Theology Notes Class One Student Notes Why Studying Theology is so important In preparation for this study: Read Tozer, chapter 1; Pink, chapter 1. Look up all verses and make notes next to them. Why important? Need to know God what life is all about Jeremiah 9:23-24 Jeremiah 31:31-34 Philippians 3:7-10 Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, 13, Everything is treated with God as center and starting-point. Under him all things are subsumed. To him all things are traced back. It is ever God and God alone whose glory in creation and redemption, in nature and in grace, in the world and in the church, it must meditate upon and describe. It is the knowledge of him, of him alone, which it must display and show forth. Few really understand who God is Read Romans 3:9-18 How much do sinners understand of who God is? Read Job 40-42 How much do believers really understand about who God is? Check out the great quote in Pink (Attributes, 9, first paragraph) That God is great in wisdom Write down your response: We tend to make God look like ourselves Luther wrote to Erasmus, Your thoughts of God are too human. Psalm 50:21 1
It determines how we will live as individuals and as a church. Check out the great quote in Tozer (Knowledge, 1, first paragraph). Write down your response: C. H. Spurgeon Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued, investigation of the great subject of the Deity. The most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ and Him crucified and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity The proper study of the Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can enlarge the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the doings, and the existence of the great God which he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can comprehend and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-contentment, and go on our way with the thought, Behold I am wise. But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumbline cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought, I am but of yesterday and know nothing. [Quoted in Pink, Attributes, 88-89] Tozer (Knowledge, 114) When viewed from the perspective of eternity, the most critical need of this hour may well be that the Church should be brought back from her long Babylonian captivity and the name of God be glorified in her again as of old. [the last words of his book] There is a glorified Man on the right hand of the Majesty in heaven faithfully representing us there. We are left for a season among men; let us faithfully represent Him here. Wrong thoughts about God are idolatry and break the commandments of God. Exodus 20:1-17 What do you notice about the Ten Commandments and the emphasis on keeping the right view of who God is? See Tozer (Knowledge, 3, last paragraph) Let us (Write down your response) See Pink (Attributes, 28-29, last words on 28 going into page 29) The god who is (Write down your response) What else did you read in Tozer or Pink that struck you? 2
Read over each of the following views and come ready to discuss their merit and flaws (whenever possible use Scripture in your refutation): [notes taken from Christian Apologetics and When Skeptics Ask by Geisler) Ultimate Reality Seven Major Worldviews No God(s) One God Many Gods Atheism Polytheism Infinite (No view) Finite Finite Infinite God is identified God is not identified God is identified God is not with the world with the world with the world identified with Panentheism Finite Godism Pantheism the world God does not Perform miracles Deism Theism Brief definitions: Atheism the view that there is no God. Deism the view that God exists, but does not perform miracles. Pantheism the view that all is God. Panentheism the view that God is developing along with the world. Finite Godism the view that God exists but is limited and/or imperfect. Polytheism the view that there are many gods. 3
Since atheism (a theos, no god) defined as I know there is no God is self-defeating, more recent proponents have defined it as a positive affirmation of a set of beliefs which explicitly or implicitly excludes belief in God. [Blackwell Encyclopedia of Christian Thought, 1993]. So, in this sense, they consider themselves not as anti-theists, but as non-theists. Critique One must be have ultimate knowledge to know there is no God. [Thus many atheists have backed off of the statement there is no God.] Many atheistic arguments are reversible into reasons for God. To say there can t be a god because there is so much evil is based on a moral code to determine evil, behind which there must be a moral code giver. Atheism is not able to answer how the personal arose from the impersonal, the actual from the potential or for that matter why there is something rather than nothing at all in existence. 4
Chafer, Theo., 162-3 3 Basic Tenets: 1. God created the world. God made the world, but He just lets it run on natural principles. He oversees human history, but does not intervene. They compare God to a watchmaker who made the watch, wound it up, and then let it run alone. 2. God does not perform miracles. Thomas Jefferson for example cut all the miracles from the Bible. He ended the Gospel of John in chapter 19 with these words, Now, in the place where He was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never a man yet laid. There they laid Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed. [cuts out the resurrection]. 3. God is one. No trinity. Critique How could God not perform miracles, when He performed the greatest miracle of all the creation of the world? They admit God is personal, but then give Him no personal involvement with His creation [if the world is perfect, they say, he wouldn t need to get involved; but that doesn t mean He would not want to since He is personal] God is All and All is God. Hinduism, Taoism, some forms of Buddhism, Christian Science, Unity, Scientology and others. Basic Tenets: God is known not rationally or by sensible observation, but metaphysically. 5
God cannot be expressed in positive terms. He is beyond knowing. They believe in the absolute unity and transcendence of God. God did not created out of nothing, but out of himself (ex Deo). Evil like all creation flows out of God, but is not real. God is not a He, but an It (impersonal). Read this quote below and state what are the ramifications of this viewpoint: Chafer, Theo, 173. Lucan said, Whatsoever thou seest is Jupiter. Seneca inquires, What is God? and answers, He is all that you see, and all that you do not see. Pantheism has become the inheritance of every nation on earth and has cursed the streams of human thought beyond all estimation. It assumes the eternity of matter and the absurdity that matter has power to originate life and spirit. In its idealistic form it contradicts human consciousness and destroys the very ground upon which reason is based and the fundamental method of its own procedure It is promoting the notion that matter is God and God is matter and it is a short step from this to the assertion of the fool that there is no God. It is but a step, likewise, to the worship of any inanimate or animate thing, since the theory contends that all is part of God. The system leads to blasphemy and licentiousness. The basis of every moral distinction is obliterated by it. If all nature is God, then human action is not distinct from God but is the very action of God. The whole category of human crime becomes as worthy as virtue itself. (Chafer, 174-5). Even more passionate are these words from Dr. William Cooke (1862) quoted in Chafer, 176: 6
Critique If reason can tell us nothing about God, then their view is self-defeating, because they just used reason or a rational statement to say there are no reason or rational statements. If God is one and unchanging, then how can we become God. If we can become God, then we were not God and hence changed. But if we changed, how are we God who is perfect? If evil and pain are illusions, why do they seem so real? Mark Twain said this of a Christian Scientist. Nothing exists but Mind? Nothing, she answered. All else is substanceless, all else is imaginary. I gave her an imaginary check, and now she is suing me for substantial dollars. It looks inconsistent. This view is halfway between pantheism and theism also known as process theology. It says that God is to the world as a soul is to a body. The world needs God to exist. He needs it to express himself. So, He is both beyond the world and in it. God is always changing as the world changes. He is in the process of becoming all that He can be. Major Tenets: The world is God s body. God is not the world (pantheism) and is not independent from the world (theism). God is absolute, eternal, and infinite in potentiality but is relative, temporal, and finite in actuality. The world was made out of something eternally there. God simply works with the world in directing it. God is growing in perfections God is not able to overcome all evil. Critique God cannot be both infinite and finite. It must be either or. It is contradictory. If God cannot overcome all evil, what assurance is there that God will reach his potential or that the world will get better [each of which are beliefs of panentheism]? They confuse God s actions that may change with His nature that may not change. How do we know things are changing if we have no objective standard that does not change? [since they view God as changing, He cannot be this standard] 7
This view holds that God is much like the God of the Bible except that He is not perfect. He is limited in His power and nature. Plato had this view. More recently it was popularized by Rabbi Kushner. In dealing with his son s premature death, he wrote: God wants the righteous to live peaceful, happy lives, but sometimes He can t bring that about there are some things that God does not control. Basic Tenets: Since the world is finite, it only takes a finite God to bring it about. Certain natural disasters (volcanoes, earthquakes) are things beyond God s control. [for if He could control it, wouldn t His goodness demand that He do it?] Most would deny miracles. Critique If God is finite, then He also needs a Cause for His existence. The question of evil presupposes a God who is good/perfect or else how could we know what is evil. [a discussion of evil next week]. One thinks of course of the gods of ancient Greece, but polytheism is also present today. It is perhaps best seen in Mormonism. Listen to what Joseph Smith Jr. wrote God himself once was as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! Here then is eternal life to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves the same as all gods have done before you. Basic Tenets: There is more than one God, which can be seen from the multiplicity and chaos of our world. Some say the gods arose from nature, others from man. All gods have a beginning, but no end. The world has been a mixture of good and evil from the beginning. Critique If gods are not eternal, they are not ultimate. So why worship? It cannot be sustained that the universe is eternal. One might expect true God(s) to resemble man, but should they have our imperfections? [God looks like He is made in the image of man]. 8
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