Video Transcript: God's Attributes (Part 1)
Today we talked about God the Creator, the essential doctrine in Christianity, of course, everything builds around that. And we have more than one scripture that tells us that God is to be thanked and praised and worshipped, just because he
is the creator of all things. And I want to talk about that today. And about the attributes, God's word reveals him to have, that God is seen to, or recorded in Scripture, so we can know them. And we'll raise what may seem to a lot of you like an odd sort of question. And that has to do with a relation between God and the characteristics that we know his attributes. That's the usual term use for God's personal characteristics. So we're going to try to take a brief look at what scripture says about that. And we're going to see that there are some places that comment on that. And then we'll talk about how we get a bigger picture in theology of the nature of God. So let's begin. I'm going to start with Colossians 1, that God affirms again, that God has created through Jesus Christ, all things visible or invisible. Now, it only takes a moments thought for you to realize everything's either visible or it's not. So the writer here, which is St. Paul,writimg to the church, at Colossae, is telling us that God through Christ has created everything, everything we can see and everything we can't. And this is one of the reasons that a good number of theologians have pointed out that God has not only created the objects that we see around the world, the sun, the moon, the stars, the planet, the ocean, the land, life forms, and so on, but has created also the laws that govern his creation. And there is a strong tradition in theology of people who recognize that as an important point said, God isn't subject to those laws, he created them. We don't have any problem when it comes to something like the law of gravitation, we say, of course, the law of gravitation doesn't apply to God, because God's not a physical object, say on the planet Earth, isn't held to the ground by gravity. But there are other laws as well, that exist in creation, and that people discover laws such as logical laws and mathematical laws. There's another strand of theologians that have said, No, God didn't create those. So that's the difference that we're going to begin to address here, visible or invisible, would have to include the laws, unless you just want to fudge that unless you try to say, well, that's what Paul said. But you know, he didn't mean it, that strictly and so on. I find, however, that there are other places in Scripture that also reflect that view. And one of those, is in Proverbs 8, where it speaks of God's wisdom, or rather, God's wisdom is speaking it's a personification. and wisdom says of ourself. In Proverbs 8, I am the first of God's creations, he brought me forth before the heavens and the earth, before the hills, before anything else was, I was, and I was with him. And then it goes on. And that concludes, and then I was with the sons, the children of men. So it's the same wisdom that God has, in a much greater degree than we could ever imagine. But it's the same quality characteristics that he shares then with human beings. But the important thing here is that it's an attribute of God. And it says explicitly, that God created it. And I think these two texts taken
together, that God has created everything visible or invisible, and then talking about the characteristic of wisdom and saying, God created that. So he created his own wisdom. And he shares that with creatures that that strongly suggest, the position that there are no exceptions. Among God's attributes. They're all ones that he created, in the, in the way that Proverbs 8 explicitly says, His wisdom is created. And not only that, I think that that view of God's attributes, fits perfectly with a central doctrine of the New Testament, which is the doctrine of the Incarnation. In in the Incarnation, God explicitly takes something he is creating something that is creaturely that depends on God for existence, namely, the human person of Jesus Christ, and takes him into himself. So that Jesus Christ is the human side of God, and God is the divine side of Jesus Christ. The two things aren't confused or identical. But that's how the relationship is presented in Scripture. And that too means that the revelation of of God that we see in Jesus Christ, that in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And that when we look at him, we see God, as God is, he says, to remember to His disciples, who asked, Can we see God, he says, haven't I been with you a long time, don't you see me, that kind of thing that again, shows that there is that God has created these characteristics in order to reveal himself. So I'm going to schematize that a bit on the board, because we're going to contrast it with another theological tradition, that's going to deny important parts of what I've just said to you. Here, I'm going to use a solid line circle, for God for what is divine, and I'm going to use a dotted line. For what is created that depends on God. Notice that the arrow that goes from God to creation is also created. God has brought into existence, a creation distinct from himself. And his relationship to that creation, therefore, is also something he's creating simultaneously. Prior to creating, if we can talk that way, prior to creating, God doesn't have that property of being the creator of the world, once the world exists, he has the property being the creator of the world. And what I'm suggesting here is, that of all the things that God has created, if he's created everything, visible or invisible, then God has created quantity and number. I mean, numbers are our symbols for the quantity we find in the world. He has created space. And because the creation is spatial, the creation is also physical. It's got living things in it. It's biotic. And what happens is that then God takes into himself these characteristics, so as to accommodate himself to be understood by us. So numerically, God is one. But in three persons, spatially, God is everywhere, God's omnipresent. Physically, God is all powerful. Biotically, God is our father, because he gives us life. And scripture goes on and on in all the different aspects of the creation, to tell us what are the characteristics that God has of that kind. So those are all creative things. They're not the uncreated, originating being of God, that's beyond our ability to know it all. But here's the way God has accommodated himself to us so we can be known by him, and we can know Him. So all those things that are attributed to God in Scripture, are true of God. That's the truth. And they are
what God swears in his covenant. They are what he promises to be forever. Now, what I've said so far, might be misunderstood in this way. By saying that these are created characteristics, I don't mean to say that there was a time God didn't have them. Saying that something is created means it depends for its existence on God, whether it began in time, or it didn't. My understanding is, here's that God has called into being all of creation, visible or invisible, and that includes time. And there are four or five places in the New Testament that says God created time. Two of them say he created time through Jesus Christ. So this is space, time, matter, life, and so on, great deal more. But whatever it is, God has called it into existence out of nothing. God then accommodates himself in ways that we can understand in order to make himself known to us and establish His redemptive covenant of love, forgiveness and everlasting life. That's how I'm going to see God's attributes as we go forward in this study, and that's why it's a key element of seeing why Christian Philosophy is not only possible, but a duty. So I'm going to call this view of God and His attributes, the incarnational model for understanding God's relation to the revealed characteristics that we are told about in Scripture. There's a nice summary of that, of this view in John Calvin. He says, every attribute, every perfection ascribed to God in Scripture is also found in creation. And hence, is not God per se, but how God relates to us. And that's also a good summary of the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of God, which says essentially the same thing. And orthodox thinkers over the centuries since Calvin have recognized that Cyril Lucaris, for example, the Patriarch of Constantinople and thought the world of Calvin's theology to leave liturgy aside Lucaris and all other orthodox thinkers believe it in love a very complex and rich liturgy and Calvin just about threw that out the door, but as to the doctrine of God, right on says Lucaris. This turns out to be important, just because there's a strain of theology that denies it. I'm going to stop there for now. And then we're going to pick up the other theology and draw the contrast.