Understanding the Classical Doctrine of God

Theology is really just speech about God, you know, that's the basic meaning of the idea, and many verses of scripture come to mind when we think about the importance of that for all of us as Christians. Think for example of the famous words in Jeremiah 9 that the wise man shouldn't boast in his wisdom or the rich man in his riches or the strong man in his strength but let him who boasts boast of this that he knows me that I am the Lord. [00:02:44]

I've often thought that one of the reasons for getting God right so to speak for working hard to grow in the knowledge of God and engaging with theology is in one respect among others as an antidote to idolatry, to guard our hearts and be sure that when we do come to him in prayer and supplication and when we offer him praise and thanksgiving and we name him as our God that it is in fact God that we are naming as God and not a creature that we've mistaken for him. [00:05:14]

What we sometimes call classical theism is really just a nickname, if you will, for a set of doctrines that you find sort of universally held down the Centuries by Christian theologians from North Africa to Asia Minor to southern Europe and to the ends of the Earth really eventually even up to Scotland, you know, and the United States these doctrines have been held and taught and cherished. [00:09:12]

Classical theism really emphasizes attributes of God that accentuate his perfect self-sufficiency as the one who is adequate for his own being but also adequate for the being of all things that depend upon him so doctrines like Divine assadi Divine Simplicity as a kind of negative corollary of that Doctrine impassibility sometimes is mentioned in that list Divine immutability and also God's Timeless eternity. [00:11:22]

The more man-like we think of God the less likely we are to worship Him, so that rather than being a negative concept the classical Orthodox view of God has been all through the church's life at the epicenter of the church's worship, knowing god trusting God having a real heart Adoration of God the greater he is, the more we realize that though he has made us as his image that's in a very miniature sense he is unlike us. [00:13:51]

The classical doctrine of God has never been expounded in such a way that God is removed that he is a prisoner of his Transcendence or a prisoner of his immutability. He is The God Who in his Transcendence deals with the imminent who in his immutability deals with our mutability and even though the praise of the church I think has recognized this as well as the theologians have by the way in which so many of the great hymns of the church. [00:20:03]

When we say God is simple we obviously don't mean easy to understand or grasp in the sense that he's Transcendent and Beyond us and the finite cannot contain the infinite and all the different ways in which we articulate God's beyondness to call him simple does not mean that he's simplistic in our sort of modern way of using that or that he's a simple ton not lacking in knowledge. [00:21:36]

The Reason God won't go to pieces on you is because there are no pieces of God into which he might go and I think that's something that should encourage us that that really is an anchor for all of our confidence our confidence in his word our confidence in his being upon which he Stakes his word really is a confidence that God is irreducible in his absoluteness and being. [00:26:55]

The attributes of God are like this the goodness and the wisdom and the power and the love and Justice as they are in God are just himself I think as we think about this analogy of light passing through a prism and approaching God in that refracted spectral Glory there's something about this that even corresponds to the way that scripture speaks about and when job says in job 26 when we perceive the power of God. [00:44:36]

When we say that God is passionless far from saying that he doesn't care we're really saying he's passionless because he doesn't need to be provoked to care more than he does. I think that's an important point with this fullness of being aspect as opposed to stoic Stillness I think that's a caricature of the classical View. [01:00:16]

I believe there is a stronger argument for the classical doctrine of God in this area as being grounded very clearly in the statements of scripture than some of the other classical language that is used that is almost universally accepted, so when we talk about the immutability of God when we talk about God as Eternal when we talk about the impassibility of God then it's possible to direct people fairly simply back to passages in scripture. [01:01:09]

If you want to speak about God rightly no scripture well and be full of it in your in your mind memorize it spend time with it grow to know the god of Holy Scripture if you want to focus on something in particular I would say Focus particularly on how scripture distinguishes God from creatures what is it what is the criteria that scripture furnishes to to Mark out God in distinction from all so-called Gods from all imposters. [01:18:07]