Today we’ll tackle the biggest question of all: who is God? We’ll take a journey through scripture together to discover what God is like, stopping at key moments to consider what this or that interaction tells us about him.
—— Notes ——
theology: one’s understanding of God
Ontology vs. Functionality
- ontology: understanding something based on what it is (it’s essence)
- tendency to define God based on what he is (omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent)
- perfect being theology: reasons from perfection to generate characteristics that God must have independent from what he reveals about himself in the bible
- bible tends to define God based on what he’s done and his relationship w/ people
Creator desiring trusting relationships
Limited participant in human affairs
- in time, with us, not aloof (we’ll get to predestination later)
- Cain and Able
- warns Cain
- does not force him or prevent him
- Lamech
Heartbroken exception maker
- Nephilim
- Gen 6
- Noah’s flood
Preemptive preventer
the God of Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob
- the call (Gen 12.1-4)
- Yahweh is going to be Abraham’s God
- he’ll have his back
- bless those who bless
- curse those who curse
- he’s just looking for someone to believe him, to trust him, to do what he says
- three tests of trust
- leave your land
- circumcise yourself and all your men
- the Akedah (binding of Isaac)
- with Abraham and Sarah we find the opposite of Adam and Eve
- believed God’s promises
- left their native land to be with God in promised land
- trusted God to perform the impossible
- over time grew more faithful
- died trusting God
- by the end of all of this, God irreversibly yoke’s himself to this family through covenants
- covenant faithfulness and chesed
- henceforth, God’s dealings w/ Abraham affect how he PRIMARILY refers to himself
- I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
Powerful liberator and god-mocker
- burning bush
- how does God introduce himself to Moses?
- the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
- the name
- Pharaoh’s question (Ex 5.1)
- 10 plagues as God telling Egypt and the world who he is vis-à-vis the Egyptian gods
- he is the God above all other gods
- Passover meal memorializes the historical event of God liberating Israel
- this is how God intends to imprint faith on each generation (festivals)
Exclusive moralist
- ten commandments begin w/ several statements of exclusivity
- singular pronouns!
- whenever anyone ever uses a pronoun for God in the bible it is singular: he, him, his, you (sg.)
- basic moral code
8 attributes of God
- Exodus 34.6-7
6 The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
chesed (חֶסֶד)
- John Goldingay: “It is sometimes described as covenant love, though in the OT it rarely appears in the company of the word “covenant.” It is used in two connections: when someone makes an act of commitment for which there is no reason in terms of prior relatio
