Doctrine of God (Part 2): Doctrine of God (Part 2)

Today we begin our study of the attributes of God. This is really my favorite section of theology. We are going to begin by looking at some of the infinite attributes of God; that is to say, those which are God’s, not in virtue of his personhood, but simply in virtue of his being an infinite being.

In my Defenders 3 lectures I took divine necessity to be entailed by God’s aseity. But because these are conceptually distinct I now want to break out divine necessity and treat it as a distinct attribute. So let’s add a new point to our outline:

2. Necessary Existence

a.  Analysis

1. Scriptural Data

Ever since Aristotle, God has been conceived in Western philosophical theology as a necessarily existent being (ens necessarium). For Aristotle gods necessary existence was synonymous with his eternity. From the time of the Church Fathers Christian theologians have interpreted the revelation of the divine name “I am that I am” (Ex 3.14) to express this same idea.

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations (Ex 3.13-15). 

It is significant that the divine name is not a name given by human beings to God but is revealed by God Himself. Since proper names were understood in ancient Israel to reveal their bearer’s character, God intends thereby to provide a self-revelation to Moses.

The difficulty lies in understanding what the divine name was meant to convey. OT scholars have struggled to come to consensus concerning the import of the divine name revealed to Moses. Indeed, Brevard Childs comments that “Few verses in the entire Old Testament have evoked such heated controversy and such widely divergent interpretations.”[1] Although modern interpreters have largely dismissed the traditional exegesis of this passage as teaching God’s necessary existence, Childs insists that it is far from obvious that the ancient Hebrews had no concept of being, such as seems to come to expression in the divine name. Although commentators have often seen the divine name as an expression to Israel of God’s abiding presence with them, such an interpretation does not at all exclude and might well comprise God’s eternal being as a precondition of His abiding presence. Although it would doubtless be anachronistic to read into the name an expression of God’s necessary existence in a broadly logical sense, ancient Hebrews in general and the Pentateuchal author in particular certainly had the conception of God as one who has never come into being and will never go out of being and therefore as necessary in the Aristotelian sense.

Scripture clearly supports God’s necessary existence in the Aristotelian sense, in virtue of its affirmation of divine aseity, eternity, and supreme power. Today this is often called factual necessity. According to this notion, God exists necessarily in the sense that, given that God exists, it is impossible that He ever came into or will go out of existence.  He is uncaused, eternal, incorruptible, and indestructible.

(2)  Systematic Summary

During the Middle Ages, however, an even more powerful conception of God's necessity emerged:  God's non-existence is logically impossible. This is appropriate to the concept of God because God is the greatest conceivable being. This conception of necessary existence thus lay at the heart of Anselm's ontological argument:  if God’s existence is logically possible, then it follows that He must exist.  On this view God is not merely factually necessary, but logically necessary in His being. St. Anselm’s concept of God as the greatest conceivable being, or a most perfect being, helps to guide systematic theology. A most perfect being – a greatest conceivable being – would be a being which doesn’t exist merely contingently, but one that necessarily exists because it is obviously greater to exist necessarily than to just accidentally happen to exist. This conception of God’s necessity is typically called metaphysical necessity. The concept of God as a metaphysically necessary being came to dominate Western conceptions of God.

Powerful philosophical and theological reasons can be given for taking God's existence to be metaphysically necessary.  Philosophically speaking, whether or not one regards the ontological argument as a successful piece of natural theology, Anselm was right in thinking that the conception of God as the greatest conceivable being implies His necessary existence in the logical sense, since logically contingent existence is not as great as necessary existence. Moreover, various arguments of natural theology, to be discussed later, if successful, go to establish the existence of a metaphysically necessary being. Leibniz’s cosmological argument from contingency, for example, terminates in a metaphysically necessary being, for only such a being can supply an adequate answer to the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" The moral argument for God as a foundation for the objectivity of moral values and duties leads naturally to such a being, since many moral values and principles are not plausibly logically contingent. 

Moreover, theologically speaking, a God who just happens to exist (even eternally and without cause) seems less satisfactory religiously than one whose non-existence is impossible. An attitude of worship and adoration toward God seems inappropriate if God exists accidentally and possesses contingently various great-making properties. Mere factual necessity does not seem to capture the fullness of divine being.

So, in summary, Scripture teaches explicitly that God is at least factually necessary in His being, that is, He is uncaused, eternal, incorruptible, and indestructible. But as great as that is, perfect being theology leads us to extrapolate this attribute to involve metaphysically necessary existence. God exists in every possible world. It is impossible that God not exist. Such a conception of God ought to elicit in us even deeper reverence and awe of who He is.

3. Self-Existence (Aseity)

            a.  Analysis

          (1)  Scriptural Data

The next attribute that we want to examine together is God’s self-existence or, as it is more properly called, God’s aseity. Aseity comes from the Latin words a se which means “by itself” or “in itself.” The idea here is that God exists a se; he simply exists in himself. Or, as I put it here on the outline in English, God is self-existent.

Let’s begin by looking at some of the scriptural data that indicate that God is a self-existent being. Let’s begin in the Old Testament by looking at a passage from the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 40:17-23, 28a. This is Isaiah’s polemic against pagan idolatry. He mocks the idols in contrast to the God of Israel who is the uncreated Creator of all things. So, in Isaiah 40:17ff we read:

All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? The idol! a workman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold, and casts for it silver chains. He who is impoverished chooses for an offering wood that will not rot; he seeks out a skilful craftsman to set up an image that will not move. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nought, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. . . . Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

Here Isaiah portrays God as the uncreated Creator of all things, and compared to God these other things are as nothingness and as emptiness next to God. God in Isaiah’s conception is unique as an uncreated self-existing being.

Turn over in the New Testament. One of the most important passages for the attribute of divine aseity is John 1:1-3. Here John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Here John says that at the very beginning (he is harking back to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and Earth;” as it were, prior to creation, in the very beginning) all that exists is God and his Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning. Then everything else comes into existence through God’s word. All things were made through him. The verb here can also mean “to come into being.” So this could be translated “all things came into being through him.” So at the very beginning you have God and his Word as self-existent and then everything else coming into being through the creatorial power of God’s Word.

See also Revelation 4:11. Here is the praise that is given to God in heaven: “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Here God is said to be the creator of all things; they exist by his will.

Moreover, according to Scripture, God not only created the world initially, but he also preserves it in being. Look at Nehemiah 9:6. Ezra said:

Thou art the LORD, thou alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and thou preservest all of them; and the host of heaven worships thee.

Here Ezra says not only that God is the one who has brought into being initially heaven and the Earth and everything that is in them, but also he preserves them in being. God is not only the initial creator billions of years ago, but he also is the conserver of these things in being moment-by-moment as they endure.

The Scripture thus testifies that God is the source, the sustainer, and the goal of all reality outside himself. Romans 11:36: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” Notice here that all things are from God; he is the source of their being. They exist through him; he sustains them in existence. And he is the end of their existence; he is the goal toward which all things tend. God is the source, the sustainer, and the goal of all things other than himself. One might compare in this connection Hebrews 2:10. Hebrews 2:10 refers to God as the one “for whom and by whom all things exist.”

God, by contrast, didn’t come from anywhere. He didn’t come into being at all. God just is. He just exists. Psalm 90:2 says, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” Here the psalmist imagines God existing, as it were, before creation, before anything had been brought into being. He says God just is. From everlasting to everlasting God exists.

It is interesting that in the New Testament all of these same qualities (being self-existent, the source and sustainer and goal of all created things) are also ascribed to Jesus Christ. Christ is said to possess these same properties.

Look at some representative verses. 1 Corinthians 8:5-6. Paul writes:

For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’ – yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

Notice how the description of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are so similar. God the Father is described as the one from whom and for whom we exist, and Christ is the one through whom we exist. So Christ is God’s instrument in sustaining the world in being.

Look also at Hebrews 1:1-3a:

In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power.

Here, again, Christ is described as bearing the imprint of the divine nature, and then carrying out this role that belongs properly to God of creating the world and sustaining it in being.

Finally, in Paul’s letter to the church of Colossae – Colossians 1:15-17 – Paul says:

He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities – all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

So I think that you can see that this property of being the self-existent source of everything else is attributed to Christ as well as to God the Father which is a tremendous affirmation of the deity of Christ – of his full divinity.

(2)  Systematic Summary

1. Definition

Let’s now try systematize and understand this doctrine.

The Bible affirms that God is a self-existent being. Minimally that would mean that God doesn’t depend upon anything else for his existence. If everything else were magically to disappear, God would still be there. He exists independently of anything else.

I think aseity or self-existence is even stronger, even more robust an attribute than simply existing independently of other things. Aseity means that God is the sole ultimate reality. Nothing else exists a se.

It seems to me that this concept of aseity, or being the sole ultimate reality, is one that not only properly belongs to the concept of God as a greatest conceivable being but we actually have some good arguments for thinking that such a being exists. We will review those arguments later in the class, but I want to simply mention these at this point by saying that the notion of God as a self-existent being that exists by a necessity of his own nature is one that makes good sense.

If God is the sole ultimate reality, then all finite reality depends upon him for its creation. There is no other self-existent being besides God. He is unique in that sense. So everything apart from God depends upon him for its initial creation coming into being, for its present existing, and then for its future being on into the future. So reality is shot through with a radical dependence of everything upon God – for its creation, its conservation, and its future being.

An analogy to this might be the way in which a dream is sustained in your mind when you are asleep and dreaming. Your dream can be populated with all sorts of persons who are engaged in activities, doing different things, and yet the instant you awaken that dream vanishes and all those people and everything just evaporates instantly. It is gone. Obviously, I am not saying that this world is a dream. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying the world is a dream in the mind of God. But I am saying that it is radically dependent upon God in exactly the same way that a dream world would be dependent upon your mind. If God were to cease thinking about the universe, it would be annihilated; it would vanish in an instance.

So if there is no God, there is no universe. On the other hand, if there were no universe, God wouldn’t be affected because he is self-existent and independent. Nothing could make God cease to exist. On the contrary, everything that exists other than God depends upon God for its being. God is a being which is self-existent, eternal, and necessary, and everything else that exists is going to be contingent and dependent upon God in its being.

This understanding of God’s self-existence can help to solve two problems.

First, sometimes it has been said that if God is a being, then he is just one being among others. He is just one more marble in the sack if God is a being. So God can’t be a being. I think understanding God’s self-existence enables us to see the fallacy of that reasoning. All other beings are dependent upon God for their existence. God alone is a self-existent, necessary being. Everything else that exists is a contingent, dependent being. So God is not just one more marble in the sack; rather, everything else depends upon him for its being. He is not just one being among many.

The second problem that this helps us solve is the old question, “Where did God come from?” The answer is God didn’t come from anywhere. God is a self-existent being. It is impossible for him not to exist, and he always has existed. His existence is permanent. So when you understand the concept of God as a self-existent being, you can see that this old question, “Where did God come from?” or “Who made God?” is a meaningless question. It is like saying, “Why is it that all bachelors are unmarried?” Nobody breaks his brain trying to figure out why all bachelors are unmarried. It belongs to the very concept of a bachelor to be unmarried. Similarly, it belongs to the very nature of God to be independent. He had no beginning; he depends upon nothing.

Those who ask the question “Where did God come from?” or “Who made God?” simply show that they haven’t understood the concept of God. Once you understand the concept of God, then you can see that this question is as trivial as asking why all triangles have three corners.

What we will do next Sunday is look at the principal challenge to the doctrine of divine aseity. This comes from the quarter of Platonism. Platonists believe that there are other uncreated entities besides God – indeed, infinities of infinities of such entities – and that therefore God is not the source of the being of all things other than himself. There are uncreated entities in addition to God. Next week we will look at that challenge, and I will try to provide some answer to it.