God didn't need to make the world. He created the universe because he wanted to.
Perhaps it is not surprising that God did decide to create the universe. God has revealed to us that love is a fundamental description of who he is. And if God is love, it is perhaps not surprising that he would create more things to love. [1]
But, admittedly, it is highly doubtful that we could comprehend God's literal motivations for creation. We inevitably "anthropomorphize" when we think of God. We create him in our image. We ascribe feelings and motivations to which we can relate.
Of course God has, in effect, encouraged us to do so. After all, that is the way he has revealed himself to us in the Bible. To varying degrees, the Bible is full of anthropomorphisms. For example, an all-knowing God cannot literally regret that he made humanity, nor will he be deeply troubled literally (Gen. 6:6). He knew humanity was going to do such things, and he knew how he was going to respond. He knew the world would become vastly wicked and that he would destroy them with a Flood.
Such statements were God meeting Israel where they were, God revealing himself in terms to which we can relate as humans. Such language is "incarnated" revelation. It was God taking on human flesh in terms of how Israel and the original audiences of the Bible understood things. Such biblical language shows us what God is like by analogy to our human experiences, but it is not precise or exactly literal language.
So what pictures does Scripture give us of God's motivations for creation? Revelation 4:11 simply mentions that everything was created because of God's will. In other words, God created the universe because he wanted to. The context of this verse is the final restoration of the universe to its ideal state, with all creation worshiping its Creator.
In Acts 17:25, Paul makes it clear to his pagan Greek audience that God does not need to be served with human hands, like the gods of Athens that Acts was critiquing. Rather, God himself is the source of all life. God himself made the world and everything in it. He does not live in temples made by human hands.
As the sermon we call Hebrews makes clear, the temple of the Old Testament was only meant to point to God in a shadowy way. It foreshadowed the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and, like all revelation, gave a picture of God that Israel could understand in terms similar to the way all the people of that day worshiped their gods. But God does not literally dwell in houses made by human hands (cf. Acts 7:48-50.
Even Solomon, when he dedicates the temple in 1 Kings 8:27, recognizes that "The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you." Solomon himself, in the paradigm of his day, probably pictured the heavens as layers of sky as you move upward until you reached the highest heaven where Yahweh dwelt. But we can translate his picture and see that this universe cannot possibly contain God. Indeed, as Christians we believe that God created the universe out of nothing and thus that God in his essence is distinct from this universe.
Before God created this universe, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit alone existed and were completely self-sufficient. Christian tradition calls this characteristic of God his "aseity," the fact that he does not need the universe. We should not take that to mean he is aloof or disinterested. It is to say that while we could not exist without him, he does and could exist without us.
And he would not be God if it were not the case. The gods of the Greeks, Babylonians, and all the other ancients were not nearly so powerful as the God we serve. Indeed, they were really only larger than life versions of the men and women who imagined them. They threw temper tantrums, had affairs on their spouses, and could be defeated in battle. They were really just projections of really powerful men and women who could not die.
None of these descriptions apply to the one true God. Even if the Bible might use anthropomorphisms like God getting angry or changing his mind, these are just pictures to help us understand. They are baby talk meant to help us catch a glimpse of a God whose ways are "past finding out" (Rom. 11:33, KJV). We can catch a glimpse of what it might mean for God to have all power, but only a glimpse. We can see by analogy to things we know just a small taste of what it must be like for him to know all things.
But the literal essence of God, what he is apart from this creation, is beyond anything we could imagine (Eph. 3:20). We know him primarily in relation to the creation of which we are a part. To think we have a grasp on him literally--as he actually is without figure or metaphor--runs the risk of idolatry, of mistaking an image for the Creator himself.
While Christians disagree on many of the nuances of God and theology, faith in the self-sufficiency of God has been nearly universal throughout Christian history. There might be some today, particularly those who identify as process theologians, who might question the self-sufficiency of God. Process theology tends not to see God as distinct from the world but developing and becoming with the world. But this approach to God deconstructs the very notion of God into something else.
To say that God is God is to say that he does not need anything outside himself. God didn't need to create the world because he was lonely or because there was something imperfect about him without us. God created the world because he wanted to.
Next Sunday: G2. Is God a guy?
[1] Christianity holds that the one God mysteriously exists as three persons--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus, Christianity would traditionally believe that the love within this "Trinity" was a sufficient expression of love for God. He did not have to create more because he is love. The love of the Trinity was sufficient.
Showing posts with label aseity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aseity. Show all posts
Sunday, March 09, 2014
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Grudem 11b: Incommunicable Attributes 2
... continued from Sunday
__________
B. The Incommunicable Attributes
1. Independence
Summary
Grudem defines God's "independence" as follows: "God does not need us or the rest of creation for anything, yet we and the rest of creation can glorify him and bring him joy" (160-61). This is Grudem's sense of the classic doctrine of God's "aseity" or self-existence. God does not and could not need the creation for anything (162). With regard to us, he is a necessary being (we could not exist without him existing) but with regard to him we are completely unnecessary (he can and does exist whether we exist or not).
On the other hand, it would be wrong to think that our existence is therefore meaningless. On the contrary, "we are in fact very meaningful because God has created us and he has determined that we would be meaningful to him. That is the final definition of genuine significance" (162). God's existence is qualitatively different from ours but our contingent existence is immensely significant because it is significant to God.
Evaluation
Grudem is completely on target with his sense of God's self-existence. God does not need us to exist nor does our existence complete God in any way. This is the classic view. Grudem is also correct in believing that our significance is derivative from God. Humanity is immensely significant because God considers humanity--and the creation as a whole--to be significant.
The main critique again is Grudem's use of Scripture to "proof text" his claims. God's self-existence is more a topic that arose in later Christian theology than within the pages of the Bible itself. On the one hand, Acts 17:25 does point solidly in this direction. God does not need human service. Even though the Bible doesn't say much about God's self-sufficiency, surely the biblical authors would have agreed.
On the other hand, attempts to use Exodus 3:14 to do hard core theological or philosophical service are generally anachronistic. This is the passage where YHWH reveals his name to Moses. To make significant metaphysical claims out of it is almost always to import later philosophical categories, often categories that did not exist until centuries after Christ.
"Couldn't God have been thinking such things when Exodus was written?", one might ask. Certainly! But how would we know what God was thinking at the time of Exodus, if that's not what Exodus itself originally meant? We would implicitly be claiming that God revealed this truth at some later point in church history. I personally am fine with thinking, but we should be clear in such cases that we are claiming God continued to reveal key understandings even after the New Testament was written. By contrast, those who say such things are often trying to use a meaning from outside the Bible to argue for a meaning inside the Bible. You can't have your cake and eat it to.
2. Unchangeableness
Summary
Grudem defines God's unchangeableness, also known as immutability, as follows: "God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations" (163). By unchanging "perfections," Grudem means God's attributes do not change (164). By unchanging "purposes," Grudem means that "once God has determined that he will assuredly bring something about, his purpose is unchanging and will be achieved." By unchanging promises, he means that God will be faithful to his promises once he has promised something.
Grudem addresses the impression we get from various biblical texts that God changes his mind. Moses intervenes and God decides not to destroy Israel. Hezekiah prays and God allows him to live for fifteen more years. Jonah preaches, Nineveh repents, God changes his mind and spares it. Grudem explains that "God responds differently to different situations" (165). Statements about what God plans to do in such cases are statements of his present intention given a present situation. When the situation changes, God's present intention changes. Such statements are thus not part of God's unchanging purposes or promises.
Another topic in this section is the question of God's "impassibility." Does God experience emotions or "passions." Grudem differs from the Westminster Confession and holds that "the idea that God has no passions or emotions at all clearly conflicts with much of the rest of Scripture" (166).
In this section he also dismisses process theology, a form of theology that believes process and change are essential aspects of true existence, and thus that God must change if he exists. The evangelical view in God's unchangeability, Grudem responds, does not imply that God does not act in the world. According to the Bible, Grudem says, God is both infinite and personal, something true only of biblical religion, he says.
Grudem ends his section on God's unchangeability with what is at stake. If God could change, then he could change for the worse--he could become evil. If God could change for the better, that would mean he isn't already the best. If God could change his purposes or promises, then how could we trust him? Some of the things most important to us about God would be in jeopardy. Rather, God is "infinitely worthy of trust" (168).
Evaluation
Grudem's treatment of God's immutability is orthodox and would be agreeable to most Christians. His use of Scripture, as always, is dubious. For example, the verses he quotes in relation to God's unchanging character need to be read in terms of what specific characteristic of God each passage is talking about. When God says in Malachi 3:5 that he does not change, he is talking about changing his opposition to adultery, to those who pay unjust wages, to those who oppress immigrants, and so forth. It is not talking about the theological doctrine of immutability.
When Hebrews 1:12 says that Jesus will not change, it is primarily talking about the fact that he will continue to live forever and probably that he will continue as high priest forever (cf. 7:24). The psalm Hebrews is quoting had a slightly different referent in its context even still. The parallelism of Psalm 102:26-27 indicates that the psalmist was speaking of God (the Father rather than Jesus') continued existence for ever. In short, Grudem doesn't know how to read biblical texts for their intended meanings.
I believe Grudem is also inconsistent in what he is willing to consider metaphorical and what he takes literally. So he insists we must take language of God's emotions literally. Perhaps he would say that he takes language of God changing his mind literally too, but I don't think he does because he is interpreting "change of mind" to mean "respond in a predictable way to a new circumstance." Surely this is not the normal sense of "changing one's mind."
A more consistent view, in my opinion, is to say that language of God changing his mind is anthropopathic language. It is human-speak that helps us understand God but that should not be taken literally. If God knows all things, then he cannot literally change his mind (or in my opinion, literally have emotions). These become less than literal pictures of God that enable us to relate to him. They are true analogies of a reality we could not possibly understand on a literal level.
So I believe Grudem is mostly right. God walks with us through time in the way he supposes. Yes, God's responses are predictable given God's unchanging character. Unlike Grudem, I would say God's emotions fall into this same category of anthropopathic descriptions of God's predictable responses.
Where Grudem is wrong is to suppose that the biblical texts already have such a philosophically worked out theology. Following Grudem's hermeneutic, he should be an open theist. Open theists are individuals who believe that God has suspended his foreknowledge so that he can truly change his mind, experience emotions, etc. They take the Old Testament text in particular more literally than Grudem does. I believe Grudem rightly appropriates the Old Testament through later Christian theological eyes. I believe he wrongly thinks he is taking the Old Testament literally.
We can raise some questions about Grudem's sense of God's unchanging purposes. Where do we learn these? Grudem would no doubt say that we learn them in the Bible. The problem is of course that he is being selective in what purposes are unchanging and which or not. Reading Leviticus on its own terms, for example, we would conclude that animal sacrifice is part of God's unchanging purpose. It is only when we read Leviticus in the light of Hebrews that we come to a different conclusion. So Grudem is not wrong to say that God's purposes are unchanging. He is only unreflective in how he has come to arrive at a knowledge of which of God's purposes are the unchanging ones.
A final word is in order about process theology, which is different from the open theism mentioned in the previous paragraph. One has to wonder what reason anyone has for continuing to believe in God at all if one becomes a process theologian. It does not seem a position that an atheist or objective seeker would adopt. Rather, process theology seems to be an attempt to hold on to some vestige of a Christian faith one has more or less lost or abandoned.
__________
B. The Incommunicable Attributes
1. Independence
Summary
Grudem defines God's "independence" as follows: "God does not need us or the rest of creation for anything, yet we and the rest of creation can glorify him and bring him joy" (160-61). This is Grudem's sense of the classic doctrine of God's "aseity" or self-existence. God does not and could not need the creation for anything (162). With regard to us, he is a necessary being (we could not exist without him existing) but with regard to him we are completely unnecessary (he can and does exist whether we exist or not).
On the other hand, it would be wrong to think that our existence is therefore meaningless. On the contrary, "we are in fact very meaningful because God has created us and he has determined that we would be meaningful to him. That is the final definition of genuine significance" (162). God's existence is qualitatively different from ours but our contingent existence is immensely significant because it is significant to God.
Evaluation
Grudem is completely on target with his sense of God's self-existence. God does not need us to exist nor does our existence complete God in any way. This is the classic view. Grudem is also correct in believing that our significance is derivative from God. Humanity is immensely significant because God considers humanity--and the creation as a whole--to be significant.
The main critique again is Grudem's use of Scripture to "proof text" his claims. God's self-existence is more a topic that arose in later Christian theology than within the pages of the Bible itself. On the one hand, Acts 17:25 does point solidly in this direction. God does not need human service. Even though the Bible doesn't say much about God's self-sufficiency, surely the biblical authors would have agreed.
On the other hand, attempts to use Exodus 3:14 to do hard core theological or philosophical service are generally anachronistic. This is the passage where YHWH reveals his name to Moses. To make significant metaphysical claims out of it is almost always to import later philosophical categories, often categories that did not exist until centuries after Christ.
"Couldn't God have been thinking such things when Exodus was written?", one might ask. Certainly! But how would we know what God was thinking at the time of Exodus, if that's not what Exodus itself originally meant? We would implicitly be claiming that God revealed this truth at some later point in church history. I personally am fine with thinking, but we should be clear in such cases that we are claiming God continued to reveal key understandings even after the New Testament was written. By contrast, those who say such things are often trying to use a meaning from outside the Bible to argue for a meaning inside the Bible. You can't have your cake and eat it to.
2. Unchangeableness
Summary
Grudem defines God's unchangeableness, also known as immutability, as follows: "God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations" (163). By unchanging "perfections," Grudem means God's attributes do not change (164). By unchanging "purposes," Grudem means that "once God has determined that he will assuredly bring something about, his purpose is unchanging and will be achieved." By unchanging promises, he means that God will be faithful to his promises once he has promised something.
Grudem addresses the impression we get from various biblical texts that God changes his mind. Moses intervenes and God decides not to destroy Israel. Hezekiah prays and God allows him to live for fifteen more years. Jonah preaches, Nineveh repents, God changes his mind and spares it. Grudem explains that "God responds differently to different situations" (165). Statements about what God plans to do in such cases are statements of his present intention given a present situation. When the situation changes, God's present intention changes. Such statements are thus not part of God's unchanging purposes or promises.
Another topic in this section is the question of God's "impassibility." Does God experience emotions or "passions." Grudem differs from the Westminster Confession and holds that "the idea that God has no passions or emotions at all clearly conflicts with much of the rest of Scripture" (166).
In this section he also dismisses process theology, a form of theology that believes process and change are essential aspects of true existence, and thus that God must change if he exists. The evangelical view in God's unchangeability, Grudem responds, does not imply that God does not act in the world. According to the Bible, Grudem says, God is both infinite and personal, something true only of biblical religion, he says.
Grudem ends his section on God's unchangeability with what is at stake. If God could change, then he could change for the worse--he could become evil. If God could change for the better, that would mean he isn't already the best. If God could change his purposes or promises, then how could we trust him? Some of the things most important to us about God would be in jeopardy. Rather, God is "infinitely worthy of trust" (168).
Evaluation
Grudem's treatment of God's immutability is orthodox and would be agreeable to most Christians. His use of Scripture, as always, is dubious. For example, the verses he quotes in relation to God's unchanging character need to be read in terms of what specific characteristic of God each passage is talking about. When God says in Malachi 3:5 that he does not change, he is talking about changing his opposition to adultery, to those who pay unjust wages, to those who oppress immigrants, and so forth. It is not talking about the theological doctrine of immutability.
When Hebrews 1:12 says that Jesus will not change, it is primarily talking about the fact that he will continue to live forever and probably that he will continue as high priest forever (cf. 7:24). The psalm Hebrews is quoting had a slightly different referent in its context even still. The parallelism of Psalm 102:26-27 indicates that the psalmist was speaking of God (the Father rather than Jesus') continued existence for ever. In short, Grudem doesn't know how to read biblical texts for their intended meanings.
I believe Grudem is also inconsistent in what he is willing to consider metaphorical and what he takes literally. So he insists we must take language of God's emotions literally. Perhaps he would say that he takes language of God changing his mind literally too, but I don't think he does because he is interpreting "change of mind" to mean "respond in a predictable way to a new circumstance." Surely this is not the normal sense of "changing one's mind."
A more consistent view, in my opinion, is to say that language of God changing his mind is anthropopathic language. It is human-speak that helps us understand God but that should not be taken literally. If God knows all things, then he cannot literally change his mind (or in my opinion, literally have emotions). These become less than literal pictures of God that enable us to relate to him. They are true analogies of a reality we could not possibly understand on a literal level.
So I believe Grudem is mostly right. God walks with us through time in the way he supposes. Yes, God's responses are predictable given God's unchanging character. Unlike Grudem, I would say God's emotions fall into this same category of anthropopathic descriptions of God's predictable responses.
Where Grudem is wrong is to suppose that the biblical texts already have such a philosophically worked out theology. Following Grudem's hermeneutic, he should be an open theist. Open theists are individuals who believe that God has suspended his foreknowledge so that he can truly change his mind, experience emotions, etc. They take the Old Testament text in particular more literally than Grudem does. I believe Grudem rightly appropriates the Old Testament through later Christian theological eyes. I believe he wrongly thinks he is taking the Old Testament literally.
We can raise some questions about Grudem's sense of God's unchanging purposes. Where do we learn these? Grudem would no doubt say that we learn them in the Bible. The problem is of course that he is being selective in what purposes are unchanging and which or not. Reading Leviticus on its own terms, for example, we would conclude that animal sacrifice is part of God's unchanging purpose. It is only when we read Leviticus in the light of Hebrews that we come to a different conclusion. So Grudem is not wrong to say that God's purposes are unchanging. He is only unreflective in how he has come to arrive at a knowledge of which of God's purposes are the unchanging ones.
A final word is in order about process theology, which is different from the open theism mentioned in the previous paragraph. One has to wonder what reason anyone has for continuing to believe in God at all if one becomes a process theologian. It does not seem a position that an atheist or objective seeker would adopt. Rather, process theology seems to be an attempt to hold on to some vestige of a Christian faith one has more or less lost or abandoned.
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