It is fascinating to read Grudem's footnotes, because in them you can probably see the critiques of the years since this book first came out. It is also important to realize that these critiques surely have not come from the faithless. After all, this is not the sort of book a person without Christian faith would even read. The critiques have almost certainly come from other Christians, people like me who see in Grudem's theology a well-intentioned disaster.
For example, there is a revealing section in this chapter where Grudem responds to the objection that his version of the authority of Scripture is a circular argument. A circular argument is an argument that assumes its conclusion as it tries to make its conclusion. For example, what if I were to say something like, "You can trust everything I say because I never lie."
Grudem's response: Of course it's circular, just like all appeals to an ultimate authority (78-79). This at least seems very clever on the surface. What he is saying, very badly, is that ultimate starting points are generally assumptions rather than premises that can be proven. And that is true. We use basic reason without really being able to prove it. We expect ideas to cohere with each other without being able to prove that coherence is an indicator of truth. Postmodernism has emphasized our uncertainty about such things and basically said that life "works" when we operate on these sorts of assumptions.
But then we make some observations. First, the Bible isn't really the same sort of "ultimate authority" as the ultimate assumptions he compares it to--things like reason, logical consistency, or empirical data (79). He's not comparing "like" things. In fact, Grudem's very assumptions about what it means for the Bible to be true are based on the sort of ultimate assumptions he is contrasting the Bible with! The basic reasoning and coherency he implies are not the ultimate authorities for him--he uses them in every sentence. In fact, they stand at the heart of his definition of the truthfulness of Scripture.
So what does he really mean when he says the Bible s an ultimate authority? Surely he means the set of specific truth claims he thinks he is getting from Scripture are assumptions without need for proof. But this is something different from ultimate criteria for truth, which turn out to be the same as those he is trying to defend himself against. He still assumes that if the Bible is true, the world will correspond to it. And he still claims that for the Bible to be true, its parts will cohere with one another. And he claims that the truths he finds in Scripture will work in the real world. He still operates with the same criteria of truth we learn about in philosophy: correspondence, coherence, pragmatism.
The Bible is thus not the same kind of "ultimate authority" as the tests for truth we have just mentioned. The Bible for Grudem rather provides the content of truth. But these truth claims are not "necessary truths." They are assertions that could in theory be true or false. Not so with basic reasoning. If we do not assume basic reasoning, we cannot talk meaningfully at all about anything. Communication of any kind disintegrates.
So Grudem is right to say (badly) that the ultimate foundations of truth will involve unprovable assumptions. However, the content of the Bible largely does not involve that kind of assumption. The claims Grudem thinks he gets from the Bible do not have the nature of unprovable assumptions. You know the child's game. I say something. You say "Why?" I give a more basic answer. You say, "Why?" We keep this game going until I say something like, "Just because" or "Because I said so."
When you get to a "Just because" answer, you've hit assumption (which, again, Grudem clumsily calls an ultimate "authority"). Certainly some of the assumptions of the Bible may fit into this category. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga thinks that the existence of God is such a "warranted Christian belief." But "Jesus healed a blind man on his way to Jericho" is hardly a claim of that sort. So what sounded very clever at first, a snappy come back, actually doesn't make sense in the way he has posed it.
Even more clever than Grudem's resort to "all ultimate authorities are circular" is his fail safe device. Since everyone with the Holy Spirit recognizes his understanding of the Bible, anyone who disagrees with him obviously doesn't have the Holy Spirit. It's incredibly convenient and fitting for a 5 point Calvinist to say something of this sort. No doubt if I were predestined, I would immediately recognize that he's right. So much pressure!
Of course I could use this same argument to claim that the world is run by little green men that only the enlightened see. That's how cars run, you know. There's one green man on the top of each piston and another one on the bottom. What looks like gas exploding is really these little green men farting back and forth. Don't believe me? It's because you're evil and God hasn't revealed it to you.
I'm not discounting the need for faith--not at all. There are much more intelligent versions of "truth is revealed" than the one Grudem seems to assume here. For example, Kierkegaard believed that the most important truths in life were subjective, a matter of blind faith. Karl Barth's Dogmatics and the movement for radical Christian orthodoxy see basic Christian faith as matters we should be "unapologetic" about, where "apologetics" is the attempt to prove Christian claims using "evidence that demands a verdict." Rather, they would say, they are things we believe by faith.
But, again, the Bible isn't really the same kind of literature as Barth's Dogmatics or the kinds of truths that Kierkegaard takes a leap of faith over. Barth writes in a somewhat poetic way as if to say, "The truth of God is beyond what can be captured in simple propositions. We try to point to it in human language in analogical terms." Kierkegaard's leaps of faith are not so much leaps about truth-claims but about deep existential truths.
In the end, Grudem's way of reading the Bible doesn't fit with the Bible itself. He reads certain words in the Bible in a certain way and concludes that the Bible teaches certain things about itself. But when it turns out that the way he is reading it is untrue to its own nature, the entire foundation for his theological enterprise crumbles. That is not to say that there is not truth in his thinking. Truth is bigger than the method by which we arrive at it.
But Grudem's method and his way of using the Bible disintegrate. First, as we already showed above, he uses the very tools of correspondence and coherence he wants to trump with the Bible, Second, he uses all sorts of non-biblical tools like textual criticism and of course his chapter on canon must thoroughly rely on factors outside the Bible. Third, he does not understand how genre impacts meaning--the Bible does not present itself as a set of truth claims. Fourth, he has a naive understanding of language, as if words have something like fixed meanings, which means, fifth, that he doesn't understand how context determines meaning, as I have said previously. We see this in his "proof-texting," ripping words from the Bible and reading them in a way that makes sense in his context, rather than listening to their full meaning in their original context.
2 Timothy 3:16 is an excellent illustration of 1) the fact that his ultimate assumptions come from outside the Bible and 2) that he is not self-aware in his use of them. All Scripture is God-breathed and beneficial for teaching, correction, discipline, and moral training. Because of Grudem's assumptions, he assumes such functions will come from the literal meaning of the OT text. He would not have to, by the way, he could see the Spirit-illumined meaning of the text as something different from what it seems to mean literally to him.
But ultimately, the inspired meaning that NT authors often saw was a different meaning than the original one. Paul for example finds it hard to believe that God would be concerned with oxen (1 Cor. 9:9). No, wasn't Deuteronomy 25:4 "entirely" referring to the Christian mission, and how those who work for the sake of the gospel should be materially supported by those to whom they minister. In other words, the God-breathed meaning is an allegorical one, not a literal one.
You run the risk of losing your faith if you try to maintain Grudem's hermeneutic and are exposed to any true expert on the meaning of the Bible. For most people blind faith does not work well when reality pummels you, and if faith is not at least minimally reasonable, what would that say about God's desire for us to put our faith in him? It works fine, of course, if you think God has predestined certain people to see it. Indeed, irrationality becomes a badge of honor.
So what is the authority of Scripture? It is, first of all, the authority of God. Any authority the Bible has, it has because God stands behind it as the speaker/transformer. When I read Grudem, I begin to fear that he has made the Bible into an idol, as if the Bible were now detached from God and could be worshiped as an end-in-itself. But the Bible is a means to an end, to bring us to God and Christ. The Bible does not exhaust God and God can speak to us/change us in other ways too.
The Bible is thus the mediated authority of God, and it was mediated through people who lived in other times and places in "many and various ways," but chiefly through his Son (Heb. 1:1-2). One of the greatest ironies of Grudem's approach, a fundamentalist approach to Scripture, is that it has a hidden agenda for how Scripture can speak. It does not come to the Bible with a blank sheet of paper but with its own questions for the Bible to answer, not letting the Bible say what questions it wants to answer. How you pose a question has everything to do with the answer you get.
So while Grudem quotes many verses, he has already decided what it means for the Bible to be truthful or what a "writing" is without realizing how deeply these sorts of categories lie in our cultural assumptions. For example, it is true that the word "scripture" means "writing," but Grudem just assumes that this means a writing in the ancient world had the basic functions and characteristics of writing for him today, a literate, post-printing press, educated individual.
But those who actually try to come to the ancient world would say that the ancient world was an oral culture such that even writings were read aloud and with an oral mindset. This is probably why the early copyists of both the OT and NT documents seemed free to paraphrase the wording. This is probably why the NT authors felt free to adjust the wording of OT texts. As a typical unreflective pre-modern, Grudem reads his own assumptions into the biblical text thinking and calls it the timeless meaning.
God can indeed speak directly to us through the words of Scripture, but the original revelations were written to people who have been dead for 2000 years and more. That's what the texts actually say. You and I are not the initial audience of the "thus saith LORD" of the prophets. Not only are we not the audience but the genres are not uniform. Grudem acts like the primary purpose of a psalm or a narrative is to give us truth--thus a narrative's primary purpose would be to tell us what happened. This is an impoverished approach to such genres.
So apart from when the Spirit speaks to us directly through the words of the Bible, the books themselves want to be read as indirect revelation--words we can learn about God from by the way he spoke to and through others in various ways. God can certainly transform us through Scripture directly as well, but this is less of a matter of understanding as a matter of changing who we are. The more direct the change in understanding, the less we are reading the words for what they originally meant.
Third, the authority of Scripture is an incarnated authority. This follows directly from the fact that it is a mediated authority. Once you have a deep understanding of how meaning works, you will recognize how wide the gulf is at times between us and the original audiences. Our default sense of meaning (and Grudem's) is that words point to this timeless bank of meanings that all humans share in common. Not so.
Meaning is always local. The bank from which the meaning of words is drawn on any occasion is the local bank, and universal meaning only takes place when all locations have the same meaning in their banks. The deep sense of "sacrifice" in the ancient socio-cultural environment, for example, is not in the North American dictionary. We can read about what they did when they offered sacrifices but truly understanding how sacrifices worked in the psyche of an ancient, that's going to take a lot of doing for you and me.
In good pre-modern fashion, Grudem doesn't seem to realize how variable the meaning of words can be or, rather, he is overconfident that people with the Spirit will see the same meaning. This is why I have described his understanding of the Bible as two-dimensional. It is superficial because he has no idea how differently he sees the world than the biblical writers did.
Because the authority of Scripture is mediated and incarnated, the authority of Scripture is the all-time of Scripture, and the "all time" of Scripture is the import of the whole of Scripture. A "one-time" command of Scripture can teach me something, but it is not directly demanding something of me ("go and sell everything to the poor," spoken to one person). A "that time" command of Scripture ("cover your head because of the angels") is not directly demanding something of me. The ultimately authority of Scripture over me is the authority of the timeless take-away of the Bible, which is a function of the Bible taken as a whole, its varied pieces directed to different audiences integrated into a singular theology and ethic. This takes place more on the level of principle than of individual precept.
All of that is looking under the hood. In practice, when it happens right, I love when Grudem says that, "the Holy Spirit speaks in and through the words of the Bible to our hearts and gives us an inner assurance that these are the words of our Creator speaking to us" (77). When the Bible is functioning as Scripture, we don't need to know all the "below the surface" talk above. God speaks to us. God transforms us.
So why do I find fault with Grudem? Because I do not believe he rightly hears the Spirit at many points. So if his spiritual engine isn't working right, then it makes sense to get under the hood and get clarity on where his machine isn't working right. Ultimately, the fundamentalist approach to Scripture inadvertently makes the Bible into a barrier between us and God. It results in a Bible that, rather than pointing beyond itself to the real God, creates a skewed picture of God, flattened by its false rules for what the Bible can and cannot say. It makes the Bible an end-in-itself rather than a sacrament of God's speaking and transformation.
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Monday, May 28, 2012
5 The Inerrancy of Scripture
Summary
Grudem begins by referring back to one of his arguments in chapter 4 (82, n. 13):
1. The Bible is God's words.
2. God never lies.
3. Therefore, the Bible never lies.
He extends this in chapter 6 on inerrancy. "The inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact" (91). What does he mean by this? He does not say so but he implicitly is referring to the Bible taken in its plain sense (usually its literal sense, although sometimes the plain sense can be figurative). And he means "everything it talks about," every detail (93). "The Bible itself does not make any restriction on the kinds of subjects to which it speaks truthfully" (93). He is ultimately referring to things like historical details, scientific implications, attributions of authorship, etc...
He gives three further clarifications:
1. The Bible can be inerrant and still speak in the ordinary language of everyday speech.
2. Loose or free quotations are not errors.
3. Unusual or uncommon grammatical constructions aren't errors.
He also addresses some challenges to his (Chicago Statement) understanding of inerrancy:
1. Some say the Bible is only authoritative in areas of faith and practice.
Some groups from the late 1960s started to distinguish the word "infallible" from the word "inerrancy," where infallible meant that the authority of the Bible only extended to matters of faith and practice. I suspect that he rightly describes the way the language evolved (93 n. 2). He has a long paragraph on pages 93-94 where he argues that "the New Testament writers were willing to rely on the truthfulness of any part of the historical narratives of the Old Testament."
2. Some say the term inerrancy is a poor term.
His rejoinder is that "we often use nonbiblical terms to summarize a biblical teaching" (95).
3. Some say it's misleading to speak of inerrancy in the original manuscripts since we don't have them.
But their content is 99% assured. Basically, "the current published scholarly texts of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are the same as the original manuscripts" (96).
4. Some say the biblical writers accommodated their messages in minor details to the false ideas current in their day or taught those ideas in an incidental way.
So, he says, doesn't that imply that God is a lying God? What kind of a role model does that make God, a God who makes "white lies" (97). Can't God use human language to communicate perfectly without having to affirm any false ideas.
5. Some say this overlooks the human side of Scripture, overemphasizing the divine aspect.
6. Some say there are clear errors in the Bible.
"There are many evangelical Bible scholars today who will say that they do not presently know of any problem texts for which there is no satisfactory solution" (99).
The chapter ends with some problems Grudem thinks follow from denying inerrancy:
1. It creates moral problems--should we imitate God and lie in small matters too?
2. If we deny inerrancy, can we really trust anything God says?
3. If we deny inerrancy, we make our own human minds a higher standard of truth that God's word itself.
4. If we think the Bible is wrong on some minor details, then we must also say it is wrong in some of its doctrines as well.
Evaluation
These are very unfortunate chapters to me. They're unfortunate because we could have a much more helpful discussion of how God speaks through the Bible without all the misunderstandings that are "fundamental" to Grudem and his fundamentalism. We could have talked about the spiritual and sacramental quality of Scripture, whereby God mysteriously speaks to us and changes us. We could have talked about how God met the authors and audiences where they were at.
Instead, we're forced to get under the hood to see why his engine doesn't run so well sometimes. He's not wired the thing correctly. It runs... it just doesn't run well.
Grudem's already acknowledged that his argument is circular--he assumes certain things and goes from there. He also warns us about making our own human minds a higher standard of truth than the Bible. But since his argument is circular, he starts with the assumptions of his own mind as well, as I've already said repeatedly. In fact, because he doesn't dig into the probable assumptions of the texts themselves, his assumptions are far more his than those of the texts themselves.
This is a problem with his sort of inerrantist. He thinks he has a high view of the text but isn't willing to let the texts themselves set their own agenda. So it turns out their high idea is what is important to them, not the texts themselves. In practice, his method actually rapes and violates these texts repeatedly in the name of a so called "high idea."
What if the real situation, the one that actually listens to the biblical texts--rather than shoving preconceived definitions down their throat--goes like this:
1. God spoke to the people of the Bible mostly in their own categories, in their own thought categories.
2. God's speaking was more about changing their heart than giving them perfect understanding.
3. God has given us the Bible as a place to meet him and be changed by him, and his Spirit continues to walk with us today as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
We can still affirm that the Bible is inerrant in all that God affirms through it, infallible in all that God tries to do through it, authoritative in all that God commands through it. Grudem doesn't accept the incarnation principle fully. He'll accept that a phrase like "the sun rises" is simply putting things in the perspective of the author. But he won't accept that "As David said" could be exactly the same thing. There are arbitrary boundaries to his own rules.
I'm also emphasizing in my wording that God is the authority behind the Bible. The words themselves, as all words, are capable of all sorts of meaning. The meaning that is inerrant, infallible, and authoritative is the meaning God wanted and wants them to have. But it's all about God--the text is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Grudem arguably makes the Bible into a barrier between us and God and his god is the pop-up God he splices together from his out-of-context readings of the Bible rather than the immortal, invisible, real God-only-wise that stands behind it.
I said there are arbitrary boundaries to his rules. So I'm with him that grammatical infelicities, loose quotations, and street Greek aren't errors. But why stop there. What if some creative license was acceptable in ancient biography or history writing? What if Genesis 1 is more poetic than literal? Why would those be errors if they were perfectly acceptable at the time of writing?
And why only inerrant in the original manuscripts? Because your sense of God's speaking is so limited that you have to have a strong demarcation of what is in and what is out, of which text is the right one? Funny, God doesn't seem to have been so concerned. If God is really that concerned with the precise contents why didn't he reveal the list? Why didn't God reveal a list of the authoritative OT books in the gospels or Paul? Why doesn't Revelation include a list of the NT books that are authoritative? Why did God let the church debate such things for 400 years? Why didn't he preserve the original manuscripts? Why did he let the church, on your admission, overwhelmingly use the less original text for 1500 years?
The best answer is that God isn't nearly as concerned about these sorts of things as Grudem is. That God is primarily interested in a relationship with us, not having us memorize and regurgitate head knowledge. God meets us where we are at with our understanding and moves us along in our hearts and lives.
So let's quickly go through some of Grudem's claims. First, there is a difference between what might cause me doubt and what is true. Let's say there was only one blind man that Jesus healed around Jericho, does that make it untrue that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"? Not at all. The truth in one part of Scripture is not contingent on the truthfulness of another part. Truth is truth, no matter where it comes.
I actually agree with Grudem that the distinction made in the last part of the twentieth century between inerrant and infallible was somewhat of a false distinction, but not for the same reason. Every word of the Bible was revealed in the language and categories of its audiences. That means that even in matters of faith and practice we have to do some translation.
For example, the OT does not deny the existence of other gods like Dagon and Ba'al. It is henotheist rather than technically monotheist. We call them demons in the New Testament. The understanding of God's relationship to evil develops in the pages of the Bible as well. In Samuel, God sends evil spirits and tempts people. In Chronicles, Satan tempts and in James, God certainly doesn't tempt. So even in matters of faith and practice, we need to consider God's continuing relationship with his people to have a full picture of who he is. Matters of faith and practice in the Bible are also incarnated truths.
There is also something quite Victorian about Grudem's assumptions about lying. There is lying in a military context in the Bible (Rahab). If John 7:8-10 were not telling us about Jesus, I'm quite sure Grudem would consider it wrongful lying. Grudem's preoccupations with precise history and such are part of his own sub-cultural assumptions. Think more in terms of teaching a child. It's more important to move them in the right direction than for them to understand everything.
So inerrancy is probably a poor term today, given the way it is used by fundamentalists like Grudem. But it is usable, if we use it more generally and not as Grudem himself or the Chicago Statement does. Obviously anything God taught or teaches through Scripture is without error if we understand it in context. Obviously anything God commanded or commands through Scripture is absolutely authoritative. Obviously anything God intended and intends to do (e.g., to promise) through Scripture will not fail.
As Asbury Seminary puts it, "The Bible is without error in all it affirms." Then we get to work together to figure out what that is.
A key insight in all of this is to realize that the same words can be taken by different people to teach, command, or promise different things. The God-breathed interpretation at any time is arguably a Spiritual one, and that is a key insight into understanding 2 Peter 1:20-21. Indeed, this has been a previous critique of mine in this series. Grudem assumes that the teaching, commanding, and promising of Scripture will always take place with the plain or literal sense of a text.
But this is not what the Bible itself actually does. More complicated? Yes. More accurate? Yes. Grudem's wiring can work a good deal of the time, on the simple things. But his wiring will lead us to fight against God when things get more complicated.
Grudem begins by referring back to one of his arguments in chapter 4 (82, n. 13):
1. The Bible is God's words.
2. God never lies.
3. Therefore, the Bible never lies.
He extends this in chapter 6 on inerrancy. "The inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact" (91). What does he mean by this? He does not say so but he implicitly is referring to the Bible taken in its plain sense (usually its literal sense, although sometimes the plain sense can be figurative). And he means "everything it talks about," every detail (93). "The Bible itself does not make any restriction on the kinds of subjects to which it speaks truthfully" (93). He is ultimately referring to things like historical details, scientific implications, attributions of authorship, etc...
He gives three further clarifications:
1. The Bible can be inerrant and still speak in the ordinary language of everyday speech.
2. Loose or free quotations are not errors.
3. Unusual or uncommon grammatical constructions aren't errors.
He also addresses some challenges to his (Chicago Statement) understanding of inerrancy:
1. Some say the Bible is only authoritative in areas of faith and practice.
Some groups from the late 1960s started to distinguish the word "infallible" from the word "inerrancy," where infallible meant that the authority of the Bible only extended to matters of faith and practice. I suspect that he rightly describes the way the language evolved (93 n. 2). He has a long paragraph on pages 93-94 where he argues that "the New Testament writers were willing to rely on the truthfulness of any part of the historical narratives of the Old Testament."
2. Some say the term inerrancy is a poor term.
His rejoinder is that "we often use nonbiblical terms to summarize a biblical teaching" (95).
3. Some say it's misleading to speak of inerrancy in the original manuscripts since we don't have them.
But their content is 99% assured. Basically, "the current published scholarly texts of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are the same as the original manuscripts" (96).
4. Some say the biblical writers accommodated their messages in minor details to the false ideas current in their day or taught those ideas in an incidental way.
So, he says, doesn't that imply that God is a lying God? What kind of a role model does that make God, a God who makes "white lies" (97). Can't God use human language to communicate perfectly without having to affirm any false ideas.
5. Some say this overlooks the human side of Scripture, overemphasizing the divine aspect.
6. Some say there are clear errors in the Bible.
"There are many evangelical Bible scholars today who will say that they do not presently know of any problem texts for which there is no satisfactory solution" (99).
The chapter ends with some problems Grudem thinks follow from denying inerrancy:
1. It creates moral problems--should we imitate God and lie in small matters too?
2. If we deny inerrancy, can we really trust anything God says?
3. If we deny inerrancy, we make our own human minds a higher standard of truth that God's word itself.
4. If we think the Bible is wrong on some minor details, then we must also say it is wrong in some of its doctrines as well.
Evaluation
These are very unfortunate chapters to me. They're unfortunate because we could have a much more helpful discussion of how God speaks through the Bible without all the misunderstandings that are "fundamental" to Grudem and his fundamentalism. We could have talked about the spiritual and sacramental quality of Scripture, whereby God mysteriously speaks to us and changes us. We could have talked about how God met the authors and audiences where they were at.
Instead, we're forced to get under the hood to see why his engine doesn't run so well sometimes. He's not wired the thing correctly. It runs... it just doesn't run well.
Grudem's already acknowledged that his argument is circular--he assumes certain things and goes from there. He also warns us about making our own human minds a higher standard of truth than the Bible. But since his argument is circular, he starts with the assumptions of his own mind as well, as I've already said repeatedly. In fact, because he doesn't dig into the probable assumptions of the texts themselves, his assumptions are far more his than those of the texts themselves.
This is a problem with his sort of inerrantist. He thinks he has a high view of the text but isn't willing to let the texts themselves set their own agenda. So it turns out their high idea is what is important to them, not the texts themselves. In practice, his method actually rapes and violates these texts repeatedly in the name of a so called "high idea."
What if the real situation, the one that actually listens to the biblical texts--rather than shoving preconceived definitions down their throat--goes like this:
1. God spoke to the people of the Bible mostly in their own categories, in their own thought categories.
2. God's speaking was more about changing their heart than giving them perfect understanding.
3. God has given us the Bible as a place to meet him and be changed by him, and his Spirit continues to walk with us today as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
We can still affirm that the Bible is inerrant in all that God affirms through it, infallible in all that God tries to do through it, authoritative in all that God commands through it. Grudem doesn't accept the incarnation principle fully. He'll accept that a phrase like "the sun rises" is simply putting things in the perspective of the author. But he won't accept that "As David said" could be exactly the same thing. There are arbitrary boundaries to his own rules.
I'm also emphasizing in my wording that God is the authority behind the Bible. The words themselves, as all words, are capable of all sorts of meaning. The meaning that is inerrant, infallible, and authoritative is the meaning God wanted and wants them to have. But it's all about God--the text is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Grudem arguably makes the Bible into a barrier between us and God and his god is the pop-up God he splices together from his out-of-context readings of the Bible rather than the immortal, invisible, real God-only-wise that stands behind it.
I said there are arbitrary boundaries to his rules. So I'm with him that grammatical infelicities, loose quotations, and street Greek aren't errors. But why stop there. What if some creative license was acceptable in ancient biography or history writing? What if Genesis 1 is more poetic than literal? Why would those be errors if they were perfectly acceptable at the time of writing?
And why only inerrant in the original manuscripts? Because your sense of God's speaking is so limited that you have to have a strong demarcation of what is in and what is out, of which text is the right one? Funny, God doesn't seem to have been so concerned. If God is really that concerned with the precise contents why didn't he reveal the list? Why didn't God reveal a list of the authoritative OT books in the gospels or Paul? Why doesn't Revelation include a list of the NT books that are authoritative? Why did God let the church debate such things for 400 years? Why didn't he preserve the original manuscripts? Why did he let the church, on your admission, overwhelmingly use the less original text for 1500 years?
The best answer is that God isn't nearly as concerned about these sorts of things as Grudem is. That God is primarily interested in a relationship with us, not having us memorize and regurgitate head knowledge. God meets us where we are at with our understanding and moves us along in our hearts and lives.
So let's quickly go through some of Grudem's claims. First, there is a difference between what might cause me doubt and what is true. Let's say there was only one blind man that Jesus healed around Jericho, does that make it untrue that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"? Not at all. The truth in one part of Scripture is not contingent on the truthfulness of another part. Truth is truth, no matter where it comes.
I actually agree with Grudem that the distinction made in the last part of the twentieth century between inerrant and infallible was somewhat of a false distinction, but not for the same reason. Every word of the Bible was revealed in the language and categories of its audiences. That means that even in matters of faith and practice we have to do some translation.
For example, the OT does not deny the existence of other gods like Dagon and Ba'al. It is henotheist rather than technically monotheist. We call them demons in the New Testament. The understanding of God's relationship to evil develops in the pages of the Bible as well. In Samuel, God sends evil spirits and tempts people. In Chronicles, Satan tempts and in James, God certainly doesn't tempt. So even in matters of faith and practice, we need to consider God's continuing relationship with his people to have a full picture of who he is. Matters of faith and practice in the Bible are also incarnated truths.
There is also something quite Victorian about Grudem's assumptions about lying. There is lying in a military context in the Bible (Rahab). If John 7:8-10 were not telling us about Jesus, I'm quite sure Grudem would consider it wrongful lying. Grudem's preoccupations with precise history and such are part of his own sub-cultural assumptions. Think more in terms of teaching a child. It's more important to move them in the right direction than for them to understand everything.
So inerrancy is probably a poor term today, given the way it is used by fundamentalists like Grudem. But it is usable, if we use it more generally and not as Grudem himself or the Chicago Statement does. Obviously anything God taught or teaches through Scripture is without error if we understand it in context. Obviously anything God commanded or commands through Scripture is absolutely authoritative. Obviously anything God intended and intends to do (e.g., to promise) through Scripture will not fail.
As Asbury Seminary puts it, "The Bible is without error in all it affirms." Then we get to work together to figure out what that is.
A key insight in all of this is to realize that the same words can be taken by different people to teach, command, or promise different things. The God-breathed interpretation at any time is arguably a Spiritual one, and that is a key insight into understanding 2 Peter 1:20-21. Indeed, this has been a previous critique of mine in this series. Grudem assumes that the teaching, commanding, and promising of Scripture will always take place with the plain or literal sense of a text.
But this is not what the Bible itself actually does. More complicated? Yes. More accurate? Yes. Grudem's wiring can work a good deal of the time, on the simple things. But his wiring will lead us to fight against God when things get more complicated.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
6 The Clarity of Scripture
Summary
Grudem builds to this definition of the clarity of Scripture (perspicuity is the more technical term): "The clarity of Scripture means that the Bible is written in such a way that its teachings are able to be understood by all who will read it seeking God's help and being willing to follow it" (108). He rejects a more limited understanding of clarity, one that believes that the Bible is primarily clear in relation to "all things necessary for our salvation and for our Christian life and growth." He doesn't think the Bible itself sees it this way or puts such a limitation on clarity.
Back up to the first section of the chapter. Here he quotes a few verses where some teaching seems clear. Deuteronomy 6:6-7--teach the commandments of the Law to children. Psalm 19:7--the testimony of the LORD makes the simple wise. Jesus talks to some of his enemies as if it is their problem that they don't understand, not the fact that Scripture is ambiguous. Paul writes to Gentiles about Jewish Scriptures and assumes they can understand. So on these paltry instances ripped from their contexts Grudem supposes that pretty much every word of the Bible is clear.
In a second section, he links the clarity of Scripture also to one's spirituality. So while the Bible itself is written clearly, "it will not be understood rightly by those who are unwilling to receive its teachings" (108). In his fourth section, he expands on reasons why people misunderstand. One is a lack of faith or hardness of heart. For certain, in his mind all disagreements are our problem, not a problem with clarity.
In the end, his fifth section suggests two reasons for disagreements: 1) we are trying to conclude on an issue on which Scripture does not take a position (and therefore on which we shouldn't) or 2) we have made a mistake in our interpretation (we left something out or we have a spiritual problem).
He ends the chapter by clarifying what role biblical scholars (i.e., people who know Greek and Hebrew for him) might then play:
Critique
The idea of the clarity of Scripture goes back to the Protestant Reformation and, indeed, Martin Luther himself. Luther debated Erasmus (the key figure behind the Greek text of the King James Version) over whether the Bible was clear enough for individual believers to understand it properly or whether people needed the Church to interpret it for them. Luther argued that Scripture was clear. Erasmus that it was not.
To hear the issue posed this way often evokes an immediate response--of course I don't need someone to tell me what the Bible means! But the actual history of the last 500 years tells a definitive answer. History smashes Grudem's wishful thinking to bits and gives the debate far more to Erasmus than to Luther. At least on the details, the Bible has been read in so many different ways that it's ridiculous. In fact there are somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 distinct denominations. Either Grudem is embarrassingly wrong about the clarity of Scripture or perhaps only one of these tens of thousands of groups is God's favorite and the rest of us are hell bound.
I belong to a small church in the Methodist tradition and I did sincerely marvel once in my teens at how amazing it was that I just happened to be born into the church that had everything right. What were the odds, I thought. A year or two into seminary I shifted my perspective. I began to talk about how my tradition sees things, interprets the Bible, in contrast to other traditions. At one point such talk of tradition so annoyed a family member that she stopped me and said, "Stop talking about our tradition. We just read the Bible and do what it says!"
Grudem would disagree. Those who are predestined and are spiritual see the clarity of Scripture, even down to many details. Au contraire. I would assert that truly spiritual people will believe exactly the opposite. They will recognize that there are equally spiritual people in almost all if not all of these tens of thousands of groups.
There are Roman Catholics who are just as spiritual as Grudem. There are Methodists who are just as spiritual as the most spiritual Lutheran, who is just as spiritual as the most spiritual Baptist, who is just as spiritual as the most spiritual Assembly of God person. This is because God is primarily interested in people's hearts, not their understanding. Otherwise he would correct all the spiritual people who don't agree with me.
Grudem's handful of verses are pretty thin. The ones in Deuteronomy and Proverbs have to do with knowing and doing the laws that God gave to Israel. It's hard to know which laws in particular are in view. Certainly keeping commandments like not stealing, killing, or committing adultery could result in a not too insightful person living a wise life. But that's light years from what Grudem is arguing about the clarity of Scripture.
It highlights the "proof-texting" dimension of his entire theology--you rip some words out of context and read them in a way that seems clear to you (because of the tradition you're in and not acknowledging). Jesus does sometimes come across rather strongly in some of the passages Grudem mentions. But what we find is that we are not only hearing Jesus in the Gospels. We're also hearing the gospel writers' presentation of Jesus. It is at least possible, especially in Mark, that part of what we are hearing is not Jesus' harsh tones but the disciples' own frustration at themselves for not initially getting it.
So why do people disagree about what the Bible means? The main reason is that it was written to people who lived 2000-3000 years ago whose world was drastically different than ours. Indeed, someone from Africa is more likely to read the stories of the Bible with the right socio-cultural connotations than someone from North America. It is almost a joke that Grudem would think he's going to pick up on all that just out of the blue.
That's not to say that God can't and doesn't speak clearly to people through the Bible, especially godly people. But in such instances they're normally hearing a direct word from God, not necessarily what those words meant originally. I agree with his implication that a scholar is not necessarily more gifted to hear God in Scripture than anyone else. I agree with him that the church is where God helps us know how to apply the Bible to today.
Scholars are part of that equation, but being a scholar only means you're more likely to know the original meaning, not what God wants for the church today. To be a scholar of the original meaning of some part of the Bible, 1) you must know the original language of that part. 2) You must know the historical-socio-cultural background that informed the meaning of that part, the "language games" that gave meaning to those words at that time. 3) Certainly an expert should know the history of interpretation, because you would imagine after hundreds of years of scholarship, most of the possibilities are out there and a lot of non-starters have already been weeded out. 4) And of course, you need to know the rules of exegesis and how to read the Bible inductively. This involves how to do historical research and how to follow a literary text.
Grudem isn't such a scholar, period. In my opinion, he lacks spiritual discernment as well. It's possible he's a nice guy, just not someone who should be allowed to teach theology.
Grudem builds to this definition of the clarity of Scripture (perspicuity is the more technical term): "The clarity of Scripture means that the Bible is written in such a way that its teachings are able to be understood by all who will read it seeking God's help and being willing to follow it" (108). He rejects a more limited understanding of clarity, one that believes that the Bible is primarily clear in relation to "all things necessary for our salvation and for our Christian life and growth." He doesn't think the Bible itself sees it this way or puts such a limitation on clarity.
Back up to the first section of the chapter. Here he quotes a few verses where some teaching seems clear. Deuteronomy 6:6-7--teach the commandments of the Law to children. Psalm 19:7--the testimony of the LORD makes the simple wise. Jesus talks to some of his enemies as if it is their problem that they don't understand, not the fact that Scripture is ambiguous. Paul writes to Gentiles about Jewish Scriptures and assumes they can understand. So on these paltry instances ripped from their contexts Grudem supposes that pretty much every word of the Bible is clear.
In a second section, he links the clarity of Scripture also to one's spirituality. So while the Bible itself is written clearly, "it will not be understood rightly by those who are unwilling to receive its teachings" (108). In his fourth section, he expands on reasons why people misunderstand. One is a lack of faith or hardness of heart. For certain, in his mind all disagreements are our problem, not a problem with clarity.
In the end, his fifth section suggests two reasons for disagreements: 1) we are trying to conclude on an issue on which Scripture does not take a position (and therefore on which we shouldn't) or 2) we have made a mistake in our interpretation (we left something out or we have a spiritual problem).
He ends the chapter by clarifying what role biblical scholars (i.e., people who know Greek and Hebrew for him) might then play:
- They can teach.
- They can explore new areas because new issues arise.
- They can defend the Bible against attacks.
- They can supplement the Bible with other things like church history.
They don't have the right to decide for the church what is true and false doctrine. That's for the "officers of the church" (111).
Critique
The idea of the clarity of Scripture goes back to the Protestant Reformation and, indeed, Martin Luther himself. Luther debated Erasmus (the key figure behind the Greek text of the King James Version) over whether the Bible was clear enough for individual believers to understand it properly or whether people needed the Church to interpret it for them. Luther argued that Scripture was clear. Erasmus that it was not.
To hear the issue posed this way often evokes an immediate response--of course I don't need someone to tell me what the Bible means! But the actual history of the last 500 years tells a definitive answer. History smashes Grudem's wishful thinking to bits and gives the debate far more to Erasmus than to Luther. At least on the details, the Bible has been read in so many different ways that it's ridiculous. In fact there are somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 distinct denominations. Either Grudem is embarrassingly wrong about the clarity of Scripture or perhaps only one of these tens of thousands of groups is God's favorite and the rest of us are hell bound.
I belong to a small church in the Methodist tradition and I did sincerely marvel once in my teens at how amazing it was that I just happened to be born into the church that had everything right. What were the odds, I thought. A year or two into seminary I shifted my perspective. I began to talk about how my tradition sees things, interprets the Bible, in contrast to other traditions. At one point such talk of tradition so annoyed a family member that she stopped me and said, "Stop talking about our tradition. We just read the Bible and do what it says!"
Grudem would disagree. Those who are predestined and are spiritual see the clarity of Scripture, even down to many details. Au contraire. I would assert that truly spiritual people will believe exactly the opposite. They will recognize that there are equally spiritual people in almost all if not all of these tens of thousands of groups.
There are Roman Catholics who are just as spiritual as Grudem. There are Methodists who are just as spiritual as the most spiritual Lutheran, who is just as spiritual as the most spiritual Baptist, who is just as spiritual as the most spiritual Assembly of God person. This is because God is primarily interested in people's hearts, not their understanding. Otherwise he would correct all the spiritual people who don't agree with me.
Grudem's handful of verses are pretty thin. The ones in Deuteronomy and Proverbs have to do with knowing and doing the laws that God gave to Israel. It's hard to know which laws in particular are in view. Certainly keeping commandments like not stealing, killing, or committing adultery could result in a not too insightful person living a wise life. But that's light years from what Grudem is arguing about the clarity of Scripture.
It highlights the "proof-texting" dimension of his entire theology--you rip some words out of context and read them in a way that seems clear to you (because of the tradition you're in and not acknowledging). Jesus does sometimes come across rather strongly in some of the passages Grudem mentions. But what we find is that we are not only hearing Jesus in the Gospels. We're also hearing the gospel writers' presentation of Jesus. It is at least possible, especially in Mark, that part of what we are hearing is not Jesus' harsh tones but the disciples' own frustration at themselves for not initially getting it.
So why do people disagree about what the Bible means? The main reason is that it was written to people who lived 2000-3000 years ago whose world was drastically different than ours. Indeed, someone from Africa is more likely to read the stories of the Bible with the right socio-cultural connotations than someone from North America. It is almost a joke that Grudem would think he's going to pick up on all that just out of the blue.
That's not to say that God can't and doesn't speak clearly to people through the Bible, especially godly people. But in such instances they're normally hearing a direct word from God, not necessarily what those words meant originally. I agree with his implication that a scholar is not necessarily more gifted to hear God in Scripture than anyone else. I agree with him that the church is where God helps us know how to apply the Bible to today.
Scholars are part of that equation, but being a scholar only means you're more likely to know the original meaning, not what God wants for the church today. To be a scholar of the original meaning of some part of the Bible, 1) you must know the original language of that part. 2) You must know the historical-socio-cultural background that informed the meaning of that part, the "language games" that gave meaning to those words at that time. 3) Certainly an expert should know the history of interpretation, because you would imagine after hundreds of years of scholarship, most of the possibilities are out there and a lot of non-starters have already been weeded out. 4) And of course, you need to know the rules of exegesis and how to read the Bible inductively. This involves how to do historical research and how to follow a literary text.
Grudem isn't such a scholar, period. In my opinion, he lacks spiritual discernment as well. It's possible he's a nice guy, just not someone who should be allowed to teach theology.
Friday, May 25, 2012
8 The Sufficiency of Scripture
Summary
Grudem defines the sufficiency of Scripture as follows: "The sufficiency of Scripture means that Scripture contained all the words of God he intended his people to have at each stage of redemptive history, and that it now contains all the words of God we need for salvation, for trusting him perfectly, and for obeying him perfectly" (127).
The sufficiency of Scripture for Grudem means that we focus our search for God's words to us on the Bible alone (128) and have confidence that "we will be able to find what God requires us to think or do" on all our doctrinal or moral questions (129). This sufficiency is now complete, although it unfolded in stages. So at the time of the death of Moses, Grudem believes the first five books of the Bible were sufficient for God's people at that time (130). No further central redemptive acts have occurred since the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ (and the unpacking of these events in the New Testament).
Grudem gives several practical applications that come from the sufficiency of Scripture:
1. We should be encouraged that everything God wants to tell us to think or do about an issue is found in Scripture (131). It may not always speak directly to our questions, of course, but it will at least do so indirectly if it is a matter of concern to God.
2. We are to add nothing to Scripture and to consider no other writings of equal value to Scripture.
3. "God does not require us to believe anything about himself or his redemptive work that is not found in Scripture" (132).
4. "No modern revelations from God are to be placed on a level equal to Scripture in authority" (132).
5. "Nothing is sin that is not forbidden by Scripture either explicitly or by implication."
6. "Nothing is required of us by God that is not commanded in Scripture either explicitly or by implication" (133).
7. "We should emphasize what Scripture emphasizes and be content with what God has told us in Scripture" (134). There are many topics that receive "relatively little direct emphasis in Scripture" (135), and while the Bible may have things to say about many of these things, these are not the areas that Christians should be focusing on.
Evaluation
The idea of the sufficiency of the Scriptures--like the clarity of Scripture--flows directly out of the Reformation and Martin Luther's debates with the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). Luther believed rightly that the Roman Catholic Church had added a number of doctrines and practices that are not clearly taught in the Bible. The Protestant dictum of "sola scriptura," "Scripture only," was thus a battle cry meant to peel back these accretions, things like purgatory and requiring priests to be celibate.
The place of my own tradition--the Wesleyan tradition--in relation to sola scriptura is a little ambiguous. Perhaps prima scriptura, "Scripture first," would be a little more accurate description of the practice of John Wesley, the father of Methodism. He is often said to have operated more in terms of a "quadrilateral" consisting of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, with Scripture primary. Nevertheless, the sufficiency of Scripture is taught in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican tradition from which Methodist churches like mine emerged, and the sufficiency of Scripture is in the Articles of Religion of my own Wesleyan denomination. (They are also implied by the Westminster Confession of the Reformed and in Cornelius Van Til's four characteristics that Grudem is building on)
Do I believe that the Scriptures are sufficient? Absolutely I do, and especially in two ways. Let me start with the easy one. The Scriptures are entirely sufficient for any matter of ethics because all of God's expectations are summed up in "Love God and love neighbor," where love of God means that one is completely surrendered to his will as you know it, and love of neighbor includes living lovingly toward one's enemies. The rest is working out the specifics.
The specifics are where Grudem and I no doubt will get into some disagreements, because it seems inevitable to me that many of the specific commands of Scripture were contextual and situational. Nor do I think it will be always easy to hone in on specific answers to ethical questions. In a complex world, love of neighbor can be a complex matter to work out and the Bible may or may not give much help. What is that verse about stem cell research again? I strongly suspect that Grudem's idea of finding answers in Scripture will often turn out to be just plain bad interpretation.
Secondly, I believe that Scripture contains "all things necessary to salvation," as the Thirty-Nine articles read. I would distinguish what God requires of us for salvation from the truths about how salvation works, with God judging us according to our (God-empowered) response to the light we have. But the fundamentals of how salvation works are even then quite sufficiently laid out in Scripture: God's loving grace, Christ's death, and my faith, all clearly there in Scripture.
But the Protestant sense of sufficiency goes well beyond what I just said. For example, the sense that the Thirty-Nine articles have is that "whatever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man or woman that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." So if the Bible doesn't require celibacy--or complete abstinence from alcohol--then no denomination should either. Groups that forbid having organs in worship because the Bible doesn't mention organs are ruled out of bounds.
As common-sensical as this sounds, the matter may be a little more complicated when we get into the details. Where, for example, does the Bible prohibit polygamy? Don't go for "the two shall become one flesh," because Jacob became one flesh with two wives and two concubines. The Old Testament freely allows polygamy (check out the rule in Deuteronomy 21:15-17), and the New Testament never explicitly prohibits it. I think it assumes monogamy in 1 Corinthians 7, but never commands it. No doubt Grudem thinks he can prove it from Scripture but, then again, he practices strange magic.
Similarly, it was about 400 years before most Christians believed in the Trinity in its current form. The main competition, Arianism, believed Jesus was the first of God's creation, the most exalted of all beings, but not "of the same substance" as God the Father. The key is that Arians made their arguments from Scripture just like their (winning) opponents did. Sure, we can read a statement like "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30) and fill it with our Trinitarian assumptions. I think God is fine with us reading it that way now. But it is not at all clear that John was saying anything related to the Trinity originally.
Although I don't want to get into the weeds, I would claim that when the Protestant Reformers (and when Grudem) speaks of the sufficiency of Scripture in matters doctrinal, they really mean the sufficiency of Scriptures as interpreted once the Trinitarian and Christological controversies of the first five centuries were over. Basically, the Scriptures are sufficient for Christian doctrine if they are interpreted the way they were once the theology of common Christendom was established. But one at least might argue that the Reformers did not actually peel back doctrine all the way to the New Testament church but back to the interpretations of the Bible that became dominant by around the year 451 at the Council of Chalcedon, when the Nicene Creed was finalized.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
10 The Knowability of God
Summary
This is a relatively short chapter with three main points. First, we cannot currently know God unless he reveals himself to us (149). Several proof texts are mentioned, including Matthew 11:27, "No one knows the Son except the Father, and non one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (RSV, italics his). For Grudem, Scripture must filter any other way of knowing God as well, including natural revelation. "The Bible alone tells us how to understand the testimony about God from nature" (italics his).
His second and third points respectively are then that 2) we cannot never fully understand God but 3) we can know God truly. God is infinite and we are finite. Therefore, we can never fully understand God. This is how Grudem defines the word "incomprehensible," not that we cannot understand God but that we cannot understand him fully.
This is true not only about God in general, but also that "we can never fully understand any single thing about God" (150). And it is not only true now but also in the age to come. Our inability to understand God fully is not simply a matter of our sinfulness but of our finitude, the fact that we cannot comprehend the infinite. "There will always be more to learn" (151).
It is important nonetheless for Grudem to qualify that we can still know God truly. "All that Scripture tells us about God is true" (151). Further, more important than facts is the fact that we want to know God as a person (152). Christians have the far greater privilege of knowing God personally above mere knowing facts about God.
Evaluation
Much in this chapter is commendable. It seems beyond question that we cannot know God fully or completely because he is infinite and we are finite. Surely Grudem is also right that it is more important to know God relationally than to know God cognitively. Finally, it seems possible that there are some facts we can know about God that are not skewed in any way. For example, "God knows everything there is to know about the creation" seems like a true statement that is absolutely true and completely literal.
To say something is literal is to say that we are using words in their ordinary sense. If I say, "he went through the roof," I am not speaking literally. To go through the roof literally is no doubt to die of massive head injuries from your body being propelled through all the wood and roofing materials. If I say "I have a son" and am talking about my dog, I am speaking figuratively. If I say, "I have a son" and am talking about my son, I am speaking literally.
It seems quite likely that much of our knowledge of God is figurative to some extent, not completely literal. To say much of what we believe about God is figurative is to say that we are saying true things about God but we are describing him by comparing him to something in our world that we can relate to. "God is my fortress," not because he is a literal building structure I can hide in when someone is trying to attack me, but because he is like that.
So when the Christians of the 300s and 400s wanted to describe the three members of the Trinity, they described them as "persons." I accept this language as true. Is it literal, or is it God helping the early Christians find something in our world that expressed what the members of the Trinity are like? The principle of revelation, one that Grudem fails to appreciate, is that God primarily speaks to humanity in terms we can understand. By contrast, Grudem seems to think that God reveals himself to us in his own absolute categories, that he lifts us up to his level more than he reaches down to ours.
Thus we return to the underlying problem with his hermeneutic, that he implicitly reads the Bible as a document that stands outside of human context. He treats the words as propositional statements of absolute truth rather than as words in genres written in situations in cultures, as God speaking to humans at particular times and places largely within their own categories and "language games." The meanings of the Bible were comprehensible to those to whom its books were first revealed; therefore, its original categories were largely those of the audiences to whom they were first revealed.
The Bible primarily gives us pictures of God, snapshots at particular times and places. Most of what we know of God we thus know more by analogy than on a fully literal level. But yes, surely we can know some things about God literally as well, without saying he is "like" something we can relate to. And Grudem is surely very right to say we can know God personally and relationally--by far the most important way that we can know God.
Monday, May 21, 2012
11 The Incommunicable Attributes of God
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.
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.
3. Eternity
Summary
Grudem defines God's eternity as follows: "God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time" (168). The fact that he does not learn new things or forget things (omniscience) follows from this aspect of his being. "To God himself, all of his existence is always somehow 'present'" (169). "All of past history is viewed by God with great clarity and vividness" (170).
God "has a qualitatively different experience of time than we do" (170). In Grudem's diagram, God is above looking down at creation, the life of Christ, 1994, and the final judgment all at the same time (171). Yet, by contrast, God somehow "sees the progress of events over time and acts differently at different points in time" (172). This will be true of us forever, even in eternity (173).
Evaluation
Grudem's analysis of God's eternity is completely orthodox here also. It would be unwise for most of us to speculate about the physics. Grudem's diagrams (and anyone else's) will surely be a source of great embarrassment to him in the kingdom when God gives him a greater glimpse of how it actually works.
Grudem's use of Scripture continues to be out of context. The idea of someone being "outside of time" seems anachronistic for biblical times. It seems doubtful that any biblical author understood God to exist outside of time. Such ideas arguably did not develop until later church history, and those who understand relativity today would no doubt even question the notion of medieval timelessness.
The biblical authors thus seem to picture God going through time as we do, as we would expect. The passages Grudem quotes only suggest that God always has and always will exist. God revealed himself in the ancient frameworks of those to whom he first spoke, so it is no surprise that the Old Testament sometimes pictures God learning new information, just as it sometimes pictures him knowing the distant future. Arguably the more philosophical versions of God's timelessness came in later church history, when philosophy began to influence Christian theology more extensively. The biblical language is more poetic and anthropopathic, even though the biblical authors themselves probably understood it literally.
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.
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.
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.
3. Eternity
Summary
Grudem defines God's eternity as follows: "God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time" (168). The fact that he does not learn new things or forget things (omniscience) follows from this aspect of his being. "To God himself, all of his existence is always somehow 'present'" (169). "All of past history is viewed by God with great clarity and vividness" (170).
God "has a qualitatively different experience of time than we do" (170). In Grudem's diagram, God is above looking down at creation, the life of Christ, 1994, and the final judgment all at the same time (171). Yet, by contrast, God somehow "sees the progress of events over time and acts differently at different points in time" (172). This will be true of us forever, even in eternity (173).
Evaluation
Grudem's analysis of God's eternity is completely orthodox here also. It would be unwise for most of us to speculate about the physics. Grudem's diagrams (and anyone else's) will surely be a source of great embarrassment to him in the kingdom when God gives him a greater glimpse of how it actually works.
Grudem's use of Scripture continues to be out of context. The idea of someone being "outside of time" seems anachronistic for biblical times. It seems doubtful that any biblical author understood God to exist outside of time. Such ideas arguably did not develop until later church history, and those who understand relativity today would no doubt even question the notion of medieval timelessness.
The biblical authors thus seem to picture God going through time as we do, as we would expect. The passages Grudem quotes only suggest that God always has and always will exist. God revealed himself in the ancient frameworks of those to whom he first spoke, so it is no surprise that the Old Testament sometimes pictures God learning new information, just as it sometimes pictures him knowing the distant future. Arguably the more philosophical versions of God's timelessness came in later church history, when philosophy began to influence Christian theology more extensively. The biblical language is more poetic and anthropopathic, even though the biblical authors themselves probably understood it literally.
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.
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