Is the classical understanding of God tenable? GERALD BRAY ISBN 0-85364-909-X I 9 780853 649090 THE PERSONAL GOD Gerald Bray paternoster press Copyright© 1998 Gerald Bray First published in 1998 by Paternoster Press 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Paternoster Press is an irriprint of Paternoster Publishing, P.O. Box 300, Carlisle, Cumbria, CA3 OQS, U.K. · http://www.paternoster-publishing.com The right of Gerald Bray to be identified as the Author of this W ork has been asserted by him in accordance with Copyright, Designsand Patents Act 1988. All rights rese1·ved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, rewrding or otherivi~e, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the U.K. such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WlP 9HE. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-85364-909-X Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder and Stoughton Limited. All rights reserved. 'NIV' is a registered trademark of the International ßible Soc1ety UK trademark number 1448790 Cover Design by Forum Marketing, Newcastle upon Tyne Typeset by WestKey Ltd., Falmouth, Cornwall Printed in Great Britain by Caledonian International Book Manufacturing Ltd., Glasgow Contents 1. Introduction 1 Why this book has been written 1 The obje<.:tiun tu dassical theism and the proposed alternative 5 2. The God of the Bible 9 Creation and providence 9 The covenant of grace and faith 14 The development of the covenant 16 Jesus and the renewal of the covenant 20 Doing and being 25 Summary and conclusion 27 J· '1 Am What 1 Am' - The Ontological Imperative 29 Is revelation necessary? 29 From revelation to theology 31 The name and identity uf God 38 What is God like? 41 God is love 44 Talking about God 48 4. 'I Am Has Sent Me To You' - The Personal Dimension 55 The personhood of God 55 Relating to God 65 Becoming like God 71 The openness of God 73 Index 75 1 Introduction Why this book has heen written This book was originally commissioned as a response to another work, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Tradi tional Understanding of God, which was written by five North American professors of theology in 1994.1 lt was published by lnter-Varsity Press in the United States and by Paternoster Pub lishing Company in the United Kingdom and received wide publicity at the time because of its untraditional approach to the Christian doctrine of God. Following a number of critical re views, 2 the British publishers decided to publish a response to it and asked me if 1 would undertake that task. No conditions were placed on this invitation other than that the book should be short (about 25,000 words) and produced quickly enough to reach the public before The Openness of God disappeared from view. However, it would be fair to say that the general understanding 1 Clark Pinnock (McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario), Rich ard Rice (La Sierra University, Riverside, California),John Sanders (Oak Hills Bible College, Bemidji, Minnesota), William Hasker (Huntington College, Huntington, Indiana) and David Basinger (Roberts Wesleyan College, Rochester, New York). 2 See especially those by Roger Olson, Douglas Kelly, Timothy George and Alister McGrath, published together in Christianity Today on 9 January 1995, and the one by Frederick Leahy in the April 1997 issue of Evangelicals Now. 2 The Personal God was that my response would come from a traditional standpoint and be acceptable to those who criticized the radicalism of the original work. Books, however, tend to have a life of their own, and no doubt many who read this will never have seen The Openness of God. One thinks, for example, of J. I. Packer's well-known Fundamentillism and the Word of God, which was originally written in response to Gabriel Hebert's Fundamental ism and the Church of God, which had in turn been inspired by Billy Graham's mission to London in 1954 and which is now all but forgotten. Packer's book, on the other hand, is still in print and there must be many thousands who have read it and know no more of Hebert's 'text than what they have found there. 1 cannot pretend that The Personal Gud will have a similar future, but 1 ha.ve felt it important to bcar in mind the needs of readers who, although they may be concerned with the fundamen tal issues at stake, are unfamiliar with the immediate cause of the book's composition and will not read the work it was intended as a response to. Reviews of The Openness of God have taken up particular details in it which have been the cause of controversy and concern. This book will also deal with these points, but within a more general framework. lt is not intended to he a direct critique of The Openness of God in the way that a book review would be. fo order to do justice to my commission from the puhlisher, 1 have taken the following approach. First, 1 have ttied to under stand what it is that the theologians who wrote The Openness of God are trying to communicate tö the Christian public„ and particularly to the evangelkal wing uf the church, to whom thc book is specifically addressed. 1 have then gone on to outline what 1 see as the essential framework for any doctrine of God, whether it is 'evangelical' or not. Readers will of course notice that the author is writing from that standpoint, but the questions raised and the answers proposed take us beyond the parameters öf any one branch of Christianity and reach out to embrace the whole. Traditional Christians who are Roman Catholic, Eastern Ortho dox or non-evangelical Protestants might wish to phrase some things differently, but 1 hope that in the pages which follow they will all recognize the common faith which we share. At the same Introduction 3 time, 1 hope that non-traditional readers, while they will no doubt disagree with many of the things expressed here, will nevertheless see that this is not simply a reiteratlon of a standard line which . they have rejetted, but an attempt to restate the faith once delivered to the saints in a way which addresses their concerns with the seriousness they deserve. To state the problem briefly, the authors of The Openness of God, in common with many modern theologians, are unhappy with what they regard as the 'traditional doctrine of God'. Of course it is possible to quarrel with their definition of this, and even to question whether what is commonly known as 'classical theism' is really what most Christian writers through the ages have thought and taught. lt is particularly worrying to note that what they appear to be doing in fact is writing a critique of the Puritan divine Stephen Charnock (1628-80).3 lt is no criticism of him to say that his book provides a very slender base as the chief source for the 'traditional doctrine', and one which has never carried any official weight in the church. Other traditional writers may or may not agree with what Charnock says, but very few of them would have taken his views into account when writing, and there is no school of Charnock in the sense that there are schools of Aquinas, Luther and Calvin. lt would have been better if the authors of The Openness of God had ·c hosen a more representative source for their assertions of what the traditional doctrine is, 4 though of course there can be no doubt that Charnock was trying to defend his understanding of it. the authors of The Openness of God also belong to a type of Protestantism which not only rejects the authority of the church's tradition, but sets it up in contrast to the teaching of Scripture. At times it seems that in their minds the Bible stands in sharp conflict with the history of Christian theology, even 3 Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God (reprint, Grand Rapids, 1979). 4 .In such matters it is usually best to take some ecclesiastical confession of faith, such as the Westminster Confession of 1647, rather than the writings of any one individual. 4 The Personal God though all genuinely Christian theologians have regarded the right interpretation of Scriptural doctrine as their primary task. Perhaps they' did get some things wrong, and of course none of us is perfect, but it is hard to believe that in the late twentieth century a few radicals have arrived at a truth which has escaped generations of sincere searchers. lt may well be that the modern age is asking different questions, which must be addtessed in a fresh way, but that is not initself sufficient ground for denying the validity of the inherited tradition. lt is at least possible that what theologians of an earlier time were trying to express can be restated in such a way as to meet modern concerns, without calling their faithfulness to Scripture into question. The authors of The Openness of God are rightly cuncerm:J Lu avoid a method of reaJing the Bible which is normally called 'proof-texting'. This involves taking verses at randoin, out of context, and using them to support whatever it is that one wishes to say. They accuse the classical tradition of dring an almost endless number of biblical texts in support of a doctrine of God which is fundamentally unbiblical.because it neglects the under lying spirit and direction of. Scripture. Of course, it is always possible to do this, as the fourth-century Arians demonstrated. By assembling a wide range of Bible verses taken out of context, they were able to 'prove' that the Scriptures taught that the Son of God was a creature, inferior to the Father, who alone was truly God. But those who criticize such an approach have to show that what they are proposing is really more faithful to the inner meaning of the Bible than what they are attacking, and it is more than doubtful whether the authors of The Openness of God have succeeded in doing this. Such a demonstration would require a much more extensive treatment of the subject than they have given it, but even if we accept this limitation, there are problems with the method they adopt and the conclusions which they come to which must make us pause. As they quite rightly recognize, being 'biblical' is not as easy as it sounds, and those who try to achieve this aim without taking the church's theological tradition into account may well. end up with a pattem of belief which is less profound and less