The Dunham Family Vision and Direction

To glorify God in the expression of an Ephesians 5 marriage, individual holiness, redemptive parenting (including the reflection of the unity of all races in Christ by means of inter-racial adoption), in happy-hearted obedient children, and in faithful ministry to the local church.

By means of:
1) Humble, sacrificial male headship in the home.
2) Faithful and helpful female submission.
3) Redemptive discipline of children (including firm corrective discipline, humbling praise, and continuous encouragement when each is needed).
4) Directing the family’s focus continually to the cross through a careful guarding of the number of hours and the content of television watched, internet web-pages viewed, and the type of books read, through daily/weekly family worship, and through mandatory service as occasions rise.
5) Weekly date night between husband and wife, and monthly date night between father/mother and child/children.
6) Serving in the pastorate or mission field as God call us.
7) A resistance to affluence, including a celebration of Christmas that is Christ centered instead of present-centered.
8) Educating our children on the need for missionaries, and encouraging such a goal for each of them.
9) A weekly, monthly, and annual spiritual check-up.
10) A confession of faults to one another, and prayer for one another.
11) A proper management of money, and a consistent and sacrificial giving to the Lord of our finances.
12) The repeated commendation of sexual purity outside of marriage, and fidelity within.
13) Glorifying God in our body, which means a wariness towards self-indulgence and apathy in both eating and exercise.
14) Persistent Parental involvement in the education of our children, either through home schooling or simply a knowledge of what is being taught at the public school.

15) Personal piety, and daily private prayer and Bible study.

A Trinitarian Theology

“Lose weight, feel great,” says the slogan for one diet regimen. Nothing makes one feel better, so we are told, than losing those extra un-wanted pounds that bog us down. This “heaviness,” we are told, can be lost to welcome in a life of more comfort and satisfaction. But the physical body is not the only place that our modern culture longs to lose some weight. In theology too there is a desire to lose some un-wanted theological pounds, specifically in relation to the doctrine of God.

The ever-increasing religious pluralism in our culture, and inclusivism in the church, indicate that a more generic god is needed. Churches across America are looking for a god with no sovereignty, no moral law, and no confrontational attributes. This cultural trend has been well documented and discussed by David Wells in his book God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams[1]. So Wells comments, “…evangelicals rarely have a functioning view of the transcendence of God”[2]. We find this god, however, not only theologically thin in His holiness, but also in His inner life. The culture has not only abandoned the psychologically hard doctrines of justice and sovereignty but they, along with much of the church, have equally abandoned the intellectually hard doctrine of the trinity. It is the latter of these two losses that concerns me in this paper, for the doctrine of the trinity bears great significance for understanding the God of the Bible. To see the God of the Bible correctly and to understand His uniqueness, His aseity, and His love Christians must see Him as the Triune God.

The God of the Bible is not the god of the Jew, or of the Muslim, and certainly not the same god as that of cultural Christianity. The God of the Bible is distinct in that He is triune: One God, three persons. This is certainly not easy to think about and impossible to uncover completely, yet without wandering too far into speculation we may adequately understand the trinity and then, in turn, grasp the significance of this doctrine. In order to explain this doctrine, however, we will have to turn to the very Word of God.

For any of us, understanding the trinity is impossible without God’s self-revelation. One indicator that the doctrine of the trinity is the truth given to man by God is that it is too complex a doctrine for any man to have conceived of in his own intimations. For us to have such a doctrine it must come from God’s revelation of Himself to man. John Calvin put it very poetically when he wrote, “For, as persons who are old or whose eyes are by any means become dim, if you show them the most beautiful book, though they perceive something written but can scarcely read two words together, yet, by the assistance of spectacles, will begin to read distinctly- so the Scriptures, collecting in our minds the otherwise confused notions of deity, dispels the darkness and gives us a clear view of the true God[3].” It is only by means of Scripture that man goes from deist to Christian.

Christians are monotheists, that is they believe that there is one God. This is, undoubtedly, the clear teaching of Scripture, and is seen most clearly in the Shema of Israel (Deuteronomy 6:4). Deuteronomy 6:4 is known as Israel’s great Confession of Faith; the text reads, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” The context of the verse gives us some insight.

Deuteronomy details the renewed covenant that God was making with the new generation of Israelites before they entered the Promised Land, and as such it was a covenant that was all of God’s grace and yet contained within it stipulations for Israel. There were conditions, which they had to meet in this renewed covenant. Verse 5 sums up their responsibility: they are to love the LORD their God with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their might. This condition is based completely on verse 4, which clarifies that God is “one”. The word “one” in this verse can be interpreted in a several ways; I think it is best to see in this word both God’s singularity and His uniqueness. There is no God like Him because He is the only true God, and thus it is to Him alone that the Israelites are to be devoted.

In the gospel of Mark, Jesus echoes this very same verse. When a scribe asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’” (Mark 12:28b-30). Jesus himself teaches that there is only one God. The New Testament, in pointing to the three persons of the Godhead, does not in anyway intend to undermine the monotheism of the Old Testament. Yet within this same context we have hints of multiple persons within this one Godhead. When Jesus answers the man that the greatest commandment is to love God and love your neighbor the scribe asserts that Jesus has spoken truly. In verse 34 we read, “And when Jesus saw that he [the scribe] answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ And after that no one dared to ask Him any more questions.” In seeing that this young scribe understood what Jesus had said He tells him that he is near to the Kingdom of God, but not yet in that kingdom. Why was the man only near? The rest of the New Testament teaches us that it was because he had not at this point repented of his sin and confessed Jesus as Lord. So even in this one verse we see that God is one and yet salvation unto God is by Jesus, a distinct person of the Godhead.

There are other verses that also teach that there is only one God (Isa. 45:5-6; Deut. 32:39; Isa. 44:6-8; Rom. 3:29-30[4]). Robert Letham points out that the Shema of Israel “and the whole law of which it was apart, trenchantly repudiate the polytheism of the pagan world. In the immediate context, Canaanite religions were the challenge to Israel, but this impressive declaration includes in its scope all pagan objects of worship mentioned in the historical and prophetic literature[5].” While it is certainly true that the Old Testament, time after time, drives home the unity and uniqueness of God, there are hints that this unity is complex.
The New Testament bears the most fully developed information concerning the doctrine of the trinity, but all that is said there builds upon what was established in the Old Testament. So Herman Bavinck, in his Doctrine of God, says, “These N.T. facts do not give us something which is absolutely new. The N.T. principles involved in the doctrine of the trinity are contained in the O.T. teaching concerning creation, and in fact in the entire O.T. economy[6].” In fact the Old Testament begins asserting multiple persons within the one God from the very beginning, Genesis 1.

In Genesis chapter 1 we read of God’s creating the world, and as we come to verse 26a we read, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” Who is this “us” that God is referring to? All throughout His creating of the world God has been identified in the singular (“He”). Many have defended a number of varying interpretations to try and clarify the change in voice. Peter Lewis, quoting Gordon J. Wenham, states that this change in voice is “a divine announcement to the heavenly host, drawing the angelic host’s attention to the masterstroke of creation, man[7].” The problem with this claim, however, is that the text does not merely say God called others to watch Him work, but that He called upon them to work with Him: “Let us make…” Is it, then, to be assumed that God called upon the angels to help Him make man? To this interpretation the early church father Iraneaus points out that God needs no help, “as if He did not possess His own hands. For with Him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom and in whom, freely and spontaneously, He made all things, to whom also He speaks, saying, ‘Let us make man after our image and likeness[8].’”

Others have turned to issues of language and stated that the Hebrew word for God in this context (elohim, which is plural in verse 26) could easily be used as a form of royal address. God, like earthly kings, may be, here, referring to Himself in the plural form, which would explain the “us” and the “our”. This would be an acceptable answer if it were not for the lack of evidence of such usage within Hebrew literature. Nowhere else in Hebrew writing is a “plural of royalty” used.

The most fitting answer seems to be that God the Father, the creator, is referring to the other two persons of the trinity, the Son and the Spirit. Such an interpretation is supported by the apostle John’s words that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:1-3). Jesus is the “Word,” and this passage testifies that He was with God in the beginning, that He is the means by which the whole world was created, and that He is God. Note, also, that while this passage teaches that the Word is God it also makes a distinction between the Word and the Creator (i.e. the Son and the Father): the Word was with God. He is not only God, but He is with God. The two are one, and yet the two are distinct.

In a like manner we find the Holy Spirit is present in the work of creation as well. In Genesis 1:2b we read that God had created the earth and that the “Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Here we find the third person of the trinity. He is God and yet He is distinct from the Father, who speaks, and the Son, who is the Father’s Word. All three are present, and once we turn to the New Testament it sheds the needed light on these Old Testament shadows of the trinity.

Among other places in the Old Testament that point to the Trinitarian existence of God are the numerous Messianic texts. One such text is Psalm 110:1, which Jesus quotes in Matthew 22:42-43. In the Psalm David says, “The Lord said to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” The verse should raise eyebrows, as Jesus assumes it should in the context of Matthew 22. There we read, “Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, ‘What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?’ They said to Him, ‘The son of David.’ He said to them, ‘How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet?” If David calls him Lord, how is he his son?’ And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask Him any more questions” (Matthew 22:41-46). The verse from Psalm 110 is clearly pointing to Jesus himself, the Christ, the Messiah, who is both with God and is God. “The LORD”, that is Yahweh, “says to my Lord,” this is someone who is both God and is yet distinct from God. Jesus’ words indicate that the Pharisees missed the truth of this Psalm: that their messiah is divine. Other verses confirm a Trinitarian God; they can be found stretching across the whole canon of scripture (Psalm 33:6; Isa. 11:1-2; Isa. 42:1; Gen. 11:7; Isa. 6:8; Ezek. 34:21; Psalm 45:6-7; Isa. 63:9-11; Isa. 9:6-7; Jn. 5:21-23; Jn. 17:5; Mt. 3:16-17; 2 Cor. 13:14; and Eph. 1:1-14).

The Bible teaches that there is one God, and yet there is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit[9], the exact persons whom Jesus commands His disciples to baptize new believers in the name of (Matthew 28:19). The evidence of Scripture, then, gives us firm ground to stand upon in proclaiming the truthfulness of the doctrine of the trinity. The question now to ask, however, is “why should we care.” It is sad that many today do not. If Wells is correct that most evangelicals do not have a functioning view of God’s transcendence, then how much more true is it that they do not have a functioning view of His Trinitarian life. Many may profess agreement and adherence to the orthodox creeds of the Christian faith, they may espouse belief in the trinity, but they rarely think about it, rarely worship it, and undermine its significance. Robert Letham has described this sad truth in his work The Holy Trinity. He writes, “Prominent aspects of the church’s doctrine of the trinity have often been derided or neglected as unbiblical speculation…Today most Western Christians are practical modalists[10]. The usual way of referring to God is ‘God’ or, particularly at the popular level, ‘the Lord’. It is worth contrasting this with Gregory Nazianzen, the great Cappadocian of the fourth century, who spoke of ‘my trinity,’ saying, ‘When I say “God,” I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit[11].’” This negligence to contemplate the trinity on our part is a failure to see God for who He really is: a Triune being. And failing to understand and think through this doctrine has effects on other doctrines that the church holds very dear. There are three other doctrines that the doctrine of the Trinity has specific bearing upon. To be sure there are more than three, but I will only deal with these three: (1) God’s uniqueness, (2) God’s aseity, (3) and God’s love.

God’s nature has, in the last two centuries, slowly become more and more acclimated to the culture. Many today are opposed to Christian missions to the Jews, because after all, they assert, “they worship the same God.” This is, however, proof of nothing more than a shallow understanding of who the God of the Bible is. God’s Trinitarian nature makes Him distinct, separate from all other “gods;” it is His trinity that makes Him unique. Many other religions profess belief in a deity who is “all-powerful” or who is “personal” (though only in Christianity are both attributes combined into one being). Many other religions profess belief in “many gods” or in “a monad,” but the trinity is distinctly Christian, where God is one and yet three. Others may have presented a sort of philosophical trinity, but this proved to be nothing more than impersonal forces. The Trinitarian existence of the amazing God of the Bible is one of a kind.
In putting this doctrine on the historical shelves to be covered in the dust of time, by ignoring it, and by practically denying it the church has reformed the doctrine of God completely. He is no longer the one true God of Scripture, but the generic god of the culture. The Jew, Muslim, deist, and Christian can share and worship a divine being only if he is undefined. Such a truth should make the church think more carefully about its worship songs and its prayers; can this be sung or prayed by a deist or a Jew? If it can then it is not worshiping or praying to the God of scripture. If the Christian charismatic community focuses on the Holy Spirit to the point of ignoring the Father and the Son, than other churches focus on the Father or the Son (usually one or the other) without the acknowledgment of the Spirit. The church at large, then, has lost a view of the triune God. Thus the recovery of Biblical worship must begin with the recovery of the Biblical doctrine of God. Consciousness, within the church, about all three persons of the one Godhead reminds us of the truth that there is only one God like our God.

Part of what makes God unique is not only that He is three in one, but also that He is completely independent. This is sometimes referred to as God’s aseity, His self-reliance. He has no need of man, the earth, oxygen, or food; He is completely independent. In Psalm 50:12 God says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.” The apostle Paul affirms God’s independence when he writes, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24-25). This attribute of God, like His uniqueness, is also dependent upon His being Trinitarian in His inner life; allow me to elaborate.

I would like to be able to deal with each of these three attributes individually, but due to the fact that God’s attributes are not simply parts of a whole, but are so much a part of His very nature that they mix together, I cannot. So in dealing with God’s aseity I must also deal in part with His love, the two are that connected. The very nature of love is such that it must be communicated. Love cannot be “love” unless it is exchanged and shared. In order, then, for the God of the Bible to be a God of love, which the Bible says He is (1 John 4:8), He must communicate that love. This is where the issue of aseity becomes necessary. The need for love to be communicated requires that there exist someone or thing to receive that love, but if the only possible receivers of God’s love is creation then suddenly we find a God who is dependent upon His creation. Thus God is no longer a se. But the Trinity, as B.B. Warfield said, “brings us…the solution of the deepest and most persistent difficulties in our conception of God[12]…” The Trinity allows for God to be both genuinely loving in His very nature and yet also free from His created world.
The eternally existing triune nature of God allows for love to be exchanged between the three persons of the trinity. C.S. Lewis grasped this concept when he wrote, “All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love.’ But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, he was not love[13].” What Lewis is saying is essentially that in order for God to be love he must be love in His Ontological Trinity, which is what He is in triune nature apart from the world. In order for God to be “love” and to be self-sufficient this attribute must exist within God Himself. And since it does, the love that has flown between these three persons of the Godhead for all eternity allows for God’s creation of the world to be free, not out of necessity. The God of the Bible, unlike any other mythical or fabricated god, is both personal and independent; He is royally sovereign over the world and yet He loves the world. Without the trinity we lose these complimentary truths. Some theologians, such as Jurgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, have failed to articulate clear distinctions between the Creator and the creation and have thereby misconstrued the doctrine of the trinity. The Biblical doctrine of the Trinity, however, teaches that God both loves His creation and yet remains independent of that creation.

Many in the church today are quick to talk about the love of God and yet slow or completely resistant to talk about His transcendence. This is certainly true in non-Evangelical circles and it is even creeping into the Evangelical community with pragmatic based preaching, and most recently with Open Theism. Further investigation would need to be done on my part, but I believe, from an initial examination, that this can be traced back to a loss of the Biblical view of God, including a loss of His Trinitarian existence. When we realize that the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that God is transcendent and independent, and yet also loving and personal we will be less prone to overemphasize one attribute at the expense of the others. Those who speak much about God’s love and not about His transcendence have forgotten an important lesson of the trinity: that God is royally above us[14]. Thus by overemphasizing love and ignoring transcendence the church is only speaking half-truths about God, and a half-true God is not the true God at all.

There are other ways that the relationship between the trinity and the attribute of love are being challenged today, and have been challenged in the past. Throughout the history of the church some have rejected the usage of the word “person” to identify the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Early on St. Augustine expressed reservations over the word, and in the 20th century both Karl Barth and Karl Rahner attempted to abandon or qualify the word. Karl Rahner (1904-1984), a prominent Catholic theologian, composed an alternate definition to replace “person”. He calls the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit “…three distinct manners of subsisting[15].” The concerns of Barth, Rahner, and others should be taken seriously; there is nothing sacred about the word “person” (it’s never once found in Scripture), and it is, perhaps, not the best word for identifying God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Yet finding a fitting substitution seems to be extremely difficult, and most who have attempted to avoid the word “person” have done more damage to the doctrine of the trinity than good. Take Rahner’s definition for example. By denying himself the use of the world “person” Rahner has, in turn, made God impersonal. The attribute of love, which is so important to the church, is not only lost if we deny the trinity, but it is lost if we fail to speak of that trinity in personal language. Robert Letham appropriately asks “how three ‘distinct manners of subsisting’ can love each other[16]?” The related question of how three “distinct manners of subsisting” can love us needs to be asked as well, for the impersonal does not love.

The significance of the trinity is that it gives the creation both a God who is un-limited in His power, un-contaminated in His purity, and yet who draws near to that creation in love. It preserves His justice allowing man to trust God in His word, to believe Him to be powerful and almighty, and yet to feel and know Him intimately. The trinity allows God to be both far and near, not spatially but relationally. He is far above us in His transcendence, holiness, and otherliness; He is in no way dependent upon us for anything. But He is also near to us in love and intimacy, giving to man all things from His gracious hands. The Trinity gives to man, what John Frame has identified as, the Covenant Lord. He joins Himself into a personal covenant with man, and yet He remains the sovereign Lord over all. Frame elaborates on the importance of the trinity for God’s love:

“We might imagine that God’s love…is defined as a relationship between Himself and the world. But then a divine attribute would be dependent upon the world. God would have needed the world in order to have an adequate object for His love. But Trinitarianism teaches us that God’s love is defined not by the world, but by the eternal love between the Father and the Son. God would have been a loving God even if He had chosen not to create the world. So God is sovereign in defining His own nature. And He is sovereign, not only in defining His love, but in exercising it. He loves the world, not because He must, but because He chooses freely to do so[17].”

In the fourth century the Orthodox Christians fought hard for the doctrine of the Trinity, they knew what was at stake in its being challenged. At that time in history a denial of the trinity from a group known as the Arians was an attack on the divinity of Jesus. In our own day and age, however, the denial or neglect of the trinity does not tend so much towards a denial of the divinity of Jesus (though there certainly are some). In evangelical circles, however, the neglect of the trinity often means imbalanced presentations of God’s attributes, or imbalanced presentations of His Covenant Lordship (leaving off either the Covenant part or the Lord part). It means making the persons of the trinity either impersonal forces or making them nothing more than “good buddies”. The true Biblically saturated concepts of the divine Godhead hold before the eyes of man a God who is unique, who is a se, and who loves. It is this God, and no other, who is worthy of worship. Our prayers, hymns, and praises should reflect who He truly is in character and nature. This means praying in the name of Son, calling upon the Spirit’s aid, worshiping the Triune God, and baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John Frame sums this truth up so succinctly when he writes:

So the doctrine of the Trinity is quite integral to the doctrine of divine lordship. It reinforces God’s sovereign control, His aseity, the sovereignty of His love and knowledge, the authority of His word, the intimacy of His relationship to the creation, the richness of salvation. The doctrine of the Trinity is not an incidental addition to the doctrine of God; rather, it is the doctrine of God as a whole, in which God gives us a glimpse of His own inner life[18].

The culture’s obsession with weight loss and dieting has gone too far when it takes aim at shaving a few pounds off the doctrine of God. It is the responsibility of the church to both grasp the true significance of the doctrine of the Trinity, and to proclaim it to the world. We are to be like Athanasius, in the fourth century, who boldly and defiantly held that God is one and yet He is three. If we fail to hold on tightly to this deep and full theology of God we end up with a deity who is not merely theologically thin, but one that is really non-existent.







Bibliography:

Banvinck, Herman. The Doctrine of God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951.

Calvin, John. On the Christian Faith. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957.

Frame, John. The Doctrine of God. Philipsburg: P&R, 2002.

Letham, Robert. The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship.
Philipsburg: P&R, 2004.

Lewis, Peter. The Message of the Living God. Leicester: IVP, 2000.

Warfield, B.B. Bible Doctrines. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1932.

Wells, David. God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.



[1] David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).
[2] Ibid. 28.
[3] John Calvin, On the Christian Faith. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957). 19.
[4] Here in Romans 3 Paul asserts that the God of the Jews is also the God of the Gentiles, something he can assert because there is only one God.
[5] Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship. (Philipsburg: P&R, 2004). 25.
[6] Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951). 264.
[7] Peter Lewis, The Message of the Living God. (Leicester: IVP, 2000). 39.
[8] Quoted from Letham, 93.
[9] For a more thorough treatment of how the Bible proves that all three are God I recommend John Frame, The Doctrine of God. (Philipsburg: P&R, 2002). 644-687.
[10] A label applied to those who see the three persons of the trinity not as persons, but merely as roles that the one God plays.
[11] Letham, 5-6.
[12] B.B. Warfield, Bible Doctrines. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1932). 139.
[13] Quoted in Robert Letham, 458.
[14] The concept of God’s royal transcendence I have adopted from John Frame, The Doctrine of God. Frame argues that by accepting the doctrine of transcendence as a reference to spatiality we have lost the doctrine of immanence. “So the transcendence of God is best understood, not primarily as a spatial concept, but as a reference to God’s kingship”. 106.
[15] Quoted in Letham, 295.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Frame, 734.
[18] Ibid. 735.

The Compatibility of Love and Judgment

In the Tim Burton film Big Fish Albert Finney plays Edward Bloom, a father and husband known for telling large tales. At one point in the movie, while having dinner with his family Edward tells them that the African parrot when in its natural habitat speaks the most elaborate French you’ve ever heard. These parrots, he says, will talk about anything. They’ll talk about politics, romance, business, and economics; everything except religion. When pressed one why the parrots don’t talk about religion Bloom responds that it is not polite to talk about religion, “you never know who you’re going to offend.” It is certainly true that true religion offends. In the modern culture, Christianity in particular is often labeled as very offensive. One of the more pernicious doctrines of the faith, it is said, is the doctrine of divine judgment. The most frequent assaults against this doctrine are that it is incompatible with the doctrine of divine love, and thus one or the other of these two doctrines must be dropped. Is it true, however, that divine love and divine judgment are necessarily incompatible? I intend to show otherwise.

In order to see how these two doctrines can coalesce we must begin where God begins, that is with God-centeredness. Part of our dilemma in viewing these two doctrines as friends is that most of us start our theology by looking at man, instead of looking at God. This is what is known as doing theology from below. The Scriptures teach us, however, that all theology must begin with God. Why? Because God begins with God.

When one begins to contemplate God’s design it is often with humanity at the center of it, this notion is, however, flawed. Isaiah 43:6-7 correct us when we read God’s words there, “I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made[1].” Here we find the purpose of man most clearly stated: to glorify God.

Most often people today believe that God exists from man’s connivance rather than man for God’s glory. We believe that the chief end of God is to love man. The members of the Westminster Assembly, however, had a different view on life. They sated in the Westminster Catechism: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Modern theologian John Piper has taken those words and performed surgery on them to convey another message: The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Is that true? Is God’s chief desire to glorify Himself? Of course the only way to answer that question is from scripture. Let’s look first at Isaiah 48.

For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver, I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. (Isaiah 48:9-11)

Within these verses we see a truth that probably most of us have never heard before: that God’s primary concern is His glory. God does an action with the chief concern being for Himself and His glory. It is as Jonathan Edwards, that great puritan pastor of the 1700s, said, “God delights in Himself and makes Himself His end.” In this context the people of Israel have been in captivity in Babylon for many years, since before the fall of Jerusalem in 587. Many have died in captivity and many have been born here. Soon the great Persian King Cyrus, will release them to return home and rebuild their city, but God is concerned now with preparing them for that time. His concern is that if He does not tell them now that this is His work that He will do in sending them home, then they are liable to attribute it to the King or even to some false god. In verse 3 of Isaiah 48 God reminds the Israelites that He foreordained their captivity, “The former things I declared of old; they went out from my mouth and I announced them; then suddenly I did them and they came to pass.” But God did not only predict their captivity into Babylon, He predicted and foreordained their return from captivity as well. But why did He do that? Verses 4-5 explain.

Because I know that you are obstinate and, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass, I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, “My idol did them, my carved image and my metal image commanded them.”

These obstinate and stiff necked people, who have been so immersed in the culture of their captors, would ascribe to their graven images their return if it were not for the Lord’s promising it beforehand. God did it (that is, declared this prophecy) for the sake of His own glory, and that is what we see in the text of verse 11. “For my own sake, for my own sake I did it…” God is primarily concerned with glorifying Himself. It is for His praise (v.9) that He does not pour out His anger on the Israelites. It is not primarily because He loves them, though He does love them, it is primarily because He desires to preserve His glory. God is for Himself, and indeed He must be.

Were God to love anything more than Himself, to put something above His own glory, it would be idolatry. God’s dedication to His glory is right and just. It is proper to love something in accordance with that things worthiness, and thus God must love His glory because it is above all things the most worthy of love. Do you still contend that God must love us first and foremost? When asked what the greatest commandment was Jesus responded by saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and will all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38). For God to do any less, for God to love us more than Himself, is to commit idolatry! God, in order to maintain His justice, and because He is indeed worthy of all love, praise, and adoration, must make His first and chief goal in all things to bring glory to Himself. There is further confirmation of this found within the pages of scripture.

Ezekiel 20: 8b-9, “Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt. But I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they lived, in whose sight I made myself known to them in bringing them out of the land of Egypt.”

“Yet He saved them for His name’s sake, that He might make known His mighty power” (Psalm 106:8).

One might also look at: Exodus 14:4, 18; Psalm 23:3; 2 Kings 19:34; 2 Kings 20:6; Ezekiel 36:22-23, 32. The point is made; God’s passion for His glory and His God-centeredness is indeed Biblical.

We must now return to our initial question and ask: how does God’s God-centeredness reconcile the apparent conflict between divine love and divine justice? If it is true, as I believe it is, that God must love His own glory above all things then we must realize that He must hate the belittling of that glory. If God were to ignore sin, which is what any offense to Him is, then He would cease to be just and righteous. This loss of righteousness and justice would be detrimental to His love. For if we cannot guarantee that God is righteous and just then how can we be certain that He will always love us? How can we be certain that He will not choose to hate us, or that His forgiveness and tenderness will not simply fail? God’s justice is, in the end, the assurance that we have that His love will remain.

Perhaps this gives you little comfort. After all we are all sinners, all of us deserve wrath instead of love. God certainly does not need us. Within His own triune nature the Father God has an eternal love relationship with the other members of the Trinity (the Son, and the Spirit). His creation of us was a free act, and one that, in light of our sinful rebellion, could just as easily be done away with. And in any case, how can God be just and yet still love such unlovable people? Perhaps God’s God-centeredness makes things more depressing, and not less.

The resolution to this problem can be found only in the cross. At the cross where Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, was crucified for sinners, the Lord is found to be both just and gracious. In punishing Jesus for our sins God was able to be just, but in Jesus’ willfully dying for us God was able to be gracious. The only hope any of us has for salvation is found in the cross. It is indeed the only hope that anyone has of divine love. The cross is the place where love and wrath embrace, and to do away with one is to do away with both.

At the end of this whole discussion it is possible that some will still see God as vain and selfish. He demands our worship of Him, and He punishes those who do not. But there is good news in all of this. If man was created to know God and to worship Him, if God is truly worthy of worship and truly wonderful, then fulfilling the purpose of our lives will bring us great joy. Whenever we worship something, whenever we praise something that adoration is part of our joy. If I get new shoes I am not as happy in those shoes as I can be until I have pointed them out to others and expressed my delight in them. But shoes will not truly satisfy me. Not homes, not cars, not wives, not jobs, not health, not wealth, will satisfy the soul that was made for God. So for us to truly take joy in God we must not only worship Him (thereby completing our joy in Him) but He must be satisfying. This is where we see that God’s God-centeredness is for our joy.

If God denies His worthiness by loving anything more than Himself, even us, then He is essentially saying that He is not satisfying. If that is true then all our hopes of true joy are dashed. So for God to truly love me He must first love Himself, which He does by punishing all those who reject and hate Him. And then He must offer Himself to me, which He does by means of the cross. At the cross God Himself bears the punishment that I deserve and offers me the privilege of knowing and rejoicing in Him. Take away judgment and you take away God’s righteousness and justice; you take away the cross, and you take away the only hope for man to be truly satisfied. Divine love without divine justice, then, is really nothing more than getting a pair of new shoes. They’re nice for a while, but eventually they get old and fall apart. So while it is true that true religion does sometimes offend, without that offense there is no true joy.

[1] All Scripture references are taken from the English Standard Version. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001).

Freedom and Sovereignty in Tension

As a young high school student I often wondered how it could be that light was understood scientifically to be both particles and waves. It seemed like such a conflicting notion, yet it was overwhelmingly accepted as truth. Even back then I was beginning to understand that some things may be in tension and yet be true. Of course it is not always true that things in tension remain true, yet for light it is the case. It is also the case for the biblical/theological subject of divine sovereignty and human responsibility; while these two biblical truths seem to be in tension they are nevertheless both true.

It is difficult to think through this tension and a number of individuals have sought to resolve or lesson the tension by appealing to different explanations. There are two major systems of thought on this subject, each with its own set of definitions. After briefly explaining these two positions I hope to biblically defend where I stand on the matter. The importance of this subject demands that we think about it despite its difficulties. For if we know to what degree and in what way God is sovereign and we are free we may better know how to glorify Him and live in obedience.

The first view takes a position known as “General Sovereignty.” The General Sovereignty model sees Biblical grounds for the belief that God is sovereign. His creation out of nothing in Genesis 1, His sending Jesus into the world through virgin conception, and His working things towards His appointed end, clearly indicate God’s supreme control over the world. In the General view, however, it is in the specific details of the lives and actions of human beings where God’s sovereignty is limited. The word “General” is to be contrasted with that of “Specific” (the label taken by the opposing position). Within in this view man has the final say in all the things that he does and ultimately where he will spend his eternity. This is what is known as a libertarian view of human freedom.

Man’s free-will, it is argued by proponents of General Sovereignty, guarantees that his life and actions can, in no way, be pre-determined. Pre-determination, it is argued, dispels of true freedom. It is often over the definition of “freedom” that the majority of contention between opposing viewpoints comes. For the General view “freedom” means that man’s choices are free from any necessary causation. Man is never motivated or inclined to do something to such a degree that he could not have otherwise chosen another action. Where does this system leave a sovereign God? It leaves Him as self-limited. That is God, in choosing to create men and women with libertarian free-will, intentionally limits Himself. The more traditional orthodox view within this camp believes that God has a plan, which He sees coming to fulfillment, but the details of that plan are left up to human beings.

In orthodoxy, Arminians are those who hold to a General Sovereignty view. For the Arminian it is important to note that he in no way wants to undermine the truths of Scripture that God is sovereign. By stating that God intentionally withholds the exercising of His omnipotence and sovereign control they believe that they can preserve His supremacy. They affirm a doctrine known as “prevenient grace,” which teaches that God offers a measure of grace to humans to help them come to salvation, and to keep them from sin, but that this offer may be rejected or accepted by the free-will decision of that human. Salvation then, for the Arminian, is synergistic; meaning that man and God must work together to bring about an individual’s salvation. This theological system also takes into view God’s ability to foresee individual’s actions. So it is often asserted that God “elects,” or chooses, people for salvation based upon that individual’s foreseen faith in Christ. God’s omniscience, then, allows Him to incorporate the free decisions of humans into His general plan for the world.

Two more liberal groups also adhere to a General Sovereignty model, (1) Open Theists and (2) Process Theists. There is agreement between these two groups upon God’s inability to know for certain what the future holds. In that regard, God’s omniscience is certainly not accepted. What the Open Theists and Process Theists seem to understand, correctly I believe, is that one cannot separate “foreknow” from “foreordain”. For these theologians, God cannot know for certain that something will happen if humans always have a libertarian free-will. The Open Theist’s attempt to remain orthodox by stating that God can always take away human free-will and get His own way, but that usually He does not do so. The Process Theists contend merely that God can persuade and attempt to influence human choices but in the end He can only re-act and hope for the best. For all three groups, however, there is a general consensus that the way to resolve God’s Sovereignty and Human Freedom is to state that God has limited himself.

The Specific Sovereignty model, on the other hand, takes a much more high view of the sovereignty of God than the former. As my initial introduction to this system may, perhaps, identify, I am a proponent of Specific Sovereignty. The view as a whole holds that God is never limited by humanity, but is always acting out His sovereign will and yet this sovereignty never denies man’s responsibility and freedom. This system defines freedom, not as libertarian, but as compatibilist freedom. Compatibilist freedom may be defined as the freedom to do whatever you so desire to do. When man chooses to do something, it is argued, he is choosing based upon his desires, and his inclinations. In other words, he has sufficient reason for choosing to do that which he is doing. So in a compatibilist definition of freedom the will always chooses in accord with its strongest desire. This definition of freedom appears to be more biblical. Jesus Himself testifies, “The good person out of the good treasures of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45, ESV). If it is out of the good treasures of the heart that man produces good, and out of evil treasures produces evil then it seems to indicate that there is a sufficient motivation for performing certain actions.

In this sense man is free to choose what he wants but only what he wants. It is a limited freedom, in this view, instead of a limited sovereignty. This also seems to follow the pattern of life, for no man is indeed absolutely free. No man can choose, simply by exerting his free-will, to bear children, or to fly. I heard Don Kistler say once that you cannot go into McDonald’s and order a hot dog. Man is free to choose but his choices are limited. The major theological system that adheres to this view of freedom is labeled as either Calvinist or Reformed. For proponents of a Specific Sovereignty model, God is free to pre-determine all things, even free human choices, and in fact He does. This is the very teaching of the Holy Scriptures.

In Daniel 4:35 King Nebuchadnezzar says of God, “…He does according to His will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand or say to Him, ‘What have you done?’” God is sovereign and no one can prevent His work, even among the inhabitants of the earth (i.e. men). Likewise Genesis 50:20 teaches God’s sovereign action in the free decisions of men. Here we have both truths taught, and the lack of an explanation for this mystery suggests that it was generally accepted that God could be sovereign and yet man could still be free. In this context Joseph calms his brothers’ fears by explaining that though they sinned and sold him into slavery, God had ordained it to bring about good. So the young ruler says, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” Note that Joseph’s brothers are not absolved of their responsibility, they meant evil against Him, but nonetheless it is God who did it.

When one broaches the subject of salvation within the confines of a Specific Sovereignty model it is with great humility and gratitude. For from this view point salvation is monergistic, meaning that it is completely the doing of one (mono) work. Salvation is all of God and not of man. This too is the clear teaching of scripture. We read in Ephesians 2 that man outside of Christ is “dead” in his trespasses and sins. The word “dead” here is the same Greek word used to identify a corpse. So the point the apostle is making is that man outside of Christ is a spiritual corpse. While many Arminians would agree with this they would still contend that man can do something in the work of salvation (despite being dead). That is not the consensus of the rest of the text, however. In verse 4 Paul states, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ- by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:4-5). Note the passive sense of “made us alive”. Man is dead and it is God who makes him alive. There is no sense in which the work of salvation described here is synergistic; it is all of “grace”. Grace refers to the undeserved gift of salvation. In order for it to be truly undeserved then, man must not be able to do anything worthy of that gift. So, it is argued, grace necessarily makes salvation monergistic.

Yet it is important to note the whole of scripture never teaches that man is anything less than responsible to believe in Christ and repent of his sins. When Peter preaches to the crowd at Jerusalem, just after Pentecost, the mob cries out, “What shall we do?” And Peter responds in the power of the Holy Spirit, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). So in salvation we see again both God’s sovereign control and man’s moral responsibility.

Of course explaining this mystery is not possible for my finite and feeble mind, but the Scriptures are clear in their expression of God’s complete sovereignty. “Whatever the Lord pleases He does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Psalm 135:6). It is important to note that both systems teach that man is free and God is responsible, neither is denying such truth. It is rather in the definition of freedom and the application of God’s sovereignty that they differ. The downfall of General Sovereignty’s definition of freedom is that its very nature is incompatible with divine sovereignty. There is in this system a necessary contradiction. While of course many of my beloved Arminian brothers will appeal to mystery here, such a practice seems to skirt the real issue. I concede that mystery is indeed involved in the subject, but here we still have a contradiction. The Calvinist too must confess mystery, but he does so on no necessarily contradictory grounds. In a Specific Sovereignty model God’s supreme control and man’s genuine freedom can co-exist, because that freedom is understood by a compatibilist definition.

One may rightfully ask how it is that this world can include both God’s divine sovereignty over all things and man’s genuine freedom. The only answer that I can give, however, is that there is no necessary contradiction between the two in a compatibilist definition of freedom. Beyond that we find ourselves in the mysteries of God, things that no finite human being can know and grasp in this life. That of course is not simply a cop out, for mystery is naturally part of Biblical Christianity. It comes with the territory of the creator/creature distinction, and in fact such is the case in life. How can light be both particles and waves? I do not know, but I know that in life there is no need to discount tensions. For something can be both mysterious and yet still be true. Such is the case for light, and such is the case for the tension between divine sovereignty and human freedom.