An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
Greetings, I’m Fred Zaspel and welcome to another Author Interview here on Books At a Glance. Today we talk to Dr. Gerald Bray about his excellent contribution to Crossway’s new series, Short Studies in Systematic Theology. His book is entitled, simply, The Attributes of God: An Introduction.
Gerald, welcome, and congratulations on a wonderful little book – it is really a great read.
Bray:
Thank you very much!
Zaspel:
First, we hear more and more today about the “classical” doctrine of God. What is that, and what are some ways it may have been mischaracterized?
Bray:
The classical doctrine of God is usually used for the kind of doctrine of God that was developed originally in the middle ages by the medieval theologians, like Thomas Aquinas and others. Reconfigured in the 17th century by Protestants who took up the methods of their medieval forbearers. Grafting it on to a more scriptural basis. It tends to concentrate on abstract things: what God is, what He does, the decrees of God (predestination, etc.) that is basically what it is. It has been criticized in modern times by people who prefer a more relational approach. The so-called classical doctrine of God does not allow for feelings in God or for God to share your pain. Whether the word classical doctrine of God is appropriate, I am not sure. I prefer to say traditional.
Zaspel:
You make the point that God’s existence is different from the existence of anything else – how is that? And what is meant by the expression “absolute being”?
Bray:
God’s existence is different than that of anything else because God is the Creator and everything else is a creature apart of creation. That is a very fundamental difference. To understand traditional Christian theology, it must be in the forefront of your mind. The difference between the Creator who made us and the object including people who He has made. Therefore, they owe their existence to Him. In this way you and I are creatures, we live in a finite world of time and space. We have a cause to our existence and being. We were brought into the world by our parents. We will go out of this world at some point. We live in a transitory phase if you like, it might be long in our point of view, but it is a short period seen from God’s angle. God is outside the world of time and space. He does not owe His being or existence to anybody else. His existence will never end and is in a completely different realm.
Zaspel:
What is meant by the expression absolute being?
Bray:
In this context it means He has no cause, He cannot be changed or reduced. God is who God is. No power or force outside of Him can change Him. We say that God is, as indeed the Bible says, in Exodus 3. God appears to Moses and says to, “go to the people of Israel and say I Am has sent me to you.” This is the fundamental reality; it cannot be altered or change in any way. In that sense it’s absolute, not relative.
Zaspel:
This is very basic but clarify for us the distinction between God’s “being” and his “attributes.”
Bray:
Gods being answers the question of what God is. He is this eternal being who cannot be altered in any way. His attributes are the characteristics of that being. Now in God the being and the attributes merge into the same thing. If for example, you say God is eternal, eternity is an attribute of God. He is outside of time. It’s identical to His being because there is not part of Him that’s eternal and part of Him that is not. He does not acquire eternity in the way you and I do when we inherit eternal life in Christ. It cannot be distinguished or separated from Him. Eternity or invisibility refer to different aspects of His being. They come with the whole of God. He is not partly any of His attributes. Anything you say as a characteristic is true of His entire being.
Zaspel:
How is your book or your approach to this study distinctive?
Bray:
It puts into a systematic order, the question of God’s being and characteristics in a way that has never been done in modern times. The only theologian who has sat down and done this in a systematic way was John of Damascus in the 8th century. That strikes people as a bit surprising. That is in fact true. He had an idea in his mind of what you had to say about God, what He is, what He is like, how He stands in relation to time and space. In systematic form presented like that. Since then, theologians of every stripe have discussed attributes of God. But they have not thought about it in a systematic way. Today when you read modern systematic theology, you get to the section on the attributes of God and you get the impression that they wrote down what was on their mind without thinking about it systematically at all. That is what I have done. There have been people in the past who have talked about the difference between what they call, the communicable attributes (characteristics of God that we share with Him) versus incommunicable attributes (characteristics we cannot share with Him.) For example, invisibility, our relationship with God doesn’t mean we become invisible. But holiness, the Bible tells us the will of God is our sanctification, “Be holy as I am holy,” says the Lord. We are meant to share in holiness in a way that reflects our relationship with God.
Theologian Herman Bavinck who said in his systematic theology that the so-called communicable attributes are in fact incommunicable. God is holy in a way that is different than the way we are called to be holy. We are not holy beings like God is. Human nature is not going to be transformed into something else, like becoming an angel. It is manifested in a different way. Holiness comes to us in terms of obedience to His will which comes about by understanding His mind and purposes. For me to be holy means to have the mind of Christ and understand what God wants of me and to obey Him. We learn how to conform thoughts and will that is set out in His gospel. If I do that then I might have some claim to be holy. Any such claim that I might make would be entirely dependent on His grace and working in my life. I would not change as a being. I would still be a human being living in time and space and still a sinner. We are saved by grace not transformed into some kind of high level of being.
Zaspel:
And yet there is a distinction because God will say, “Be holy as I am holy.” He will not say, “be eternal as I am eternal.”
Bray:
Yes, this is why we have to make this kind of distinction. It is a question of how you describe it. I have taken, Christology, the doctrine of Christ, one divine person in two natures, divine and human. This is the model we start off with. In terms of His divine nature, we are completely different from God. In relational terms, because we are made in His image, we have a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ. Its at the relational level that we understand any kind of connection between ourselves and God. Something like holiness must be read in that context. It gets complicated in a way because you can say in and of Himself God is not really holy. Or the word holiness does not apply to God in Himself because holiness implies separation or difference. It implies something that is not holy that we are supposed to stay away from. If God is the only being in existence before the creation of the world, that word does not apply to Him because there is nothing that is not like Him. Only when He creates something that isn’t like Him, the word has a meaning. This is how we must think of it.
Zaspel:
Explain for us the distinction you draw between his “essential” and “relational” attributes.
Bray:
That is the difference between God’s being or nature. The way He relates to us or we relate to Him. We can only know and share in the relational attributes of God. We cannot enter His essential attributes because we are creatures and not like Him.
Zaspel:
You make a further distinction between God’s essential and relational attributes as they are in themselves and as we perceive them. Explain this for us.
Bray:
Things that would be true of God whether creation exists or not. Leave creation aside for a minute. What is God in Himself in eternity. That is His invisibility, omnipotence. God in relation to us is how we perceive Him. Which is not always the same thing. They are connected but it is the way we express them. If we use the term the Lordship of Christ. This word Lord has no meaning apart from creation because there is nothing to be Lord of. God is who God is. For us, it’s an all-important meaning. It is the way we understand the sovereignty and omnipotence of God. He is always these things whether He is functioning as Lord or not.
Zaspel:
Two divine attributes that are often found difficult to understand are divine simplicity and impassibility. Talk to us first about divine simplicity.
Bray:
The easiest way to understand divine simplicity is to think of the word as you would in chemistry. The word simple, to say God is simple, is to say He is not a compound. Hydrogen and oxygen are simple. You put them together and you have water. It’s not simple, but a compound. If God were like water, He would be taken apart and analyzed into His component parts. Such a God would be a construct and not the ultimate source of all being. You would have to go behind something to find what that underlying element or substance is. When we talk about the simplicity of God, we say there is nothing behind or beyond him. He is not a compound of other things. Which somehow coalesced to create God as we know Him. Therefore, He cannot be taken apart or analyzed in that way. That is what simplicity means. I suppose the word simple has several other meanings. It can mean easy, or unintelligent. Not in the case of God. The analogy from something like chemistry is the best way to go about knowing the meaning. He cannot be taken apart.
Zaspel:
And how are we to understand God as “impassible”?
Bray:
This is a clear case of the difference between the relational and the essential aspect. If you look at God in His essence and being, there is no power, force or other being which can harm or modify God in some way. He is sovereign and so His impassibility is a part of this. Nothing can harm or hurt Him or have power over Him in that way. Connected with His unchangingness, immutability, He is always the same. He does not get weaker or stronger. If you suffer it can be perceived as weakness. Why do we suffer? There is something in us that cannot resist pain. If you look at it in terms of nature and being then God must be impassible because if He is not, He is not sovereign or immutable. He can be affected or weakened by suffering. Where the problem comes in, people say, “if you have a God like that then He has no feeling or understanding. How can I relate to a God like that?”
Various analogies can help. First, because God has made us, we are His creatures. He does understand us and knows what we are made from. Even though He does not suffer like we do. Secondly, if you are sick in a hospital bed and your doctor comes to examine you. What do you want him to do? Do you want him to jump into the bed next to you and say I know how you feel? If he did that you would not trust him. You would want a doctor who knows what is wrong, but you don’t want him to have the same pain. You want him to get you out of your pain and how to relieve it. Another analogy I use in my book is, if you fall down a hole and someone comes along and sees you down there. What do you want them to do? Do you want them to jump in and be at the bottom with you or get a rope and pull you out? You want them to understand what the problem is but also be able to solve it and not share it.
Zaspel:
In both of those illustrations, you want the other to be somewhat above you
Bray:
Yes, and capable of resolving your problem. Otherwise, what is the point. If we are all in this together. It’s one of those things that sounds good to say, “I want a God who understand my pain but when you work out the implications it does not work. It would not do any good. Love is a very good example. We think of love in emotional terms. Whereas when we say God is love. He is love in Himself. This is the wonder of the doctrine of the Trinity. God did not need to create the world to have something to love, to manifest love. You might say it was only by creating the world that He manifest Himself as Lord or holy. But not love. Because love is realized in Himself, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s not something that comes and goes. It’s an integral part of their being. It never increases or diminishes. It is perfection. When we come to know the love of God, we enter into this. The way in which we know the love of God, the Holy Spirit, brings into our hearts the knowledge and experience of the Son who died for our salvation to fulfill the will of the Father. That is something we do not stress enough. We talk about the atonement, Christ dying on the cross as something He did for us. We forget He is primarily doing it for the Father. This is the Father’s will. The moment of crisis in Jesus’ life is not on the cross, but in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Garden is where He says, “not my will but your will be done.” At this point the Bible says He sweats blood. The atoning blood is there. The rest is working out the fulfillment of the Father’s will and the decision to do that. Because in Gethsemane it is the last time when Jesus could have escaped but He did not. We know from the beginning He was going to do that anyway. It is when He accepted the Father’s will. We see what the Father and Son’s love for each other really is. I put it in a crude way, but He was sorting walking through this experience of death and resurrection to show this was the purpose all along. John 17, the high priestly prayer of Jesus, “Father, glorify me now with the glory I had with you from the foundation of the world.” This is what is going to work itself out through the Spirit we are brought into the life and love. We can share it in some degree which is a miracle really.
Zaspel:
Looking at God’s sovereignty, the text will often say things like David displeased the Lord or God was provoked to anger. In Hosea there is this back and forth and responding of God being grieved or what not. How can I be careful not to misrepresent God as contingent and yet faithful also to the way he is represented there in the text?
Bray:
You have to say this is part of our personal relationship with God. When I do something that displeases God, it’s because I know I have gone against His will. Of course, He will make that clear to me. I must deal with the consequences of my disobedience. This is the intimacy of the personal relationship. You can compare it to children and parents. Children disobey the parents; they get angry and punish the child. But if you are a parent you realize that you perceive it differently. The anger of the parent is not anger in the absolute sense. It is a form of love. The child may not be able to appreciate it at the time. The parent will have to demonstrate, no parent likes to punish the child. If you do not punish, they grow up to be animals and you do not want that either. God is our Father. That is the picture which is presented in the Scriptures. It is part of the complexity of relationships. We are not slaves or robots but children. There is a dialogue and interaction. We are still children; we do not tell God what to do. We grow and we learn.
Zaspel:
Your book has an Appendix in which you provide a rather substantial summary of the study of God’s attributes through church history. What do we learn from that survey?
Bray:
I must confess when I originally wrote the book that was the first chapter, not the appendix. We had a bit of an argument with the editors who did not want it in at all. It needed to be there. Unless you understand how the attributes of God have been understood over time, you cannot really understand why I wrote this book which is to sort out the mess. I have taken just two very prominent evangelical theologians. I have absolutely nothing against them, but I have just taken out of their systematic theologies the way they have treated God’s attributes and put them side by side in a column and you see immediately that its incoherent. The order is not the same, some of the so-called attributes are questionable. I am not blaming them but just saying this is the way the attributes of God have been treated for 100s of years in a nonsystematic way. People do not know what they are talking about a lot of the time. I want people to see and understand. This is an aspect of out theological thinking that has been understudied and not properly analyzed. I am not saying John of Damascus is perfect and we must follow him. This is an approach to the subject that has been missing unfortunately. A lot of confusion and problems have occurred because we have not had a properly systematic approach to begin with. We need to get our framework right. We can argue these other points as we go along.
Zaspel:
Before I let you go, give us a brief overview of your book and how you approach your subject.
Bray:
The initial approach is the historical aspect. Start in the appendix to see where we come from and how we got to where we are. Because the attributes of God in the Scriptures are not discussed as such. Later, in the New Testament, Paul or someone will say God is immortal or invisible. They will use these words sparingly. Most of the time in the Scriptures from Genesis onwards, it is the history of a personal encounter with God rather than a philosophical encounter with a supreme being and what He is like. Traditional doctrine of the attributes of God is an attempt to explain biblical thinking, or who the biblical God is to people who have a very different background. In the ancient world the Greeks and Romans, but today people who are secular people. They think in material terms. Rather than a personal encounter with a supreme being. This is where we start from to understand if you take that approach, the so-called natural theology approach you will end up saying God is completely different and unknowable.
Having dealt with those essential attributes I go from there and say God is not unknowable, not by discovery but from revelation. I can run around looking at the created order and conclude someone must have made it. The old argument about the watch and watch maker. You know someone has made it. You cannot tell what kind of being the watch maker is just by looking at the watch. In the same way, you cannot identify God purely from His creation. You can only identify God by hearing His voice if He chooses to reveal Himself. That is a completely different approach. Its hard for people to understand that but it is also true even in our relationships with other people. If I see another human being just by looking at that person, I can deduce certain things. I can tell whether they are; male or female, old or young, black or white. But I do not actually know anything about the person that is of any real use. Unless the person reveals himself, who he really is. Then we can have a relationship. Observation is not a relationship. I move from what we can observe to that level.
Zaspel:
We are talking to Dr. Gerald Bray about his new book, The Attributes of God: An Introduction. As you can tell already it’s very well-informed, and it’s also made accessible and, in a bite-sized read. For my money it is the place to start. Read and learn about the God you worship.
Gerald, thanks so much for talking to us today.
Bray:
Thank you so much!
