We must define God positively. He is a person. Many people always wish to define God by what he is not.
You cannot define a person by what they are not. A person is a positive entity and must be defined positively.
At times statements about what a person is not can help clarify a person. But negative statements are far less useful in defining a person than positive statements.
The bible offers a great deal of positive statements about God. We always need to grasp the positive teaching on the nature of God. This gets us much closer to understanding God than negative statements of what God is not.
In fact God walked among us in the person of Jesus who took on human flesh. We can learn much about the nature of God from looking at the life of Jesus presented in the gospels.
Of course we must really read the gospels rather than what those who do not read the gospels think they say or those who pick and choose what they like from the gospels.
Jesus was a person very concerned with heaven and hell. He did repeatedly declare his divinity and call men to himself.
He was a man who turned the other cheek, but also a man who stood up and fought injustice. You see God's nature is more complex than ours. His personhood is deeper and richer than ours because he is bigger than us.
It is why so many people get God wrong. They cannot understand a righteous anger or a God who judges but does not delight in judgement. We need to learn as we see God what true personhood of the deepest kind looks like.
Showing posts with label Personhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personhood. Show all posts
Friday, May 30, 2014
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Knowledge of God
How can we know God's nature? Many people have suggested that God is unknowable.
There is a certain plausibility at first since God is not like us. The bible makes this very clear.
However the bible always asserts that God wishes to make himself known. Thus the pendulum swings to a desire for complete knowledge of God.
We cannot know God completely as he is above human capacity to understand.
A strange notion is in the world of the dichotomy between the OT God and the NT Jesus. As if the OT God did not preach forgiveness and Jesus does not preach condemnation.
Almost all theological error is a simplification. The teaching of scripture is always difficult. Jesus is tender and yet has a great severity against sin.
Often we find in God facets which seem impossible to coincide. The answer is always that our personhood is too small.
It is not that God is double minded it is that we are too small to truly experience the complexity of proper emotions.
Sometimes we get close. Maybe we feel happy for someone who beat us at one moment in a competition and disappointment the next.
Emotion has a mixture at times and the person of God has a higher mixture of emotion because his personhood is infinite and all other personhood is in fact derivative from his personhood.
There is a certain plausibility at first since God is not like us. The bible makes this very clear.
However the bible always asserts that God wishes to make himself known. Thus the pendulum swings to a desire for complete knowledge of God.
We cannot know God completely as he is above human capacity to understand.
A strange notion is in the world of the dichotomy between the OT God and the NT Jesus. As if the OT God did not preach forgiveness and Jesus does not preach condemnation.
Almost all theological error is a simplification. The teaching of scripture is always difficult. Jesus is tender and yet has a great severity against sin.
Often we find in God facets which seem impossible to coincide. The answer is always that our personhood is too small.
It is not that God is double minded it is that we are too small to truly experience the complexity of proper emotions.
Sometimes we get close. Maybe we feel happy for someone who beat us at one moment in a competition and disappointment the next.
Emotion has a mixture at times and the person of God has a higher mixture of emotion because his personhood is infinite and all other personhood is in fact derivative from his personhood.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
God and Man
The Christian God is a being who transcends man’s mind. The holiness of God means that he is set apart and not as man is.
The bible says that Gods thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways not our ways. When we meet the Christian God we meet with paradox.
The magnitude of being is difficult to understand. It is not that God does not make sense but that we are very small.
Man's first sin was comparing his understanding to that of God. Often we do not think that the Lord knows what he is doing.
It is always our first sin because we are small. We see evil in God when we should see error in ourselves.
God is complicated he greaves for sinners and hates sin and the complexity of his emotion often leads men to feel the bible makes no sense.
Is God angry or sad or wishing of love? Yes. You see we always wish to make God like us to make his personhood small as our personhood is small.
The reality is the complexity which we meet is above our mind and we can only start to grasp the complexity when we step back in faith and sigh and realize that it is we who are small and need to be taught and not God.
Then we can begin to understand and slowly be transformed to take on a small amount of the character of the divine nature.
The bible says that Gods thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways not our ways. When we meet the Christian God we meet with paradox.
The magnitude of being is difficult to understand. It is not that God does not make sense but that we are very small.
Man's first sin was comparing his understanding to that of God. Often we do not think that the Lord knows what he is doing.
It is always our first sin because we are small. We see evil in God when we should see error in ourselves.
God is complicated he greaves for sinners and hates sin and the complexity of his emotion often leads men to feel the bible makes no sense.
Is God angry or sad or wishing of love? Yes. You see we always wish to make God like us to make his personhood small as our personhood is small.
The reality is the complexity which we meet is above our mind and we can only start to grasp the complexity when we step back in faith and sigh and realize that it is we who are small and need to be taught and not God.
Then we can begin to understand and slowly be transformed to take on a small amount of the character of the divine nature.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Personhood of God
A lot of people like to think of God as some sort of impersonal force in the universe. The Christian God is very different from this, however.
He is a very personal God who interacts with his people. Some people have claimed that God cannot feel emotion since to feel emotion is to change and God cannot change.
I find such an object to be far too philosophical and not enough theological. I believe that it is true that God does not change, but to suggest that experiencing emotion is a changing of the nature of God seems to be a concept derived more from Greek philosophy then the scriptures.
Emotion is a state which one experiences and not an essential change of one's nature. It is true that people have often been changed by the emotions that that feel, but to experience an emotion does not necessarily change one's nature.
The bible through speaks of God as an emotional being. That God is an emotional being is not surprising since, we are created in God's image and our emotional beings.
Even if one cannot conceive that God has eternally experienced emotion one must now allow that when God's son Jesus (fully part of the trinity) entered into history now God has emotion as part of the Godhead. Of course Jesus never left his human nature upon his assent into heaven. He is in heaven as he left, fully God and fully man.
He is a very personal God who interacts with his people. Some people have claimed that God cannot feel emotion since to feel emotion is to change and God cannot change.
I find such an object to be far too philosophical and not enough theological. I believe that it is true that God does not change, but to suggest that experiencing emotion is a changing of the nature of God seems to be a concept derived more from Greek philosophy then the scriptures.
Emotion is a state which one experiences and not an essential change of one's nature. It is true that people have often been changed by the emotions that that feel, but to experience an emotion does not necessarily change one's nature.
The bible through speaks of God as an emotional being. That God is an emotional being is not surprising since, we are created in God's image and our emotional beings.
Even if one cannot conceive that God has eternally experienced emotion one must now allow that when God's son Jesus (fully part of the trinity) entered into history now God has emotion as part of the Godhead. Of course Jesus never left his human nature upon his assent into heaven. He is in heaven as he left, fully God and fully man.
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