The Doctrine of God: We all Agree!

To a certain extent, every major Christian group agrees on the Doctrine of God. That is, at least in the big picture, we all agree that God is

• Sovereign 
• Eternal 
• Omnipotent 
• Omniscient 
• Omnipresent ¹ 
• Triune 
• Immutable 
• Impassible 
• Simple
• Transcendent 
• Holy 
• Just 
• Merciful
• Love 

(and any other attributes that are not coming to mind at the moment)

Again, while there may be disagreement in the details, no Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, Arminian, or Catholic that I know is likely to disagree with this list. ²

And yes, I understand that a Doctrine of God is much more than a list of attributes. Work with me here, people.

The difference arises when we ask “OK, now what?” Here the Reformed tradition distinguishes itself. While other traditions affirm an orthodox Doctrine of God, they more or less stop there, treating it as closed system. At most they sprinkle an attribute here or there to bolster an argument. They don’t run with it like the Reformed do. For the Reformed, the Doctrine of God is their Newton’s Laws. It is not an exaggeration to say that the entirety of Reformed Theology rests upon the Doctrine of God, and rather than bringing it out when it suits them, the Reformed tradition uses it (along with scripture of course) as the starting point from which they derive all other doctrine.

This is, in my opinion, right and proper. Which doesn’t mean it cannot be abused. It can be abused, for example, when a proper Doctrine of God is elevated to a cardinal doctrine.³ It may indeed be a critical doctrine for pastors and teachers, but it is not necessary for salvation. Now of course that is a safe claim because nothing is necessary for salvation except God’s sovereign decree. But humanly speaking (and in a normative sense) what is minimally needed is a minimalist gospel: a recognition of your sin, a desire to repent, and the acknowledgement that the blood of Christ paid for your sins.

It is not outrageous to speculate that the majority of the saints before us, with us, and in the future will not have a worked out Doctrine of God. The thief on the cross is one example, at least from what we know.

This reliance on the Doctrine of God as foundational explains, in part, why the Reformed tradition devotes so much of its energy to the Old Testament, for it is in the Old Testament that we see the grand, sweeping lessons about the attributes of God and the character of God. When we get to the New Testament it is almost (but not totally) as if a solid Doctrine of God is assumed, and any remedial lessons are handled by Old Testament references.

 The Doctrine of God can also be muddled (not necessarily, but it can be) by the application of secular philosophy. Philosophy is subjective, but it is also an academic discipline with methods that are mastered by really smart people. This makes it insidious in the "that sounds so deep it must be right" sense. ⁴ Philosophy builds competing models, much like science does. The difference is that science has a methodology of testing the models, while philosophy does not. In philosophy, it is just which model can convince you in an argument. Philosophy applied to Christian theology has been enormously beneficial. The Reformation itself can be thought of, in human terms, as an application of the philosophy of the enlightenment to exegesis. ⁵ However without a method (beyond arguing) of testing we get, as an example, philosophically based classical apologetics and its diametrically opposed yet also philosophically based presuppositional apologetics. At most one is correct. It is also (arguably) philosophy applied to theology that resulted in the New Perspective of Paul.

So--what does this all mean?

I don't know.

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¹ And that exhausts the lists of omnis. Don’t let an atheist apologist add omnibenevolent into the list. They think they are being clever, and they are about to spring the Epicurean “paradox” on you and declare victory. It is fun to tell them that the solution is simple: God is not omnibenevolent. For example it is certainly not for their “good” that some are consigned to hell. Nor was it for the good of the “ites” that Joshua was commanded to slaughter them. The bible doesn’t promise that God is benevolent toward all, it only promises that he is benevolent to those who love him. And to make matters “worse” those who love him only do so because they were first loved by God. Sorry, them’s the rules! When the atheist hears this, a common occurrence is a rapid shift from the sublime to the absurd, with the atheist insisting that you are a heretic for not agreeing with his necessary presupposition of divine omnibenevolence.

² I have now clue what the Eastern tradition believes, about the Doctrine of God or really about anything. The only thing I know, from attending weddings and festivals, is that they have the most beautiful churches. A complete lack of knowledge about the Eastern tradition is one of many grand canyon sized chasms in my knowledge.

³ It is not usually made cardinal in a straightforward crude manner which would at least have the virtue of honesty. It is usually done via that most despicable of fallacious arguments: the slippery slope.

⁴ There really is no such thing as Christian Philosophy. That term just refers to the conflation of some school (pick one) of secular philosophy and Christian theology.

⁵ Ironically, many modern Christian philosophers ⁴  are attempting to revise history and discount the role of the enlightenment, even arguing that enlightenment thinking is at the root of the modernity that is behind their false notion (reborn every generation, but this time it’s for real, no I'm not kidding!) that the church is in an existential crisis. Because, well, what is in the world is, I guess, more powerful than God?