Sermon Tone Analysis

What is in a Name?

“As God’s essence is hidden and incomprehensible,” Calvin observes, “his name just means his character, so far as he has been pleased to make it known to us.”

There is nothing more important than knowing God.

-John Frame, The Doctrine of God

Ps.

Our message to the world must emphasize that God is real, and that he will not be trifled with.

He is the almighty, majestic Lord of heaven and earth, and he demands our most passionate love and obedience.

- John Frame, The Doctrine of God

1.

In what does the importance of the names of God lie?

In this, that God through them draws our attention to the most important attributes of His being.

This being is so rich and comprehensive that we need to have some benchmarks in order to understand the rest.

God’s names are not empty sounds (like the names of people), but they have meaning and contribute to our knowledge of God.

The name should thus be understood as referring to Yahweh’s being the creator and sustainer of all that exists and thus the Lord of both creation and history, all that is and all that is happening—a God active and present in historical affairs.

On one hand, the revelation of God’s name is a sign of transcendence, measuring the gulf between God’s majesty and the human servant.

On one hand, the revelation of God’s name is a sign of transcendence, measuring the gulf between God’s majesty and the human servant.

Misusing God’s name required the death penalty under the old covenant (Ex 20:7; Lev 24:16).

Nevertheless, this name is also a sign of God’s immanence, having been given to his people as a pledge of his personal presence, to be invoked in danger and praised at all times.

The point is frequently made that the Lord (Adonai) is our LORD (Yahweh) and vice versa.

The New Testament reveals a similar pattern.

As the narratives generate doctrines, the doctrines give rise to doxology and are even expressed in the form of praise, as in 1 Timothy 1:17: “To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen.”

As spirit (Jn 4:24), God is unavailable to human investigation apart from his own initiative and mediation.

Nevertheless, out of love for his creatures, God condescends to our finite capacity by selecting analogies that are appropriate but nevertheless fall short of his majesty.

Incommunicable Attributes

As we will see, it is these attributes of the way of negation that are most frequently challenged as a supposedly later corruption of biblical theology by pagan (Greek) metaphysics.

However, it is not only later theologians but the apostle Paul as well who use the alpha-privative prefix, referring to God, for example, as immortal (aphthartos) and invisible (aoratos) (1 Ti 1:17; cf.

6:15–16).

While it is true that much of the language related to theology of God studies comes in Greek philosophical expressions, it would be a mistake to think that the substance of those studies is unduly influenced by or anchored in Greek thought.

Divine Simplicity

As human beings, we are complex and compound creatures.

That is, we are made up of various parts.

However, God is simple and spiritual.

On the one hand, this means that God is not the sum total of his attributes but is simultaneously everything that all of the attributes reveal.

On the other hand, each of these attributes identifies a different aspect of God’s existence and character that cannot be reduced to the others.

This latter point is especially important, given the tendency of recent critiques to identify this doctrine with an extreme view that denies any real difference between attributes.

How would you rank the various attributes of God?

Answer: we cannot rank the attributes of God or make one more essential that then other.

Apologetic scenario: Kenosis Theology says that God emptied himself in the sense that he laid aside some of his divine attributes in order that he might truly become human.

In his defense of that theory, Stephen T. Davis, in his book Christian Philosophical Theology, posits the view that God has essential and non-essential attributes.

Explain what this means and evaluate the claim.

God is not the sum total of his attributes but is simultaneously everything that all of the attributes reveal.

One implication is that we cannot rank God’s attributes or make one more essential to God than another.

God is love even when he judges; he is holy and righteous even in saving sinners; he is eternal even when he acts in time.

God’s simplicity in no way p 229 limits the diversity evident in his works, but stipulates that in all of God’s activity he is self-consistent.

In every act, God is the being that he is and will ever be.

There is no genus of “deity” of which the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a species.

Although we cannot help but talk about his immutability, then his goodness, then his love, we should not imagine that God is composed of these various attributes.

Rather, God’s existence is identical with his attributes.

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God’s goodness, love, omniscience, and holiness are simply who God is.

I would still be human even if I lacked judgment or enterprise, but God would not be God if he did not possess all of his attributes in the simplicity and perfection of his essence.19

There is NO conflict in God.

Simplicity reminds us that God is never self-conflicted.

In God’s eternal decree, even in the most obvious example of possible inner conflict (namely, the cross), justice and mercy, righteous wrath and gracious love, embrace.

Just where we would expect to see the greatest inner conflict within God, we read that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Co 5:19).

At the place where the outpouring of his wrath is concentrated, so too is his love.

Neither overwhelms or cancels out the other.

God is “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Ro 3:26, emphasis added).

At the same time, simplicity does not (in the Reformed view, at least) eliminate the difference between attributes.

Love, justice, goodness, and other attributes are not mere synonyms but are “conceptually different in God himself.”

Apologetic: God is a God of love.

Therefore, he would not send anyone to hell for eternity if they are living the best life they know how.

How might this “God of love” approach be guilty of violating the second commandment regarding idolatry?

How does divine simplicity contradict Arminianism?

God cannot limit himself.

This is derived from certain forms of Hegelian kenosis.

God is never free to be not-God.

None of his attributes can be suspended, withdrawn, diminished, or altered, since his attributes are identical with his existence.

The denial of this attribute is often motivated by a broader criticism of God’s immutability, impassibility, and eternity, as we will see.

It is not surprising that some critics of simplicity go on to deny God’s spirituality.

There is but a short step from the denial of at least this minimal affirmation of simplicity to the denial of God’s infinity (i.e., divine transcendence).24

Divine Aseity - Self Existence

The term aseity comes from the Latin phrase a se, meaning, from or by the self.

[Frame, Systematic Theology]

Among the Reformed this perfection of God comes more emphatically to the fore, though the word “aseity” was soon exchanged for that of independence.

While aseity only expresses God’s self-sufficiency in his existence, independence has a broader sense and implies that God is independent in everything: in his existence, in his perfections, in his decrees, and in his works.

[Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics]

Before we speak of God relating freely to creatures and entering into human history as Lord and Redeemer, our starting point is God’s aseity (“from-himself-ness”), or independence from the world.

It goes without saying that a dependent deity would be involved with the world.

What is remarkable is that the triune God—self-existing, perfect, and independent—would nevertheless create and enter into covenantal relationships with creatures in freedom and love.

Karl Barth properly stressed the point that the God who is God without us has nevertheless determined to be God with us.

Freedom from creation is the ground of God’s freedom for creation.

God’s independence from the world is a necessary correlate of his glory

This doctrine has tremendous practical value.

If God were not free from creation, we might pray for him, but not to him.

We would have no confidence that he could overcome evil or rescue us from death.

Yet God’s freedom for creation—even for those who are not only finite but sinful—is the presupposition of our hope in Christ.

God does not need time, but he freely enters it; he does not need a house, but he builds one anyway.

All of this is for our benefit, out of God’s zeal to dwell together with finite, embodied creatures in covenant.

That God freely does this in creation, without any inherent need, is a testimony to his unfathomable goodness.

That he continues to do this even in relation to the unfaithful covenant partner is a measure of his unsearchable grace.

Immutability

God is non-changeable.

There are no potentialities in God.

Complete and perfect in himself from eternity to eternity, God has no potential that is not already fully realized.

God cannot be more infinite, loving, or holy tomorrow than today.

If God alone is necessary and independent of all external conditions, fully realized in all of his perfections, then there is literally nothing for God to become.

How do we explain certain texts that indicate God has changed his mind about certain things?

Thomas Wienandy explains that according to the patristic account, “God is unchangeable not because he is inert or static like a rock, but for just the opposite reason.

He is so dynamic, so active that no change can make him more active.

He is act pure and simple.”