No, this is not a post about the Kanye West song, although it is getting quite a lot of play in our house at the moment. This post is about the wonderful people at Think Theology who hosted a conference in the summer, entitled Knowing God: Where Evangelicals Get the Doctrine of God Wrong (And What To Do About It).
I was pleased to attend and hear the teaching of Carl Trueman on the subject. 'Gathering' via Zoom with a lot of other evangelical pastors and theolgians, it became clear that I was not the only one whose Christian background and influences have included little from the clasical theist viewpoint. We were gently shown where (as Dr Trueman sees it) we often get the doctrine of God wrong. For Christians, theology is no mere academic pursuit, but should help us to know God. As Professor Trueman opened up to us the doctrine of God we were stretched to wrap our heads around what it means to know this God: the impassible God (lacking in passions); the immutable God (with an unchangeable nature); the simple God (lacking in parts or properties); and much more besides.
How can we reconcile the language of Scripture, so often speaking of God in terms redolent of human emotion and passion, with the orthodox view of the ancient creeds and confessions: a God without emotions? Never mind the creeds; how much do we reflect on the songs we sing and the language they use about God? Coming from a charismatic evangelical background, I found it refreshing to be dipping into the church fathers and the truths of our Christin faith they strove to put into words.
To quote from the Westminster Confession of 1647:
There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty..
I consider myself amongst the extremely privileged this summer past, not only making it to France but making it home again before the quarantine rules were introduced.
My holiday followed hot on the heels of the conference and so, along with the one novel I allowed myself, I packed reading matter to further feed the appetite which Think had whetted.
I've three books to recommend to you if you want to apply yourself to find out more, and why wouldn't you?!
God Is - A Devotional Guide to the Attributes of God by Mark Jones is published by Crossway. It has twenty-six short chapters and I took one a day, reading the short explanation of an attribute of God, and what it means to us and the way we relate to and speak of God. It's brief and pithy; Jones communictates simply but with clarity and the book lends itself to daily meditation.
None Greater - The Undomesticated Attributes of God by Matthew Barrett is published by Baker. A more dense and meaty treatment of God's 'otherness' this takes the reader on a deeper dive but Barrett is at pains to open up the theological terminology for the unitiated (there's even a glossary). Fred Sanders says this in the foreword: "We grow comfortable with a certain set of reassuring, familiar, and cozy divine attributes. There are no sheer cliffs, dizzying heights, or fathomless abysses in the doctrine of God we let ourselves settle into. It's as if we have a doctrine of God that gets everything right except that it accidentally leaves out the sheer "godness" of God. But that means it gets everything wrong."
Rejoicing in Lament by J. Todd Billings (published by Brazos) is the most personal of the three and a book I can not recommend highly enough. Billings approaches the subject of the doctrine of God by the most human route possible: that of faith through suffering. As he lives with incurable cancer (multiple myeloma) and considers his future (and that of his wife and young children), Billings shows us the beauty and comfort of knowing and serving a God whose ways are not ours. Why do we suffer? Where is God? Does God suffer with us? Billings takes us with him through these questions and more. Going to the story of Job to provide wisdom on the question of suffering, he writes this: "Instead of having his theodicy question answered, Job realises what it means to be "dust and ashes"(42:6) before the almighty God. It does not mean that we avoid lament. But it does mean that our questions are humbled and reframed as we recognize the limits of human wisdom."
Comments