive the deity to be. If we stress sheer justice, we may think of him as a superpoliceman who will not tolerate evil, and by his knowledge of transgressions will proceed to eliminate the offender. Thus justice would be conceived from a stimulus-response view. When evil--the stimulus-appears, justice or the response of God would be swift and immediate. If such a concept were actual, then who would be left living? We would all perish. If we conclude for God’s mercy--which the Bible surely does--we must be prepared to see the design of redemptive possibilities. God seeks the sinner to come to repentance. He is patient with us even in our freedom and sin. The second type of evil is more difficult to cope with. What is to be made of tornadoes, earthquakes, and disease? Is freedom any help here? Can it be that all of creation is involved in some form of rebellion? Or to put it another way, is there an intruder in the world of man and his environment who has brought disharmony to the creation? This appears to be the answer of C. S. Lewis in dealing with the matter of disease and pain. He points out that disease is associated with Satan (Luk 13:16, 1Co 5:5). This is quite significant, for evil is thereby associated with intelligence, shrewdness, and negative purpose. Because there is a tendency on the part of evildoers to involve and corrupt others, one might proceed to relate this fact to the creation. Satan has not only brought man to disharmony with God, but has sown disharmony in man’s world. Can we relate disease to disharmony and tyranny, as is reflected in man’s experience? The medical profession speaks of free radicals in the human body as a cause of disease. If one may view a disease as caused by an organism out of harmony with its normal habitat, we may then speak of its tyrannizing another organism. Some illustrations may be used to speak of this. Cancer, for example, seems to be a type of life corruption in which cells feed on other cells. Leukemia involves the attack of one type blood cell life on another. Many diseases seem to follow this pattern-life intruding upon other types of life and attempting to lead a parasitic existence-to tyrannize. How would this differ from the balance of nature? It differs in that the balance of nature is related to the world below man, whereas man, being a moral creature, transcends the balance. From the point of faith, the Scriptures declare that man is the lord of the creation, and its creatures, other than man, are for his use. Thus animal life is not to lord it over man. This type of analysis is interesting, since new diseases appear when old ones seem conquered. Evil is not static but grows in sophistication. If we may speak of disease as disharmony caused by an outsider--an intruder invading and influencing the world below man--it would be a parallel to man’s experience when in freedom he was tempted to rebellion, whereby he was tyrannized by the same intruder. How far should this analogy be pushed? The extent will be limited by the analogy itself. Man is not as bad in rebellion as he could be. His life is not as evil and chaotic as possible. By the same analogy our world is not as chaotic as possible, nor is it as diseased and corrupt as possible.. The chaos that exists is balanced out by orderliness somewhat parallel to the story of man’s fractured existence. Chaos and order exist side by side in man as it can be perceived in the world beneath man. Another question arises in regard to what has been said. Can we relate this freedom being used by an intelligence that is able to tyrannize man’s habitat through it and by means of it to revelation? Some form of explanation along these lines is implied in the Scriptures (Rom 8:20-23). The influence of evil and its disharmony did not stop with man but permeated the whole creation and still has a hold on it. The man of faith looks forward to his and the creation’s release from its tyranny when he enjoys the liberty of God. A side issue to the problem of evil concerns suffering. Suffering is a by-product of the intrusion of sin into the world. Suffering cannot be regarded as God’s means for perfecting character before the advent of man’s original departure into sin. However, in spite of the tyranny of sin and the enslavement attendant to it, God is able to thwart sin and achieve victory in men’s lives. As life now exists we may say that suffering is the occasion of personality and spiritual development. Paul gives such a viewpoint in Romans: "We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us" (5:3-5) . It may be questioned, given our present sinful world, whether such character development can come in any other way than through suffering. But this is not to affirm that evil is necessary to produce good. Better is to say that God helps man to achieve good in spite of evil. God is not thwarted from expressing his love in making something of the man of faith, although that man previously exercised his freedom to corrupt his relation with God. A useful analogy to illustrate these ideas is presented by C. S. Lewis concerning man’s relation to a dog. Man has attempted to tame a dog so that he may love it and that the dog may serve him. He is not motivated by the love of the dog or from a desire to serve the dog. In the process of expression of his love to the dog, the dog’s ultimate interests are preserved. The dog is chosen rather than some other creature because it has possibilities for a better life with the man than if left to its own natural habits. The man seeks to make the dog more lovable than it was before. With this in mind the man does certain things to remove the offense to his love. The dog has a smell and habits that offend the sensitivities of the master. Thus, the man takes the dog and washes it with soap and water, he housebreaks it, "teaches it not to steal, and is so enabled to love it completely."⁷⁰ From the dog’s point of view, if he were a theologian, all of this would make him doubt the goodness of his master, "but the full-grown and fully-trained dog, larger, healthier, and longer-lived than the wild dog, and admitted, as it were by Grace, to a whole world of affections, loyalties, interests, and comforts entirely beyond its animal destiny, would have no such doubts."⁷¹ All of this is to say that God pays man an "intolerable compliment" by giving him a love that demands the transformation of his person. The transformation is painful.

Chapter 4.2 Who is God?

³⁸Barth, Church Dogmatics, II-l, 444.

³⁹The emphasis on the stern role of Christ the judge helped the growth of intermediaries between Christ and man. The compassionate role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, fits into this pattern of thinking.

40Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans (Philadelphia ⁴¹Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1949), p. 147.

⁴² Cf. Brunner, Christian Doctrine of God, p. 275

⁴³Ibid. p. 276.

⁴⁴Barth, Church Dogmatics, II-2, 404.

⁴⁵op.cit., p.61 ⁴⁶Barth, Church Dogmatics, II-l,559.

⁴⁷Ibid., p.426 ⁴⁸Berkhof, op.cit., p. 69 ⁴⁹ Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders and others, (Downers Grove, IL., Inter-Varsity Press, 1994) ⁵⁰ Aulen, op.cit., p. 146.

⁵¹ Barth, Church Dogmatics, II-1, 544.

⁵²Brunner, Christian Doctrine of God, p. 253.

⁵³ Barth, Church Dogmatics, II-1, 535 ⁵⁴Brunner, Christian Doctrine of God, p.257 ⁵⁵Berkhof, op.cit., p. 60 ⁵⁶Barth, Church Dogmatics, II-1, 461 ⁵⁷op. cit., I, 262.

⁵⁸Against the deistic view, Aulen quotes Sorley: "Surely a God who does not interfere will hardly be missed" (Aulen, op. cit., p. 157).

⁵⁰Barth, Church Dogmatics, II-1,642

⁶⁰Ibid., p. 643

⁶¹1Co 2:8; Psa 139:11-12, John 15, 17 62 Barth, Church Dogmatics, II-l, 608. (Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics, II-1 622-29 ).

⁶³Buswell, op.cit., p. 47

⁶⁴Ibid., p.46 ⁶⁵Honest to God, p.17.

⁶⁶Ibid., p. 47 ⁶⁷op.cit., p.187 ⁶⁸op.cit., p.429 ⁶⁹op.cit., p.188 ⁷⁰The Problem of Pain (New York: The Macmillan Colossians,1962), p.89

⁷¹Ibid., p. 43.

⁷²Ibid., p.44.