Theological Term of the Week: Archetype

archetype
“The original. In theology, God is the archetype; the creature made in his image is the ectype (the imitation or copy or image).”1 God’s knowledge, for instance, is archetypal. His knowledge of himself and everything that exists is perfect and infinite. His knowledge is the original, and all human knowledge is derived from his revelation.

• From scripture:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV)

So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 2:11 ESV)

• From Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof, on God’s archetypal knowledge: 

The knowledge of God differs in some important points from that of men. It is archetypal, which means that He knows the universe as it exists in His own eternal idea previous to its existence as a finite reality in time and space; and that His knowledge is not, like ours, obtained from without. It is a knowledge that is characterized by absolute perfection. As such it is intuitive rather than demonstrative or discursive. It is innate and immediate, and does not result from observation or from a process of reasoning. Being perfect, it is also simultaneous and not successive, so that He sees things at once in their totality, and not piecemeal one after another. Furthermore, it is complete and fully conscious, while man’s knowledge is always partial, frequently indistinct, and often fails to rise into the clear light of consciousness.

• From Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof on God’s archetypal personality: 

Since man is created in the image of God, we learn to understand something of the personal life of God from the contemplation of personality as we know it in man. We should be careful, however, not to set up man’s personality as a standard by which the personality of God must be measured. The original form of personality is not in man but in God; His is archetypal, while man’s is ectypal. The latter is not identical with the former, but does contain faint traces of similarity with it. We should not say that man is personal, while God is super- personal (a very unfortunate term), for what is super-personal is not personal; but rather, that what appears as imperfect in man exists in infinite perfection in God.

Learn more:

1. Amy Mantravadi: What Kind of Knowledge Can We Have About God?

Related terms:

• accomodation
• apophatic theology
• cataphatic theology
• ectype

1 From None Greater by Matthew Barrett.

Filed under God’s Nature and His Work 

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Sunday's Hymn: Be Still, My Soul

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In ev’ry change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heav’nly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as he has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,
And all is darkened in the vale of tears,
Then shalt thou better know his love, his heart,
Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.
Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay
From his own fullness all he takes away.

Be still, my soul: the hour is hast’ning on
When we shall be for ever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

—Kath­a­rina A. von Schle­gel

 Other hymns, worship songs, or quotes for this Sunday:

• O How I Love Jesus at The Happy Wonderer
• As We Take the Lord’s Supper at The Outspoken Tulip
• The Reach of Almighty Grace at Tried With Fire

Theological Term of the Week: Worship

worship
To give God honor, glory, and obedience as the proper response to his character and actions; also used more specifically to refer to a church’s public activity of glorifying God together by means of instruction, confession, prayer, singing, and participation in the Lord’s Supper.

• From scripture:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Roman 12:1-2 ESV)

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24 ESV)

• From A Puritan Catechism, Questions 42-46: 

Q42: Which is the first commandment?
A42: The first commandment is, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Q43: What is required in the first commandment?
A43: The first commandment requires us to know and acknowledge God to be the only true God, and our God, and to worship and glorify him accordingly. 

Q44: Which is the second commandment?
A44: The second commandment is, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”

Q45: What is required in the second commandment?
A45: The second commandment requires the receiving, observing,and keeping pure and entire all such religious worship and ordinances as God has appointed in his Word.

Q46: What is forbidden in the second commandment?
A46: The second commandment forbids the worshipping of God by images,or any other way not appointed in his Word. 

• From Worship Under the Word by Don Carson: 

Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so. This side of the Fall, human worship of God properly responds to the redemptive provisions that God has gra- ciously made. While all true worship is God-centered, Christian wor- ship is no less Christ-centered. Empowered by the Spirit and in line with the stipulations of the new covenant, it manifests itself in all our living, finding its impulse in the gospel, which restores our relationship with our Redeemer-God and therefore also with our fellow image- bearers, our co-worshipers. Such worship therefore manifests itself both in adoration and in action, both in the individual believer and incorporate worship, which is worship offered up in the context of the body of believers, who strive to align all the forms of their devout ascription of all worth to God with the panoply of new covenant man- dates and examples that bring to fulfillment the glories of antecedent revelation and anticipate the consummation.

Learn more:

1. John A. Broadus: Worship
2. D. A. Carson: Worship Under the Word
3. Kyle Borg: Disciples Worship God
4. Fred Zaspel: Gazing on His Beauty
5. R. C. Sproul: How Should We Then Worship?
6. Kevin DeYoung: A Theology of Worship
7. Brian Croft: Five Essential Reasons for Christians to Gather in Public Worship

Related terms:

• corporate prayer
• liturgy
• Lord’s Supper
• preaching
• regulative principle of worship

Filed under Ecclesiology

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Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured as a Theological Term of the Week? Email your suggestion using the contact button in the navigation bar above. 

Clicking on the Theological Terms button will take you to an alphabetical list of all the theological terms.