Video Transcript: God's Attributes (Part 1)

Today we talked about God the Creator, the essential doctrine in Christianity, of  course, everything builds around that. And we have more than one scripture that tells us that God is to be thanked and praised and worshipped, just because he  

is the creator of all things. And I want to talk about that today. And about the  attributes, God's word reveals him to have, that God is seen to, or recorded in  Scripture, so we can know them. And we'll raise what may seem to a lot of you  like an odd sort of question. And that has to do with a relation between God and  the characteristics that we know his attributes. That's the usual term use for  God's personal characteristics. So we're going to try to take a brief look at what  scripture says about that. And we're going to see that there are some places that comment on that. And then we'll talk about how we get a bigger picture in  theology of the nature of God. So let's begin. I'm going to start with Colossians  1, that God affirms again, that God has created through Jesus Christ, all things  visible or invisible. Now, it only takes a moments thought for you to realize  everything's either visible or it's not. So the writer here, which is St. Paul,writimg  to the church, at Colossae, is telling us that God through Christ has created  everything, everything we can see and everything we can't. And this is one of  the reasons that a good number of theologians have pointed out that God has  not only created the objects that we see around the world, the sun, the moon,  the stars, the planet, the ocean, the land, life forms, and so on, but has created  also the laws that govern his creation. And there is a strong tradition in theology  of people who recognize that as an important point said, God isn't subject to  those laws, he created them. We don't have any problem when it comes to  something like the law of gravitation, we say, of course, the law of gravitation  doesn't apply to God, because God's not a physical object, say on the planet  Earth, isn't held to the ground by gravity. But there are other laws as well, that  exist in creation, and that people discover laws such as logical laws and  mathematical laws. There's another strand of theologians that have said, No,  God didn't create those. So that's the difference that we're going to begin to  address here, visible or invisible, would have to include the laws, unless you just want to fudge that unless you try to say, well, that's what Paul said. But you  know, he didn't mean it, that strictly and so on. I find, however, that there are  other places in Scripture that also reflect that view. And one of those, is in  Proverbs 8, where it speaks of God's wisdom, or rather, God's wisdom is  speaking it's a personification. and wisdom says of ourself. In Proverbs 8, I am  the first of God's creations, he brought me forth before the heavens and the  earth, before the hills, before anything else was, I was, and I was with him. And  then it goes on. And that concludes, and then I was with the sons, the children of men. So it's the same wisdom that God has, in a much greater degree than we  could ever imagine. But it's the same quality characteristics that he shares then  with human beings. But the important thing here is that it's an attribute of God.  And it says explicitly, that God created it. And I think these two texts taken 

together, that God has created everything visible or invisible, and then talking  about the characteristic of wisdom and saying, God created that. So he created  his own wisdom. And he shares that with creatures that that strongly suggest,  the position that there are no exceptions. Among God's attributes. They're all  ones that he created, in the, in the way that Proverbs 8 explicitly says, His  wisdom is created. And not only that, I think that that view of God's attributes, fits perfectly with a central doctrine of the New Testament, which is the doctrine of  the Incarnation. In in the Incarnation, God explicitly takes something he is  creating something that is creaturely that depends on God for existence, namely, the human person of Jesus Christ, and takes him into himself. So that Jesus  Christ is the human side of God, and God is the divine side of Jesus Christ. The  two things aren't confused or identical. But that's how the relationship is  presented in Scripture. And that too means that the revelation of of God that we  see in Jesus Christ, that in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.  And that when we look at him, we see God, as God is, he says, to remember to  His disciples, who asked, Can we see God, he says, haven't I been with you a  long time, don't you see me, that kind of thing that again, shows that there is that God has created these characteristics in order to reveal himself. So I'm going to  schematize that a bit on the board, because we're going to contrast it with  another theological tradition, that's going to deny important parts of what I've just said to you. Here, I'm going to use a solid line circle, for God for what is divine,  and I'm going to use a dotted line. For what is created that depends on God.  Notice that the arrow that goes from God to creation is also created. God has  brought into existence, a creation distinct from himself. And his relationship to  that creation, therefore, is also something he's creating simultaneously. Prior to  creating, if we can talk that way, prior to creating, God doesn't have that property of being the creator of the world, once the world exists, he has the property  being the creator of the world. And what I'm suggesting here is, that of all the  things that God has created, if he's created everything, visible or invisible, then  God has created quantity and number. I mean, numbers are our symbols for the  quantity we find in the world. He has created space. And because the creation is spatial, the creation is also physical. It's got living things in it. It's biotic. And what happens is that then God takes into himself these characteristics, so as to  accommodate himself to be understood by us. So numerically, God is one. But  in three persons, spatially, God is everywhere, God's omnipresent. Physically,  God is all powerful. Biotically, God is our father, because he gives us life. And  scripture goes on and on in all the different aspects of the creation, to tell us  what are the characteristics that God has of that kind. So those are all creative  things. They're not the uncreated, originating being of God, that's beyond our  ability to know it all. But here's the way God has accommodated himself to us so we can be known by him, and we can know Him. So all those things that are  attributed to God in Scripture, are true of God. That's the truth. And they are 

what God swears in his covenant. They are what he promises to be forever.  Now, what I've said so far, might be misunderstood in this way. By saying that  these are created characteristics, I don't mean to say that there was a time God  didn't have them. Saying that something is created means it depends for its  existence on God, whether it began in time, or it didn't. My understanding is,  here's that God has called into being all of creation, visible or invisible, and that  includes time. And there are four or five places in the New Testament that says  God created time. Two of them say he created time through Jesus Christ. So  this is space, time, matter, life, and so on, great deal more. But whatever it is,  God has called it into existence out of nothing. God then accommodates himself in ways that we can understand in order to make himself known to us and  establish His redemptive covenant of love, forgiveness and everlasting life.  That's how I'm going to see God's attributes as we go forward in this study, and  that's why it's a key element of seeing why Christian Philosophy is not only  possible, but a duty. So I'm going to call this view of God and His attributes, the  incarnational model for understanding God's relation to the revealed  characteristics that we are told about in Scripture. There's a nice summary of  that, of this view in John Calvin. He says, every attribute, every perfection  ascribed to God in Scripture is also found in creation. And hence, is not God per  se, but how God relates to us. And that's also a good summary of the Eastern  Orthodox doctrine of God, which says essentially the same thing. And orthodox  thinkers over the centuries since Calvin have recognized that Cyril Lucaris, for  example, the Patriarch of Constantinople and thought the world of Calvin's  theology to leave liturgy aside Lucaris and all other orthodox thinkers believe it  in love a very complex and rich liturgy and Calvin just about threw that out the  door, but as to the doctrine of God, right on says Lucaris. This turns out to be  important, just because there's a strain of theology that denies it. I'm going to  stop there for now. And then we're going to pick up the other theology and draw  the contrast.