God With Ten Words self-published

I did the deed. I took the short project and self-published it. Sent some copies to some of my kids so they know my musings on God at 55.

Paperback version

Kindle version

The description says, "It is common to speak of the attributes or characteristics of God. This book picks ten key characteristics of God and explores them both biblically and theologically. God is mystery, love, power, knowledge, presence, Immanuel, good, parent, justice, and savior."

I did, by the way, self-publish an earlier book on God and Creation: Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections when I was 48. It was the first of a three-volume series I wrote, although I haven't found the time to publish the material I have already written for volumes two and three. I should probably push those out.

Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections on God

Here are my posts on the Doctrine of God.

1. God didn't need to create. (God's self-sufficiency)
2. God isn't literally a guy.
3. God has the power to do anything. (God's omnipotence)
4. God is present in all places and all times. (God's omnipresence)
5. God knows every possible thing to know.
6. God knows every actual thing to know. (God's omniscience)
7. God can do whatever he wants. (God's sovereignty)
8. God loves everything he has created. (God is love)
9. God's justice fits within the context of his love. (God is just)
10. To say God is holy is to say God is God. (God is holy)
11. There is only one God, but God is three persons. (God is a Trinity)

God's Love and Justice 1

The next video I have planned for my theology series is "God's Love and Justice."  I wanted to process how I might approach it in that video.

First, both biblically and as a Wesleyan, love seems to be more ultimate in character for God than justice.  After all, the Bible never says, "God is justice" but it does say "God is love."  Similarly, the absolute commandment to end all commandments is not "an eye for an eye" but "Love God and love your neighbor." James 2:13 even says that mercy triumphs over judgment.

What then is justice?  Justice is a term of moral consequence.  In terms of science, certain causes bring certain effects. Barring intervention by God, you can bank on cause and effect in the material world, at least on the macro-scale.

We have a sense that moral and immoral actions should also have consequences.  It is arguably a God-given sense that those who do wrong should receive appropriate consequences and those who do good things should also be rewarded accordingly.  It seems to be part of the order of things.

The "law of retribution," the lex talonis, is a very old formulation of justice in relation to wronging others: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." This formulation is over 1000 years older than the Bible, older than Abraham. Many would argue that the initial sense of the rule was actually to limit retribution rather than to ensure it. In other words, it was to make sure you didn't exact a revenge of two eyes if the other person only took one of yours.

It seems to me that the law of retribution is a excellent sense of what justice of consequence is. A person should receive a consequence for wrongdoing that is commensurate with the wrong. Notice that here we are talking about wronging another person, not about violating some abstract rule.

A person can wrong God, of course. For example, a person can fail to give God the appropriate honor. Disobeying God wrongs him in the sense that he is the ultimate authority. Some argue that it is just for even one failure in relation to God to bring in consequence an infinite time in hell. While this line of argument makes some sense, it does not seem to be the way the Bible thinks, as we will see.

Some, although not all of the Old Testament, functions with a non-intentional sense of wrongdoing, unintentional sinning.  In that respect, a person can be liable for doing wrong even when one did not intend to do so.  Uzzah reaches out to steady the Ark of the Covenant and dies accordingly.

However, the New Testament has almost nothing to say about unintentional wrongdoing. Rather, intentionality is much more the name of the game. So it would seem that the most complete understanding of justice is not oriented around the violation of absolute rules or deviation from perfection but rather around one's intentionality in relation to action.

A good action can be a sin if it is done with a wrong motive.  Similarly, a bad action can be done without blame because your intentions were virtuous. None of this denies that there actually is a standard of good and bad action, only that God is far more interested in our motives than the actual things we do.  Unclean goes from inside out, not from outside in (Mark 7:18-23)...

Is God a slave to justice? ...

Grudem 12b: God's Mental Attributes

I continue from last week Grudem's chapter on the "communicable" attributes of God, the ones that have to do with his relationship to the creation.
______________
B. God's Mental Attributes
3. Knowledge (Omniscience)
Summary
Grudem defines God's knowledge in the following way: "God fully knows himself and all things actual and possible in one simple and eternal act" (190).  First he knows everything about himself, which is amazing because he is infinite. He secondly knows everything actual--everything that exists and happens.

Third, he knows everything possible. Some things are contingent upon other things but God knows how each contingent scenario would play out depending on what happens. Fourth, God knows all these things at all times. "God's knowledge never changes or grows" (192).

Evaluation
Grudem's presentation of God's omniscience is almost entirely valid and orthodox.  He is right to take biblical statements about God forgetting our sins as hyperbole rather than literal.  God cannot forget anything because he is all knowing.

Grudem is also quite right about God's contingent knowledge.  God knows what will happen if we choose one way, and God knows what will happen if we choose another way.  Grudem would also rightly believe that God knows which choice we will make in every circumstance.

Where he is wrong is in something he only hints at.  Grudem believes that, because of God's foreknowledge, "there must be some sense in which our choices are not absolutely free" (193). That is to say, Grudem believes that it is ultimately God who is behind the scenes orchestrating which "contingent" choices we will make. As we will say later on in his consideration of God's providence, such an approach renders incoherent any meaningful sense of God as love and leaves us without any meaningful solution to the problem of evil.

However, Grudem is quite right to reject "open theism," the idea that God has intentionally suspended his foreknowledge so that we can have free will on some level. Such an approach not only takes the Old Testament too literally; it is unnecessary. Like Grudem's sense of predestination, open theism falsely assumes that God's knowledge of the future inescapably would imply that God determines the future.

As creator of the universe out of nothing, God must know every possible aspect of the universe.  He must even know what it feels like to murder someone or to die on a cross, from the very beginning of creation. For God there is no difference between theoretical and experiential knowledge because he created every possible experience from nothing.

And since Christians believe further by faith that God knows everything actual as well as possible, depictions of him with emotions must be pictures to help us understand him.  In reality, God cannot literally have a rush of emotions--anger, sadness, etc--because that would mean that some event became more real or present to him at a point in time. By contrast, the full reality of all events is always, equally present to God at all times. Depictions of God's emotions are thus God helping us understand rather than literal.

4. Wisdom
Summary
"God's wisdom means that God always chooses the best goals and the best means to those goals" (193).  Wisdom thus, as Grudem defines it, has to do with the decisions a person makes with the knowledge he or she has.  God has shown his wisdom in the plan of redemption.  He shows his wisdom in our individual lives. God gives us wisdom too, although we will never fully share in his wisdom.

Evaluation
Grudem helpfully points out that wisdom is about knowing the right decisions to make with the knowledge you have. He is also correct that God knows what the best goals are and what the best means to those goals are. However, probably implicit in Grudem's thinking is a kind of "determinism" that would say God orchestrates everything that happens in the world.

We are in no position to say whether God created this universe as the "best possible world." I believe that God has created a world where it is better for his universe to choose him freely rather than a world where he micromanages and determines everything that happens. In that sense, God knows the best goals for us to choose and the best means to those goals for us to choose, but he does not always choose them for us. In his sovereignty, he has given freedom to nature ("natural law") and empowers humans potentially to do good ("common" and "prevenient grace").

Grudem has some very commendable application in this section: "If the Christian church is faithful to God's wise plan, it will be always in the forefront in breaking down racial and social barriers in societies around the world" (194).  He also as always has some questionable interpretations.

For example, Romans 8:28 was not originally about God working all things for good in this life.  The following verse points us the good as being conformed to the image of Christ, which has to do with being glorified either in the resurrection or in the transformation that will take place when Christ returns. The entire section has been about being freed from the corruption of our bodies.

5. Truthfulness (and Faithfulness)
Summary
"God's truthfulness means that he is the true God, and that all his knowledge and words are both true and the final standard of truth" (195).  Grudem takes the statement that God is the true God to mean that God fully conforms to his own idea of what God is. In Grudem's thinking, his words cannot conform to some standard of truthfulness outside of himself. They are truth itself.

In addition, "God's faithfulness means that God will always do what he has said and fulfill what he has promised" (196).

For us, God's knowledge is the standard of true knowledge. "God's words are both true and the final standard of truth" (196). If what we know is true, it is true because it conforms to God's knowledge. Grudem assents to the notion that "all truth is God's truth" and therefore that we should be encouraged to pursue knowledge in all areas of the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities.

Because we are God's children, we must also be truthful.  To Grudem, lying is wrong not only because of the harm that comes from it but because we are acting in a way that is contrary to God's own character.

Evaluation
There is no question that God is faithful and true and that truthfulness is a core Christian value, in keeping with the nature of God. Similarly, the idea that "all truth is God's truth" is also beyond question.  Truth from any domain of knowledge cannot ultimately contradict what is true in the spiritual domain. It is refreshing to hear Grudem say that Christians should be encouraged to pursue knowledge in all areas of study.

However, if you find some of Grudem's presentation of God's truthfulness confusing, it is probably because his ideas are actually confused. What does it mean to say that God's words are truth itself, nothing that can be judged by some standard of truth outside himself? It sounds good.  It's just not clear what it really means.

It is much more helpful to think of it in this way. When God created the universe, he created everything that is true in this universe.  He created the very standards of truth that we know and rely on in all of the creation. He created the criterion that truth corresponds to the data of the world. He created the criterion that truth coheres with truth. He created the criterion that truth "works" and helps us function and do things in the world.

As far as truth in relation to God himself, we are in no position to know what it literally might be. We have no frame of reference for God's essence outside this universe other than by his revelation of himself through the analogy of things in this universe.  To think otherwise is to confuse God with the creation, to put him inadvertently within rather than beyond the creation.

Therefore, even Scripture gives us truths about God largely if not entirely by analogy. To think otherwise is to create an idol of God in our thoughts. It is thus a little misleading to say that "all of God's words about himself and about his creation completely correspond to reality" (196). They do correspond to his divine reality, but largely by approximation and analogy.

So God is not subject to the standards of truth inside this universe because his essence is outside this universe. But within this universe, all truth conforms to the basic rules of logic and the fundamental three criteria. Most Christian thinkers have rejected the idea that God might ever choose to violate the laws of logic in this universe, although when we approach God in this way, we cannot preclude the possibility.

It is not surprising, given the extent to which Grudem believes we can know God literally, that he would very closely identify truthfulness with a very literal presentation of the truth. He is here almost certainly reflecting a certain stream of Western culture. The Bible itself does not present truthfulness in such Victorian terms, from Rahab to John 7:8.

Grudem continues to demonstrate that he is unable to read the Bible in context.  For example, what does it mean for Jeremiah 10:10 to say that YHWH is the true God?  It is not to make a statement about God telling the truth. It is to say that YHWH is the only legitimate God to worship in comparison to the other gods.  It is not even necessarily to deny that the other gods exist as spiritual forces.

Once again, Grudem comes to the words of the Bible with his definitions in hands and unsurprisingly finds the Bible to teach the theology he comes to it with.

3b God, the Almighty

My Sunday work on Biblical Theology continues.

Chapter 1
Introduction to Biblical Theology

Chapter 2: Revelation
2a From Text to Scripture
2b NT Understanding of Scripture
2c God's Speakings before Scripture
2d God's Speakings in the Old Testament
2e The New Testament Church

Chapter 3: Theology of God
3a God, the Basics

Now 3b God Almighty
_____________
... A biblical theology of God thus will organize biblical teaching both with a view to the historical and literary contexts of various Scriptures as well as to the trajectory God seems to have led his people throughout the ages. The Apostle's Creed gives us an excellent place to start as it highlights God as Father, as all powerful, and as creator.  All three are clearly characteristics of God in Scripture, and we can arguably derive almost all the other key Christian theological beliefs about God from them.

God's power is a good place to begin because arguably power and immortality were the earliest and most central features of divinity in history, including the biblical text.  We can perhaps see traces of God's power even in some of the earliest names of God in the biblical text.  The Genesis text remembers the very early title "El Elyon," which means "God Most High," from the time of Abraham and Melchizedek (Gen. 14:18).

This title for God reveals both the polytheistic background of Abraham (e.g., Josh. 24:2) and the henotheistic nature of official Israelite religion at one point, although polytheism clearly continued (e.g., 1 Kings 18:21).  Henotheism is the belief that there is only one legitimate God to worship, although other gods exist.  Thus Israel must not have any gods before YHWH their God (Exod. 20:3), but there is no denial that those other gods exist. The very imagery of Psalm 82 assumes the existence of the gods of the other nations, although God Most High (82:6) is clearly far superior to them in authority and power.

As Christians we would follow Paul's lead and think of these gods more as demonic powers (1 Cor. 10:20) than as gods per se.  By the later parts of Isaiah, the sole existence of YHWH as God even seems to be affirmed (Isa. 45:5). [1] This is a truly monotheistic position.  The rise of demonology in the centuries immediately before Christ then provided a category in which to place the spiritual powers represented by the gods of the other nations.

The original sense of the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 is thus captured well by the NRSV translation: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone."  Nevertheless, both Jews and Christians alike have come to understand the Shema in terms of the sole divinity of God.  "Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one."  As Christians we affirm both the original and the theological sense that Jews and Christians later heard in this verse.  There is only one God, even if there may be subordinate spiritual powers.

The creation narrative of Genesis 1 may also reflect a truly monotheistic perspective.  Unlike the creation stories of the Ancient Near East, creation in Genesis 1 does not involve conflict between gods in a struggle for power. Rather, Elohim (God) alone is involved and creation flows directly from his word alone. He speaks and it is done. His authority and power are unchallenged.

Christians and Jews would eventually come to believe that God created the universe out of nothing. A majority would say this belief solidified in the second century after Christ, perhaps as Jews and Christians fought off Gnosticism...

[1] However, even here we need to be aware that such language can be somewhat poetic.  For example, is Isaiah saying that YHWH is so far superior to any other deity that, for all intents and purposes, we can say he is really the only God that truly exists? Nevertheless, a case can be made that Isaiah literally means that the other gods do not really exist at all.

3a God, the Basics

I thought I might continue my Sunday work on Biblical Theology.

Chapter 1
Introduction to Biblical Theology

Chapter 2: Revelation
2a From Text to Scripture
2b NT Understanding of Scripture
2c God's Speakings before Scripture
2d God's Speakings in the Old Testament
2e The New Testament Church

Now Chapter 3: Theology of God
____________

The first line of the Apostle's Creed gives us the heart of what the earliest Christians believed about God: "I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."  We have here a statement of God's power and a reference to him as Creator. The fatherhood of God would have supported this sense of him as our point of origin and added a sense that he is an authority over us.  And while ancient fathers were not "Daddys" in the modern sense, fathers did provide for the needs of their families. They were thus loving in an ancient, rather than the contemporary, intimate sense.

In the centuries since the Apostle's Creed, Christians have refined their sense of God's characteristics or "attributes" as they are called.  The word "almighty" has become the formal sense that God is "omnipotent," that he has the power to do anything that makes sense.  He can make and lift any size of rock (and so cannot make a rock so big that he cannot lift it).

Christians came to believe that God knows everything, that he is "omniscient."  Almost all Christians would say God's omniscience certainly means that he knows everything true at this moment in time and everything that has happened and was true in the past.  Most Christians also believe God knows every possible scenario in the future, and most continue to believe that God knows what the actual scenario of the future will be, assuming there is only one.

Christians believe that God is present everywhere in space (omnipresent) and time (eternal).  The details have varied just as Christians' sense of how space and time work has changed over the years. These attributes, which tend to be of a more philosophical nature, were largely discussed and refined in the years after Scripture was formed. Thus God is self-sufficient (aseity) and some have said him to be "without parts" (simplicity).

Various passages in Scripture hint or sow seeds of such characteristics.  Certainly God's power is one of his central characteristics in Scripture.  His knowledge--or more importantly his wisdom--is a constant theme, although many parts of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, do not present him as knowing everything (e.g., Gen. 3:9). The Bible does not treat any location as beyond God's access (e.g., Ps. 139:8). And he certainly has both always existed and will always exist (e.g., Ps. 102:25-27).

But these are not the characteristics of God that Scripture most highlights. Scripture most highlights God's characteristics in relationship to his people. Passages that stretch across all the Old Testament affirm God as "gracious," "merciful," "slow to anger," and "abounding in love (Exod 34:6; Ps. 86:15; Jon. 4:2).  The Old Testament also describes God as "jealous" (Exod. 34:14), usually with overtones of his anger at those who are not exclusively faithful to him.

The New Testament primarily focuses on God as love (e.g., 1 John. 4:8).  But God's love often features against the backdrop of his justice (e.g., Rom. 3:25-26) and a coming judgment.  God's "righteousness" to some extent captures both features (e.g., Rom. 1:18), both his propensity to provide a way of salvation for those who will and yet also the fact that his "wrath" ultimately comes on unrighteousness.

The Bible does not present such characteristics of God from a philosophical perspective.  Such theological statements are generally made in informal ways in the manner of ordinary language. Sometimes we find them in poetic contexts, where one has to be particularly careful to watch for less than fully literal dynamics.

A biblical theology of God thus will organize biblical teaching both with a view to the historical and literary contexts of various Scriptures as well as to the trajectory God seems to have led his people throughout the ages...

Grudem 11d: Incommunicable Attributes 4

... now to finish Grudem's chapter on God's "incommunicable attributes."
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4. Omnipresence
Summary
Grudem defines God's omnipresence as follows: "God does not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with his whole being, yet God acts differently in different places" (173). God created space, so he cannot be limited by it.  He is present everywhere, although not necessarily present in the same way.

So he can be present to punish in one place, present to sustain in another, present to bless in another.  Grudem's sense seems to be that the times we tend to notice God is when he is active in judgment or blessing. But the rest of the time he is still there, sustaining everything. "There is no one place on earth that God has chosen as his particular dwelling place" (176). Even in heaven, God is not more present, only more manifested. When the Bible says God is present, it usually means "present to bless" (177).

Grudem believes that God does not have spatial dimensions. "We should guard against thinking that God extends infinitely far in all directions so that he himself exists in a sort of infinite, unending space" (174).  Rather God does not have size or dimensions in space.  "God relates to space in a far different way than we do or than any created thing does" (175).

Evaluation
God's omnipresence has to do with the fact that he is aware of and able to act at any point of space. Since we have a limited understanding of space, it is difficult to know exactly what the physics is.  Grudem is right that God can act to bless, sustain, or punish at any point in space (just as he can in time).  But we are not in a position to know the metaphysical details.  Grudem is surely right to say that God relates to space in a far different way than we do.

It is possible that heaven is more profound--and analogical (meaning we can only grasp its nature through analogy)--than Grudem thinks. He seems to think of heaven as a place in this universe. But could heaven in part relate to "where" God was before the creation?  If so, then it is not a place such as we can relate to but a reference to "wherever" God's "presence" most literally exists. Where created beings like angels or spirits exist "in heaven" remains a mystery, but it is not clear that it is within created space.

In the end, we are not in a position to say much about such questions. The same issue pertains to hell, which we probably should not think of as located within the spatial creation.  Biblical images of hell are thus surely very heavily analogical as well, a suggestion supported by the fact that most of the imagery of hell is drawn from ancient Jewish apocalyptic.

5. Unity
Summary
The final incommunicable attribute Grudem treats is his "unity," sometimes called his simplicity.  He defines it in the following way: "God is not divided into parts, yet we see different attributes of God emphasized at different times" (177).

What does this idea mean for Grudem?  It means that Scripture "never singles out one attribute of God as more important than the others" (178).  These attributes are characteristics of God as a unity, not characteristics of parts of God.  God is not a "collection of attributes" and his attributes do not add something to God.  Rather, "God's whole being includes all of his attributes: he is entirely loving, entirely merciful, entirely just..." (179).

The implication is that God is not loving at one point in history and then just at another.  "He is the same God always, and everything he says or does is fully consistent with all his attributes" (180).

Evaluation
The medieval doctrine that God does not have parts arose largely from the application of philosophy to theology.  It is not a clearly biblical teaching, which does not in itself negate it. Divine simplicity means that God does not have attributes but God is love, justice, etc.

Many of us will no doubt find this doctrine obscure.  Since it does not particularly come from Scripture, we may feel particularly free to question it.  Biblical statements like "God is love" were not saying anything of the sort but are metonymies, poetic sayings that equate God with something that is so closely associated with him that we can practically identify him with it.  It would be as if we were to call someone with an incredibly good sense of smell, "the nose."  "She's the nose," we might say.

The question of whether some of God's attributes take priority over others is a legitimate question.  We cannot wish it away.  Can God make an exception to his justice because of his love?  This is a legitimate question that cannot be wished away by some supposed doctrine of God's unity.

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.

Grudem 11a: Incommunicable Attributes of God 1

Grudem continues...
__________
A. Introduction
Summary
The next three chapters of Grudem's Systematic Theology treat the attributes (or characteristics) of God.  Chapter 11 deals with God's "incommunicable" attributes, while chapters 12 and 13 deal with God's "communicable" attributes.  Incommunicable attributes are aspects of God that he does not share with humanity, like the fact that he is present everywhere (omnipresent).  Communicable ones are attributes that he shares with us, like the fact that he is love--we love too.  Grudem makes the further claim that "there is no attribute of God that is completely communicable, and there is no attribute of God that is completely incommunicable" (157).

A second section to his introduction talks about the names of God in Scripture.  His basic point is that "God made the universe so that it would show forth the excellence of his character" (159).  The many images used of God in the Bible are illustrations of God taken from analogies to his character in the creation.  "All that Scripture says about God uses anthropomorphic language--that is, language that speaks of God in human terms." These are not wrong or untrue ideas about God, just somewhat figurative or less than fully literal ones. Further, each description of God's attributes in Scripture needs to be understood in the light of the rest of Scripture.

Finally, Grudem clues us into the format by which he will define the incommunicable attributes.  He will do so in two parts. The first part of his definition will define the attribute. The second part will balance out what that first part is not meaning to imply. He gives the example of God's unchangeableness.  On the one hand, "God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises," but he balances this out with the fact that "God does act, and he acts differently in response to different situations" (160).

Evaluation
Grudem's categorization and descriptions are traditional and are quite acceptable.  It is noteworthy, of course, that these categorizations are logical rather than biblical.  They are perfectly appropriate attempts to arrange biblical material according to logical groupings that do not derive from anything in the biblical texts themselves. All such categorizations are "extra-biblical," meaning that while they can be built out of biblical content and can fit with biblical material, their organizing principles are not strictly derived from the Bible. Grudem's two part approach to defining God's attributes is also perfectly acceptable.

Grudem is much to be commended for his sense that our talk of God involves a hefty dose of anthropomorphism (or perhaps more accurately, anthropopathism, describing God by way of features of human psyche--anthropomorphism technically has to do with human shape).  In theory, Grudem's understanding of God approaches an "incarnational" view, which would see revelation as God largely speaking in the categories of those to whom he reveals himself. Grudem at least accepts a measure of this view when it comes to God's revelation of himself.