Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Nov/69

Contributor - T. Hogerwaard

Title - Systematic Theology For Members of Consistory Part 9

Topic - Consistory

God the Father

Many years ago, when traveling, I met a distinguished gentleman. When he had learned that I was a minister, he expressed the opinion that in this time of apostasy, atheism and agnosticism, it was greatly desirable that all those who believed in God joined hands and co-operated: Jews, Christians and Moehammedans. According to him there were three groups: pagans (who believe in many gods and demons), atheists and monotheists to which group Jews, Christians and Moehammedans belonged. Well, it is true of course that only these three world religions are historical religions and all three honour Abraham as their spiritual forefather (the Jews and Moehammedans also as their physical forefather; the Jews via Isaac; the Moehammedans via Ishmael). The Islam (as the religion of the Moehammedans is called) is not original: it has taken its chief elements from the jews and also some from the Christians. Some scholars have treated the Islam as a Christian sect. However, the opinion of said gentleman revealed the great misunderstanding which prevails with so many people about "God". In one of our former articles it was pointed out that "the God of the philosophers" exists only in the minds of the philosophers; it is a figment of their brain. This "God" has nothing to do with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, nothing in common with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. "Monotheism" is a philosophical idea, a concept, an endeavour to bring under one heading that which is totally and essentially different.

The Allah whom Moehammad preached, is not the God Who has revealed Himself as the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Moehammedans, although they honour Jesus (Isa) as a great prophet, are horrified by the proclamation that Jesus is true God and true man. With the Jews it is of course a totally different matter, but we cannot discuss that point here now: it is too vast and difficult a subject for a short article.

God is the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; all those who deny the Trinity (The Unitarians for instance) place themselves outside the Christian Church.* But now, trying to understand Who God is (an endeavour which God Himself urges us and commands us to undertake!) the same difficulty arises which we encountered already when we wrote about Christ and learned what the Greek Fathers in Chalcedon said about Him. We saw in that article that all that was said about Christ was a contradiction in itself! We also learned that only in this way justice could be done to what Scripture revealed to us about the Son. When we try to think about God on. the basis of the Biblical revelation the same difficulty of contradicting statements presents itself. On the one hand it is a fundamental point of all true teaching about God that we have to say that the Father is not the Son, the Son not the Spirit. Also: that the work of the Father and of the Son differ from the work of the Spirit. Had we only to make that simple statement (simple in the sense of opposite to complicated) it would not be difficult at all to understand, but now Scripture clearly testifies that something else can be said and therefore must be said!

That "something else" is this: that there is no work of the Father, in which the Son is not at the same time involved; the same applies to the work of the Spirit. Two examples may make this clear.

Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier

When, for instance, ministers instruct young people in the elementary points of Christian doctrine they teach that God the Father is our Creator, Jesus Christ our Redeemer and the Holy Spirit our Sanctifier. Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Creation, Redemption, Sanctification. But if we think that the Being and Acts of the Triune God are now clear to us, John the apostle tells us in the first chapter of his Gospel narrative: "The Word (Christ), then, was with God at the beginning, and through Him all things came to be: no single thing was created without Him. All that came to be was alive with His life, and that life was the light of man."(NEB) Here the action of Christ in the work of creation is clearly expressed, we might perhaps summarize this part of the Gospel by saying that Christ acted as God's Executive in the work of creation. The same proclamation you find with the apostle Paul, specifically in the Letter to the Colossians: "He (Christ) is the image of the invisible God: His is the primacy over all created things. In Him everything in heaven and on earth was created, not only things visible but also the invisible orders of thrones, sovereignties, authorities, and powers: the whole universe has been created through Him and for Him. And He exists before everything, and all things are held together in Him. He is, moreover, the head of the Body, the Church. He is its Origin, the first to return from the dead, to be in all things supreme. For in Him the complete Being of God, by God's own choice, came to dwell.

How is it now? Is God the Father the Creator or is Christ? Indeed, here again we are reminded of the wise word, which Karl Barth spoke, i.e. that above and before everything else we have to explain the Scriptures - again and again - that is to say: to try to understand each text, each chapter separately without yielding to our inherent Greek rationalistic desire to bring everything neatly together in a or THE SYSTEM! Here we begin to understand why Barth said that systematic theology can also drive you crazy sometimes; that is: if you try to harmonize which cannot be harmonized!

Once, on a Sunday night, after the evening service was over, one of the members of our Consistory came up to me and asked: "Dominee, how is it now? For in this evening service you have contradicted practically everything you said this morning!" When I asked him what he meant, he answered: "Well, this morning it was all God's work: "You are saved by grace and by grace alone!" But tonight it was: "If you do not repent, you will likewise perish!" (Luke 13 : 3) "How is it now? Is God doing all the work of our salvation or have we a share in it?" In answer I had to tell him that indeed God has done and does everything that is needed for our salvation, that we are not able to add anything to it, but that this according to the Scriptures does not exclude but include the circumstance that God expects us to react to this message of His grace in a positive, trusting, grateful and obedient way. Indeed, again: He is the One Who enables us to do so, but quietism** is out! This difficulty you meet again and again in Scripture, for God's revelation is not a mathematical system, showing us facts and truths: God reveals Himself, that we might know Who He is and how He is!

Because our mind is not great enough to understand fully Who God is, therefore we always have to say two things simultaneously; two things which seem to contradict, even to exclude each other. Moreover, our human thoughts are darkened and perverted by sin. The Holy Spirit granted to those who belong to Christ - makes us vaguely and as a beginning to understand how matters stand. Only in eternity we will know God as He knows us. Complete and perfect knowledge of God will be our share in the land of glory, but never before we have arrived there.

Then, only then, will we know as we are known. Humble, open minded study..of the Word of God excludes the assumption that we have more than partial knowledge! In Holland, many years ago, in a vacant congregation an elder preached. His subject: Creation. The last sentence of his sermon was: "And I now all of you know how God put everything together!" (Excusez du peu!) Many things God has revealed to us, many are still hidden from us. The same difficulty of seemingly contradictory statements we encounter when we think about Christ, Whose is the work of our redemption. We just quoted the words from Colossians 1 proclaiming Christ's work in creation. But the text which immediately follows, reads: "Through Him God chose to reconcile the whole universe to Himself." Here it is not the isolated preaching: "Jesus saves!", which words summarize and even exhaust for millions in this part of the world the entire Christian message! In another Letter (to Corinthians) Paul writes: "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself" (emphasis on the verb, on the action). Here again it is impossible to make a sharp distinction between God's work and Christ's work in our salvation, although it was Christ Who died on the cross and not God the Father. One group of heretics in the first centuries claimed that Christ was simply a different mode of existence of God to which the Church answered that in that case "the Father has suffered"; therefore those heretics were called Patripassians.

Thinking about the Spirit we are up against the very same difficulty. The Church prays: "Come Creator Spirit!" Lord (kurios) the rendering in the LXX (The Greek translation of the Old Testament) of God's Name JAHWEH. In the first century the original Christian confession was: Jesus is Lord! and Paul also writes: file Lord (Kurios) is the Spirit!"

There is and remains a definite limit to our capacity of understanding Who God is. Humble recognition of that fact has always been (and will always be) a chief characteristic of every true Christian. When the great Bonaventure (1221-1274) wrote his masterwork "Itinerarium mentis in Deum" (the way of the soul to God) he started with the sentence: "The reflections of a poor man in the desert start." On the other hand it is symptomatic for those- engaged in the service of "the devil - the proud spirit" - to be filled with the same conceit and pride as their black master is. Hegel for instance wrote: "The closed being of the universe possesses no power capable to resist the courage of the human will to know!" Hegel taught that the true philosopher knows God perfectly because in the philosopher God knows Himself! This is satanic madness! But Christ prayed: "I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth for hiding these things from the learned and wise, -and revealing them to the simple. Yes, Father, such was Thy choice" (Luke 10 : 21). Indeed, God will never be "mastered" by the proud human intellect. He is and remains God, the Supreme Majesty, at the same time the merciful Father to all who belong to Jesus Christ.

"O depth of wealth, wisdom and knowledge in God! How unsearchable His judgments, how untraceable His ways! Who knows the mind of the Lord! Who has been His counsellor? Who has ever made a gift to Him, to receive a gift in return? Source, Guide and Goal of all that is - to Him be glory for ever!"

Footnotes

* That even such a dedicated, sharpminded and bold warrior in the militia Christian - Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge - had to write in the Foreword of his latest book (Jesus Rediscovered) that the doctrine (he wrote "concept") of the Trinity does not say much to him simply means -as he himself admits - that he missed the theological training which would have made it clear to him how everything, he values in Christianity stands or falls with the doctrine of the Trinity. Moreover, we have to remember that thousands have died as martyrs for Christ's sake before the Holy Spirit made the Triune Being of God clear to the Christians in the days of Athanasius the great. When Christianity started, the Christian confession was: "Jesus is Lord". Many in our days would like to reduce the entire Christian message again to this simple confession ("Jesus saves!") but wrongly so. Dr. Noordmans wrote: "The confession 'Jesus is Lord' can be a torch which in the night of dark times is handed to people by a prophetic spirit, but this torch can never take the place of the bright daylight that is spread in the Church by confessing faith in the Holy Trinity."

** "Quietism" stands for: total passivity in matters spiritual. There is a school of mysticism which is called "Quietism". but the R.C. Church condemned them as heretics. In Lutheran Protestantism there was also a group which claimed that good works were detrimental to salvation! This theory is no longer taught, but every minister knows a few (sometimes quite a few!) in his congregation who act and live as if good works were damaging to their salvation: They are very careful not to damage their salvation! But acting this way they will arrive exactly where they did not want to go.

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