Round the Sphere Again: Seeing Things

Hell
Scripture gives us the sense of hell by picturing it in many different ways (Gentle Reformation). 

The Past and the Future
I tried to write a description of Viewing the river from the bridge by Steve Hays at Triablogue but couldn’t. I’ll say this: You should read it.

The Universe
Marc Cortez explains Jonathan Edward’s view of the universe (Credo Magazine). Edwards taught that God “re-creates the universe every moment,” but God’s “actions are so faithful that we can talk about natural ‘laws.’” For instance,

If I let go of my coffee mug, it will fall. That’s the law of gravity. But what we mean by “law” here is simply that God acts faithfully so that every time a mug is dropped in one moment it falls in the next. Studying the laws of nature is nothing more than studying God’s own actions in the universe.

Edwards, then, saw “every created thing as an immediate expression of God’s glory,” and some call him a Christian panentheist because of it. Read the article and tell me if you think he is one.

Theological Term of the Week

simplicity of God
The quality of God wherein he is not composed of parts, but unified and indivisible; also called unity of God.

• From scripture:

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, [7] keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7 ESV)

• From The Belgic Confession:

Article 1: The Only God 

We all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God — eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty; completely wise, just, and good, and the overflowing source of all good.

• From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem:

God himself is a unity, a unified and completely integrated whole person who is infinitely perfect in all of these attributes.

…In terms of practical application, this means that we should never think, for example, that God is a loving God at one point in history and a just or wrathful God at another point in history. He is the same God always, and everything he says or does is fully consistent with all his attributes. It is not accurate to say, as some have said, that God is a God of justice in the Old Testament and a God of love in the New Testament. God is and always has been infinitely just and infinitely loving as well, and everything he does in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament is completely consistent with both of those attributes.

…Moreover, the doctrine of the unity of God should caution us against attempting to single out any one attribute of God as more important than all the others. At various times people have attempted to see God’s holiness, or his love, or his self-existence, or his righteousness, or some other attribute as the most important attribute of his being. … It is God himself in his whole being who is supremely important, and it is God himself in his whole being whom we are to seek to know and to love.

1. Blue Letter Bible: What Is Meant by the Simplicity of God?
2. Kevin DeYoung: Theological Primer: The Simplicity of God
3. Thomas Boston:  Of the Unity of God
4. Jules Grisham: Divine Simplicity
5. R. C. Sproul, Jr: The Lord Is One: The Simplicity of God (audio)
6. Dr. James Dolezal: God Without Parts: The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (mp3)

Related terms:

• aseity
• immutability

Filed under God’s Nature and His Work

Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Safeguarding God's Simplicity

In Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution, the authors make the point that the doctrine of penal substitution preserves the harmony of God’s attributes, thus safeguarding his simplicity. 

[Penal substitution] preserves our understanding of God as a perfect being, all of whose attributes are in perfect harmony: love, goodness, justice, holiness, truthfulness and so on. It would be misleading to say something like ‘At the cross God’s mercy triumphed over his justice.’ That would imply that a conflict existed between God’s attributes, such that his mercy ‘won’ while his justice was frustrated. By contrast, penal substitution maintains God’s mercy and his justice, his love and his truthfulness. All are perfectly fulfilled at the cross. The writer of Psalm 85 expresses this beautifully, declaring that when the Lord saves his people, 

Love and faithfulness meet together;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.
(v. 10)

In more technical terms, penal substitution preserves what is often called the doctrine of God’s simplicity. … [This] refers to the truth that he is not composed of different ‘parts’ as though he could be dismantled somehow into separate components. We cannot speak of God’s love as though it were a ‘part’ of God, separate from his holiness. Rather, all of God’s attributes are in harmony with each other: his holiness is a loving holiness, a merciful holiness; his justice is a truthful justice, a holy justice, and so on. Within this framework, none of God’s attributes should be regarded as more ‘central’ or ‘essential’ than any of the others.

Most often, I think, those who argue against a penal substitutionary atonement make God’s love his central attribute. “God is love,” is the assertion; it’s love that wins, even over God’s other attributes. There’s no need for his justice to be expressed or his wrath to be satisfied. Or so they say.

The beauty of penal substitution, is that God wins because all that he is—all of his attributes—“are perfectly fulfilled at the cross.”