Doctrine of God

Theology and wisdom both begin and end with the study of God. Indeed, the knowledge and enjoyment of God are, as the Westminster Confession observes, the purpose for which human beings were made. It is only by knowing God that we can come to a proper understanding of the world and our place in it (Prov 9:10; Aquinas, ST Ia.1.7). And for this reason, what we think about God is of utmost importance. As A.W. Tozer memorably wrote, “the history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.”

“God is who He is in His works,” wrote Karl Barth, and “we cannot discern the being of God in any other way than by looking where God gives us Himself to see, and therefore by looking at his works.” Erroneous understandings of God abound. The prevalence of idolatry in the biblical narrative makes that clear enough. For this reason, Christian theology must take care to conform its speech and understanding of God to the particularities of God’s own self-presentation. In Christian doctrine, we are not simply interested in “God”, but in a particular God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who raised Jesus from the dead. This leads to the first and most important principle of Christian study of God: whatever we say about the being of God must be determined by the acts of God and by the authoritative witness to those acts in the canon of Scripture.

The second principle central to the Christian study of God is the recognition of the fundamental distinction between God and creation. God is not a being in the world. As Stanley Hauerwas likes to say, “God is not a part of the metaphysical furniture of the universe.” To the contrary, God is Being itself, the uncreated Creator. Because of this, one duty of theology is to speak of God’s transcendence over the world. And traditionally, this has been done by speaking of what God is not. God is not finite; God is not divisible; God is not subject to overwhelming passions (God is “without body, parts, or passions” as Article I of the 39 Articles puts it). This way of speaking of God’s transcendence by saying what God is not is called the “way of negation” (via negativa).

Theology does not end there, however. Theology also speaks positively of God (via positiva) by describing the attributes of God—goodness, wisdom, power, justice, mercy, love, etc.—in light of God’s own self-revelation. Described positively, God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” as He himself declared to Moses (Exod 34:6). Even with these positive descriptions of God, however, we must be careful to safeguard the uniqueness and transcendence of God. This is why theologians have often described positive speech about God as analogical. We can know God truthfully by way of analogy because God has made Himself known, but, as the Fourth Lateran Council noted, even in our recognition of the similarity of God’s perfections to our own, we must always keep in mind the “greater dissimilarity” that exists between us and God.

Finally, the Christian doctrine of God finds its fullest expression in the belief of God as Trinity, one God in three persons, and in our belief in Jesus Christ, the man in whose “face” the glorious being of God has been most perfectly revealed (2 Cor 4:6).

The Doctrine of God includes two subcategories

1. Trinity
2. Christology

Recommended Reading

Gregory of Nazianzus. Orations 27-28.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia.2-26.

J.I. Packer, Knowing God . Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973.

Resources for Further Study

A.W. Tozer. The Knowledge of the Holy. New York: HarperCollins, 1961.

Hermann Cremer. The Christian Doctrine of the Divine Attributes . Translated by Robert Price. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016.

Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics, Vol 2.1, Sections 28-30: The Doctrine of God . Study Edition 8. London, UK: T&T Clark, 2010.

Katherine Sonderegger. Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Doctrine of God . Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2015.

Christopher R.J. Holmes. The Lord is Good: Seeking the God of the Psalter . Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018.