Proper Theology is Theology Proper (applied)

Rev'd Dr John E. Colwell argues:

In essence there are only two theological questions: 'what kind of God' and 'so what'.... If a question is truly a theological question it is, at root, a question concerning the nature of God. Certainly it may present itself in another form - as a question of hermeneutics, of ecclesiology, of eschatology - but all such questions, as theological questions, are essentially questions about God. And this, then, is the manner in which they ought to be addressed, not as discrete issues to be resolved independently of each other, but as authentically theological questions, as out-workings of a doctrine of God, as responses to a series of 'so what' questions deriving from some understanding of God's nature. Theology, throughout all its various sub-disciplines, remains theology; and theology is simply the study of God.

He goes on to argue that all theology should be applied theology. His two questions might be best thought of as two aspects of one question: one has not adequately said what kind of God God is untill one has also said so what.

I have misconstrued the significance of of the word 'God' if I fail to recognise that any statement about God necessarily has significance for all reality; I cannot consider God in academic detachement without misconstuing the significance of the word 'God'. All valid theology, then, is 'applied' theology.... Christian theology is pursued through discipleship and in no other valid way;... Christian theology properly understood, is inseperable from Christian discipleship and spirituality.

John E. Colwell, Promise and Presence: An Exploration of Sacramental Theology (Milton Keynes & Waynesboro, GA, Paternoster Authentic Media, 2005) - from the introduction, p1

God is love

D.v. I'm preaching on 1 Jn 4 on Sunday AM.

I remember thinking about this once but I can't remember what I thought!

Is God's love more essential to him than his other attributes (virtues or dispositions)?

John also tells us that "God is light", of course.

Could we say "God is holiness", "God is justice", "God is wisdom", "God is wrath" etc.?

I guess we need to dig out our notes on the essence and attributes of God, eternality and divine simplicity and so on.

God's love is clearly fundamental to his Trinitarian life in a way that wrath is not.

Immutability of God Sermon Notes

BCP Communion Service

Thurs 14^th May 2009

Using the material for the 4^th Sunday after Easter (p141)

God “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (James 1:17)

NIV: God “who does not change like shifting shadows.”

God does not change.

Malachi 3:6 – “I the LORD do not change.”

Psalm 102:27 – “you, [O my God], remain the same, and your years will never end.”

Hebrews 13:8 – “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.”

Good news that God doesn’t change. Comfort and encouragement. Trust and praise him!

Collect: “among the sundry and manifold changes of the world” fix our hearts

It would be a bad thing if I never changed but it is a very good thing that God doesn’t

God doesn’t need to change, I do!

It would be a sin for God to change!

God is perfect. If he changed he’d get worse. Eternality.

God constant, a rock, reliable, trustworthy, consistent, never lets you down, predictable (?)

Prayer of Humble Access: “but thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy”

God is unchangeably good, so he only gives us good things. All that comes from him is good.

Great is thy faithfulness!

“Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.”

Abide with me:

“Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”

The Son: Equal but Different

This ought to be at the front of my mind, of course, and Mike Ovey would be ashamed of my need to ask, but given that I never studied Christian Doctrine properly (!), I wonder if you could give this the once over for orthodoxy. I'm thinking of preaching this kind of thing on Sunday morning with as few big words as possible.

(1) The Son is ontologically and essentially equal to the Father

(2) The Son is enternally relationally subordinate to the Father. This relational subordination is both according to his nature as Son and voluntary.

(3) According to his human nature, the Incarnate Son is inferior to the Father.

This "equality but difference" provides a model for the submission of wives to husbands in marriage and of members to elders in the church.

Elohim - "the gods is"

With a nervous feeling about my lack of Hebrew…

I don’t remember ever coming across this before:

Donald Macleod points out that the name most commonly used of God in the Old Testament, Elohim, is plural, although when used of God it is always used with singular verbs and adjectives. Macleod says it is as if we were to say, “The gods is”. Macleod argues that God had good reason for calling himself Elohim and that it “fits beautifully with the fact that in him there is a fullness of fellowship. The New Testament disclosure of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is the best, and possibly the only, explanation of God giving himself a plural name.” (p13)

Shared Life: The Trinity and the Fellowship of God’s People (Christian Focus, 1994)

Perspectives on Love & Holiness in OT

Rev’d Dr James Robson gave his excellent Tyndale House paper on ‘Forgotten Dimensions of Holiness’ in the Oak Hill Masters Seminar this week. He argued that it can be shown from the text of the Bible that love is a dimension of or is linked to God’s holiness in the Old Testament, though some texts might not make it seem so. Yahweh’s holiness and love are shown through his self-disclosure, his saving activity (including his hearing of prayer) and his presence. This rightly takes account of narrative and contexts as well as including word studies and depending on explicit statements.

All this seemed impressive and true, and fits in with a few systematic perspectives. For example, by the time one has said that God is simple and that all things are related, it is unsurprising to say that love and holiness are related or even that they are perspectives on one another. Interesting that the Old Testament should make this so obvious. The question is exactly how they are related. There is some danger in saying everything in that one will end up saying nothing. God’s holiness needs to be sharply defined if it is to be distinguished from other aspects of his character (and likewise with love). If holiness is simply seen as the Godness of God or that which makes God unique and separate then not much has been said.

In other words, the systematican will want to ask both how are we to distinguish God’s holiness and his love and how we are to relate them.

A few random vaguely relevant thoughts:

All the attributes of God are strictly incommunicable. No one is powerful as God is powerful, for example.

All talk about God is analogical. Love is not the same in God as it is in the rest of experience.

I think James suggested that interestingly in the economy of revelation there is a sequence that we know God’s holiness first and other things are holy since they are declared so by God or are somehow related to him. With Fatherhood, human fathers play a much greater part in the order of our knowing. Perhaps. God is always the prototype and standard. I reckon if you took holiness to mean specialness or set apartness, or even purity / cleanness, this would be much less obvious since we can think of human or creaturely analogues which we could and often do know before knowing much of God or having a Word from him.

Having said that, James rightly argued that we must first of all be attentive to the language and narrative in which God has chosen to reveal himself. Systematic questions of how we might categorise and integrate or summarise all this in various ways are secondary, even if necessary, and indeed influencing our first reading of the Bible. The old virtuous hermeneutical spiral agaisn.

The systematician can be encouraged that the Bible seems to speak in a way which is wonderfully appropriate to the simplicity of God and perspectivalism. The attributes and actions of God are not hermetically sealed by flow from his nature and though each has a “core” they flow into one another. The picture is clear at the centre but the colours at the edges are beautifully run into each other. Indeed, that’s something like how words (including the language of Scripture) work, having a semantic range and being defined by usage and difference from other words.

No single attribute of God is to be totalised or used to exclude others. Even God’s wrath is loving and his love is wrathful. One might even say that God is wrath with respect to sin but a distinction could be made here since God is not wrath in the inner Trinitarian life considered without respect to creation. Yet creation and therefore wrath is in a way “necessary” given who God is and chooses to be, but that is another story.

It was good to hear a systematically informed biblical scholar using arguments about the immanent Trinity, simplicity and analogical language, and obviously knowing his Hebrew and his Bible a billion times better than I! No surprise there either. Here’s to such conversations at Oak Hill and elsewhere.

Dove & Bread; Spirit & Body

Calvin makes the good point that when the Spirit appears as a dove, He is truly and essentially present but not in a local physical manner as if the dove is turned into the Spirit. Likewise with the bread of the Lord’s Supper, Christ’s body is truly and essentially communicated by the Spirit but not physically or locally. (LCC Calvin’s Theological Treatises, ‘The clear explanation … concerning the true partaking of … the Holy Supper’, p270)

The Living and True God

Here's the text of the handout for a sermon I preached the other day from Exodus 3, ("I AM WHO I AM") on the 1st of the 39 Articles (we only really got as far as "living and true God"). Maybe more on that later.

A new sermon series on

Famous “Anglican” Texts

from The Book of Common Prayer (1662)

The 39 Articles of Religion (1562)

of the Church of England

… for the avoiding of diversities of opinions and

for the establishing of consent touching true religion

Article 1: Of Faith in the Holy Trinity

There is but one living and true God,

everlasting, without body, parts, or passions;

of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness;

the Maker, and Preserver of all things

both visible and invisible.

And in the unity of this Godhead there be three Persons,

of one substance, power, and eternity;

the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

A modern language version of Article 1

from An English Prayer Book (OUP / Church Society, 1994)

There is only one living and true God,

who is eternal and without body, indivisible and invulnerable.

He is of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness.

He is the maker and preserver of all things

both visible and invisible.

Within the unity of the Godhead there are three persons

who are of one substance, power, and eternity –

the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

You can see some more jottings in a Word document here.

I swear by the Grand Pixie, Satan and all his imps...

On our visit to Lewes Crown Court yesterday we discovered that one can give the oath by a "god"of one's choice, more or less.

Now I know this will be defended as freedom of religion and choice, but I think it is wicked publiclly established idolatry such as the kings of ancient Israel were commanded to drive out.

I am not saying we should make windows into men's souls. Let people do what they like in their own homes and let them form private satanism clubs if they wish to worship Lucifer behind closed doors.

But courts are a public space and there is no neutrality there. They are the Queen's courts, she is (I assume) a Christian and the Christian religion should be publicly established by law. Likewise, in every court, council and parliament, there should be public prayer for the blessing of Almighty God, as there is in the high court of parliament and in every church in the land every week.

And by Almight God, I mean the living and true of God, of course, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Triune God.

I noticed the oath for Jews is the same as that for Christians expect Christians swear on a New Testament and Jews swear on an Old Testament. That really will not do. The whole Bible is a Christian book.

Are we to be a Christian country or not? We can only expect the judgement of God on such pic-n-mix public religion. I would say national repentance is in order. Perhaps Her Majesty would care to announce it in the next Queen's Speech or perhaps in her Christmas Address to her subjects.

Passionate, Simple Docrinal Preaching (Article 1)

Rather foolishly, perhaps, I have set myself to preach on Article 1 of the 39 Articles of Religion of the Church of England at our main morning service on Sunday 16th September.

I shall consult Griffiths Thomas, The Principles of Theology, which is an exposition of the articles, of course. Good to be able to read something positive about Anglicanism by a Welshman. And the English Prayer Book has a helpful modern language version of the aricles.

The Bible reading is going to be Exodus 3 (God's name is I AM WHO I AM, implying his eternality, unity, asceity, perhaps?).

The sermon will be largely doctrinal but I think it will be necessary to show that these are biblical doctrines, not just made up philosophical gobbledygoook.

I also need to show why these things matter and what their practical application is.

In general the title of the 39 articles says they are for:

… for the avoiding of diversities of opinions and
for the establishing of consent touching true religion

Noble aims: unity & truth.

I'm starting to think, though, that one sermon on the 1st Article is pretty impossible:

Article 1: Of faith in the Holy Trinity

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in the unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

So much there! That gives you maybe 2.5 mins on impassibility in your 30 min sermon, if you're lucky.

In particular, does anyone have any tips on preaching the simplicity and impassibility of God? How would you explain "God... without parts, passions"? Is there one text for each you'd turn people to? And a main practical application?

Which bit of the article should I do the children's talk on?

In fact, I wonder if the Article might not give us a sermon series. Something like:

(1) The One God
(2) The Living God
(3) The True God

(3) The Everlasting God - The Eternality of God
(4) The God without a body - The Spirituality of God (or is there a better way of putting that?)
(5) The God without parts - The Simplicity of God

(6) God's infinite power
(7) God's infinite wisdom
(8) God's infinite goodness

(9) God the Maker
(10) God the Preserver

(11) The Three Persons: Father, Son and Spirit
(12) The Trinity: One in Substance, power and eternity

Do you think there's enough material for each of these sermons? Would they all be worth doing? Or should they be broken down more: e.g. a sermon on homoousios, God the Preserver of the invisible things, and so on?

Any thoughts or tips or things I can plagarise or look at, most welcome.

God angrily punished the Son

There's been some discussion over on Revd Michael Jensen's blog (27th Feb, arising from Pierced For Our Transgressions) about whether or not we should say that God was angry with the Son and punished him. Michael denies, but I think we must affirm if we are to have penal substitution, the justice and mercy of God and the gospel.

I would say:

The triune God was angry at the elect in the Son, and hence both at us and at the Son-in-his-union-with-sinners (who are joined to him by faith in the Spirit) and rightly therefore God punished us in the Son and the Son in his union with us.

Obviously God the Father was always well pleased with his Son as Son and one might almost say the Son's obedience to death especially pleased the Father. It would be wrong for God to punish the innocent Son but not for God to punish the Son in his union with sinners, since they really are one.

This is at the heart of the gospel: that I and my sins are punished in the Son so that I do not have to experience the penalty for sin in myself (only in the Son). God's wrath is poured out, I am punished, my sin is paid for but I go free.

I reckon some people might have a difficulty with this which tracks back to a suspicion of rationality and logical inference / distinctions that can't always be read off the surface of a particular biblical text?

Trinity / Triads?

I guess every time one sees 3 things (a traid) its tempting for the Christian to think this is somehow related to or reflects the Trinity. Of course in a way everything is related to the Trinity and reflects the glory of the Triune God, but that’s another (related) story.

On this, see John Frame, The Doctrine of God, (P&R, 2002) Appendix A: “More Triads”, p743ff.

He gives, Frame says:

a list of triads… that have sometimes been thought to reflect or illumine the Trinity in some way…. I have tried to weed out those that seem to me to be obviously arbitary, contrived, or uninteresting…. I do not place any theological weight on these examples…. These triads are of some interest and they may in some measure reflect, illumine, or provide evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity…. I have been building up this list for many years, and I have lost track of many sources….

Frame cites locution, illocution and perlocution from Austin, How To Do Things With Words, as example 64 and meaning, author’s intention and hearer’s understanding as example 66 on p747.

Speaking of God (apologetically): yes and no

My non-Christian correspondent responded to my 10 points on the problem of evil, so here are some more thoughts arising:

I stand by what I said in point 1.

(1) We cannot hope to completely "solve" the "problem" of evil. God is infitely above and beyond us so he will always remain the great Incomprehensible Mystery to us. Yet we can describe the Mystery: we can say what is not so and mark out the area where the truth lies. If you like, we can know God like a sketch (an outline with features and shading) not a photograph (in every detail).

I didn’t mean it to be an endorsement of strong / thorough-going apophaticism.

A soft kind of apophatic theology / via negativa, which says what God is not (immortal, immutable, impassible, independent, uncreated, immense, incomprehensible, infallible, atemporal, aspacial, incorporeal etc.) is extremely helpful.

But we can also make true statements about God because he has clearly revealed himself in human words in the Bible. Our statements about God can be true and adequate but not exhaustive or entirely precise.

God’s revelation involves accommodation: he graciously condescends to describe himself to us in “creaturely” language that we creatures might understand something of the creator, rather as we might explain something to a 5 year old.

All language about God is analogical not univocal. God is a rock (he is strong, stable and reliable) but he is not a rock (he is not an inanimate lump of minerals). God is a lion, but not in the same way that Leo the Lion is a lion. God’s power is not exactly like human power (e.g. he is never tyrannical) and his power is one perspective on the simple God (considered from God's point of view his power is his love, wisdom, goodness, pity etc).

The fact that God is three persons (the Son reflects the Father but is not the Father) and has made us in his image gives a deep theological basis for analogical knowledge of God.

To predicate anything of God is less than straightforward. For example, to say “God is…” sounds like a statement about the present tense, whereas God is atemporal and eternal, so he has all his attributes in that mode, something that its not easy to capture in English.

Deuteronmoy 29:29 is a helpful verse: “The secret things belong to God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

Its worth noticing that the verse implies that God’s revelation is given that we might obey it and live in the light of it, rather than to answer all our questions, to satisfy our intellectual curiosity or for the sake of argument.

God is the creator (the potter) and we are the creatures (lumps of clay). Though he has graciously revealed himself to us, accommodated himself to our weakness and bears with us, he is not ultimately answerable to us. We need to remember our place and watch our words when it come to questioning God. God is and will be the just judge of all the earth. We are not!

The Christian approach is “faith seeking understanding”, not, “God, answer all my questions and then I’ll (condescend to) believe in you (if I reckon you’ve done a good enough job to convince me)”.

Nevertheless, the Christian should explain and defend the faith to non-Christians. The aim here is to show the coherence of the Christian faith and ways in which it can be seen to correspond to reality as we experience it, while showing the incoherence of other world views and their lack of ability to explain the world. If the non-Christian is to accept the reasonable revealed faith of the Christian, God must open his eyes and change his heart.

The Problem of Evil

My theological correspondent (a non-Christian who asked about the omnipotence of God and my doubts) said he found the problem of evil (almost?) insurmountable. Here are some thughts (numbered for convenience not logical order) which may help:

(1) We cannot hope to completely "solve" the "problem" of evil. God is infitely above and beyond us so he will always remain the great Incomprehensible Mystery to us. Yet we can describe the Mystery: we can say what is not so and mark out the area where the truth lies. If you like, we can know God like a sketch (an outline with features and shading) not a photograph (in every detail).

(2) God is all loving, all powerful, all wise and all good. He really does govern the world. God must have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.

(3) God must have made the best of all possible worlds considered as a whole, because of (2).

(4) God did not create evil. Evil is a privation (a falling away from good) not a thing that exists in itself.

(5) God is not the immediate responsible author of sin. Satan and humans are real responsible moral agents and all the blame for sin attaches to them.

(6) No one is really innocent. We all deserve hell.

(7) God uses evil for good. Without evil there could not be certain types of good: there is no making up without breaking up, no wrath or redemption without sin or loss.

(8) In the Person of Jesus Christ as a Man, God entered our world and took the full force of evil and sin. God sympathises with us in our human sin and suffering since he has been there.

(9) in (8) Jesus defeated sin and death and all their harmful consequences. He drew the sting of death. His resurrection proves his victory and guarentees it to all his people.

(10) God will judge the world with justice and every wrong will be put right.

Anything to add or change?

Do you find this intellectually and emotionally satisfying?

Attributes and Persons of God

Some interesting discussion in "Conversational Theology" over coffee with SJ & ED these last two days.

God's persons are not his attributes. Because of simplicity, this would lead to confusing the persons and hence modalism (with each of the persons just a perspective on God).

Rather, all the attributes of God are to be predicated of the persons since God is his persons. He only exists as the persons, there is no 4th thing called God that stands behind or under the persons of whom / which we may speak.

Truth and rationality, on the other hand, can be thought of as attributes of God and so God's truth is his rationality, considered in its essence, in God himself, though they should be distinguished from a human perspective.

Omnipotence of God

Someone asked me in an email, "do you belive God is omnipotent?".

My answer is not original, but I think it is clear and true and contains some distinctions most Christians might not be aware of. As I typed it into hotmail anywell, I reckoned it might as well go here too:

I certainly do believe God is omnipotent (in the traditional Jewish and Christian sense). I think the Muslim doctrine of a different God with a different sort of omnipotence might be rather different). The God of the Bible, the Father of Jesus Christ is all powerful or supremely powerful. He can do whatever he wants and nothing can stop him. But he cannot lie or sin. He can do whatever is most wise and good etc. In other words, God is not pure brute power (cf. voluntism / despotism), his power is governed by his will and wisdom (cf. intellectualism / monarchy). Also, he cannot do things that involve logical contradictions, such as make a stone so heavy he couldn’t lift it or things that are just matters of verbal contradiction (contradictions in terms) eg make a square circle.

Hope that helps.