Or “Stand in Wander,” part 2

The heart of theology is God Himself. What we believe about God undergirds everything else, and so what we have in common is that much more crucial, and where we disagree can be that much more divisive. As far as I am aware, I hold a very traditional Christian view of God. But this doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes bump into people who disagree with me.

I believe God is Trinity, one God in three persons. It is difficult to comprehend and difficult to explain to my kids sometimes, but I don’t believe it because it’s convenient. I accept it as the Bible’s testimony about who God is. There is only one God, but the Father, Son, and Spirit are somehow distinct. I take it that any competing view of God in church history is a rationalization, trying to smooth out the wrinkles. The Trinity does not seem to me to be a rationalization; it’s simply affirming what is there in the text on faith.

I think the Trinity is essential, but I don’t get too dogmatic about people accidentally confusing the persons of the Trinity in their prayers, as so often happens. One friend not long ago said, “Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a risen savior.” Not true. But I know what he meant and I don’t think less of him for it. I suspect God is patient with people who come in humility and love and accidentally blur the details of a mystery.

One of my favorite books about God was in some ways not really a book about God at all. I chose Fools for Christ from a list of options to read and report on in my sanctification course at seminary, and at first I was baffled by what was there. 6 portraits, and not all of people I would normally think of as Christians. But author Jaroslav Pelikan was making a point with each of these about the nature of the traditional philosophical ideals of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. And as I reflected on the book I came to see his point: for each of these, he demonstrated how we cannot use Truth, for example, to “get to” God. We cannot be good enough or beautiful enough. We cannot access God by these three virtues. But likewise, we do not use God to access these three virtues, as though if we want the Truth, we should pursue God, if we want Beauty, we should pursue God, etc. Why not? Because that would be idolatry, making God a means to getting some greater thing beyond Him. Instead, we approach God by grace for who He is, and in Him is Goodness, in Him is Beauty, in Him is Truth, and so we get these things thrown in, as it were. It did a great job of clarifying for me the doctrines of transcendence, of grace, and of God’s perfection. It gave me a clear vision of how to relate my own quests for truth, goodness, and beauty to Him, and I will be forever grateful.

Returning to the concept of the Trinity, I have never liked the idea of “perichoresis,” but it may be in part my bias against dance. I don’t mean that I think dancing is bad or that I don’t recognize the joy that comes from being moved by the music. It just always seemed like a frivolous image to attach to God’s eternal nature. God is God! He’s not a dance party. Of course, that’s just a metaphor, but metaphors are only good if they help you make a connection, and this one just doesn’t work for me. (For those of you who aren’t familiar, “perichoresis” is the idea that the unity of the three persons is something like a dance in which they are so closely working that they blend into a kind of oneness. This just seems sloppy to me. Perhaps there are better presentations out there than the one I heard.) Instead I prefer language I heard elsewhere, although I no longer remember where: that what one person does, the other persons do in, with, and through Him. This seems more accurate to me, although it probably has its own weaknesses.

One of the key doctrines that is running in the background behind my doctrine of God is the analogical nature of speech about God. I believe that words we attribute to God are not univocal in the sense that words are human conventions based on human experiences, and what God is precedes and transcends those concepts. Nevertheless, God is not wholly different from these things because He uses human words to reveal who He is to us, and since God is truthful and trustworthy, we know that there must be some truth to these words, even if they cannot be understood in basic human ways. So we have the language of analogy, that there is something in common but not precisely the same when we speak of God. God is Father, has something in common with human fathers, but is not a human father. God may be described as having a hand, but we know that what we think of as a hand is something He created, and that He does not have a body, so the word does not precisely mean what it normally means, but it does truthfully communicate something about God. This is primarily because of God’s transcendence.

On this note, one thing that bothers me is the trend in some circles to try and divest God of any masculine connotations. One book I read recently, for example, never called God “Him” but only “Godself.” Blech. I know God transcends human sex categories. He is not male the way we know male. And yet, God chose that word, that set of words (He, Him, His, Father, etc.) to reveal Himself. So it does not seem to me to be more enlightened to exchange them for something that He could have chosen to do but didn’t, out of fear of what the words God chose might do. Better to confront the error than to clear the table and start over.

Another doctrine that has profoundly influenced by theology is the idea that there is no nature apart from grace. (I believe I mentioned something about this in passing in my first entry for this series.) In virtue of God’s omnipresence, in virtue of God’s creating power, and even more so because of His sustaining power which “upholds all things,” I believe there is no such thing as a place on earth where God is not. Everything originates with Him, everything is proximate to His presence, and everything is sustained by Him. Everything is sacred, although it takes effort to properly understand this. God is distinct from Creation; we are not gods, and we are not in God in some pantheistic or panentheistic sense. But there is no neutral space, no place where God is not, nothing irrelevant to spiritual things one way or another.

There is more I could say about the traditional attributes of God, about how He is all-wise and almighty, or about His character and the astounding harmony of mercy and justice perfectly united and expressed in Him, among many other goods that we hold in tension in this world. Again, I think saying “I hold traditional views” pretty much addresses things. I have no hesitation about saying God is love, or seeing love as the defining characteristic of God (if we should be forced to choose one). Why? Not only because the Bible says “God is love,” but this is the core characteristic of our discipleship as well. If Paul can say “love is the fulfillment of the Law,” and Christi Himself can say that the two greatest commandments are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” and “love your neighbor as yourself,” then it seems to me love is at the heart of all the rest.

And that brings me to where I will end today’s reflections, limited though they are. I am so grateful to have been trained at Dallas Seminary, where more than one professor emphasized the role of Jesus Christ as the fullest revelation of who God is. I understand some traditions try to emphasize God in a more all-encompassing way, or perhaps the Father because He is given priority of place over the Son in His ministry. But I am convinced our best representation of who God is comes through Jesus Christ, the incarnate God. As Dr. Burns said, it is impossible to make too much of Christ. God is Father and Spirit as well, but our access to them comes through the Son.