God Without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology: Volume 1: God and the Works of God

GOD'S ASEITY -- HE HAS LIFE IN AND OF HIMSELF"I AM WHO I AM" (Ex 3:14).Anselm said, "He alone has of Himself all that He has, while other things have nothing of themselves. They have their only reality from Him."The aseity of the triune God is His existence in the three Persons. The Father alone is ingenerate, the Son alone is generate (without beginning and without time), and the Holy Spirit alone proceeds from the Father and the Son."For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself" (Jn 5:26).The Father grants the Son to have life in Himself, who then gives life to "those who hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live" (Jn 5:25).ETERNAL GENERATIONGregory of Naziansus says, The monarchy which the church holds "in honor is not limited to one person...but one which is made of an equality of nature and a union of mind, and an identity of motion...so that though numerically distinct there is no severance of essence."Eternal generation is the personal and eternal act of God the Father whereby He is the origin of the personal subsistence of God the Son, so communicating to the Son the one undivided divine essence. Generation distinguishes the Son from the Father, who is ungenerate, and the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.HOW God begets His Son is not comprehensible."Leave it to God who alone most perfectly knows Himself" (Frances Turretin)."The begetting of God must be honored by silence" (Gregory of Naziansus)."The mystery of His generation is more than I can attain to" (Ambrose)."We are striving to grasp the impalpable" (Hilary of Poitiers)."It is not to venture such questions concerning the generation of the Son of God" (Athanasius).BEGOTTEN, NOT MADEWhen referring to God the Father, "begetting" does NOT mean "to make."When referring to the Son, we have to try and conceive of "a living being whose life involves no development from potential to actual. Both the Word which comes forth spiritually and its Source are contained in the perfection of the divine existence itself" (Aquinas).The Son's begotten nature is wholly unique and incommunicable. Only He is Son of the Father in this way. No other of God's creatures are begotten. They are made.The Father begetting the Son is an eternal act, not bound by space or time.It is the Father's nature (pure act) to eternally beget His Son.The Father has never NOT been a Father.Generation occurs within the divine nature.The form of Begetter and Begotten is the same numerically. "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30).The generation of the Son does not result in His subordination.THE DIVINE NATURE and the DISTINCTION OF DIVINE PERSONSIn respect of persons, the Father is FROM no one (He is unbegotten) and the Son is FROM the Father (He is begotten), but both the Father and the Son have the same divine nature. "Unbegotten" and "begotten" therefore, are not of the divine essence. Instead, they distinguish the persons of the Father and the Son who have the identical divine nature, but different relations to one another.ONE WHO IS SON (Hebrews 1)1. God appointed Him heir of all things.2. Through Him God created the world.3. He is the effulgence of God's glory.God's glory is God Himself in the perfect majesty and beauty of His being. This glory is resplendent. Because God Himself is light (1 Jn 1:5), He pours forth light. God is glorious and therefore radiant. Jesus is the human visibility of God.4. He bears the very stamp of God's nature.The Son is the exact representation of the divine essence.5. He upholds all things by the word of His power.Having brought the creation to be, He enables it to continue to be, making it the object of His continual care. How? By His powerful word (11:3). It is effortless, calm, and fully sufficient. The Son is the agent of the world's maintenance.6. He made purification for sins.Purification is achieved by "the suffering of death" (2:9) of this divine-human priest, who offered His own blood to "purify the conscience" (9:14). It is absolute and complete. "By a single offering He has purified for all time those who are sanctified" (10:14).7. He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.Unlike the Levitical high priests, who stand daily to offer repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins, Jesus sat down after offering for all time one sacrifice (10:11,12).8. He has obtained a more excellent name."The name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow" (Phil 2:9,10).TRINITY and CREATIONThe task of Trinitarian theology is "to manifest what is expressly revealed in the Scripture concerning God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; so that we may duly believe in Him, yield obedience unto Him, enjoy communion with Him, walk in His love and fear, and so come at length to be blessed with Him for evermore" (Augustine).The triune God is one simple indivisible essence in three persons. The persons are inseparable from the essence, and the essence inseparable from its three persons. A divine person is nothing but the divine essence subsisting in a special manner. Each person is the fullness, not a fraction of the divine essence.The persons are distinguished by their relations to one another.God is in Himself replete, unoriginate love, the reciprocal fellowship and delight of the Three Persons and the utter repose and satisfaction of their love. God requires nothing other than Himself. Yet this unoriginate love creates us. Why this should be so, we don't know, yet we are stunned by the fact that God has indeed done so. God loves us not out of the compulsion of His needs but out of the abundance of His generosity.Each divine work is the work of the undivided Godhead.Each Person of the Godhead performs that work in a distinct way.Particular works may be assigned eminently to one Person without denying that the other two Persons also participate.God the Father is the maker of heaven and earth.The Son is the one by whom all things were made. "In Him" and "through Him" all things were created (Col 1:16). As the Father's Word and Wisdom He is the reason for and the pattern of the production of creatures. He is both creation's form and archetype and also the agent "though" whom is created that which is other than God.The Holy Spirit is Lord and giver of life. By the breath of the Spirit, who is Himself breathed by the Father and the Son, creatures that the Father originates and the Son forms become animated. "In every great work of God, the concluding, completing, perfecting acts are ascribed unto the Holy Ghost" (John Owen).CREATIO EX NIHILO (CREATION from NOTHING)"It is a great and very rare thing for a man, after he has contemplated the whole creation, corporeal and incorporeal, and has discerned its mutability, to pass beyond it, and, by the continued soaring of the mind, to attain to the unchangeable substance of God, and, in that height of contemplation, to learn from God Himself that none but He has made all that is not of the divine substance" (Augustine).1. God has no need of creation, He acquires no augmentation from its existence, and is not deprived of any good by its absence. He is "perfectly happy within Himself" (Aquinas).2. As creator, God is "the principle and cause of being to other things" (Aquinas). God is perfect, and His being has no cause, because to be perfect is to be unoriginate, irreducible to some other causal reality. But as this one, God is the "first efficient cause" of all things.3. Only God can create out of nothing. Only He has the power to do this. More specifically, He doesn't HAVE all power, He IS all power. God is not simply immensely resourceful, but He is "the universal cause of all existence." Creation crosses the "infinite distance between being and nothing" (Aquinas).4. God creates all things by His will. He could have chosen not to create at all.5.God creates out of His goodness.6. Creation out of nothing is ineffable, not just because of its grandeur and magnitude, but because we have no analogies to it.7. The divine act of creation was instantaneous, of incomprehensible swiftness. Basil the Great says, the words "in the beginning" indicate the rapid and imperceptible moment of creation which is instantaneous. At the mere will of God the world arose in less than an instant. This required no effort on God's part.8. The act of creation involves no movement or change in God. When God creates, "something new comes to be without any motion or mutation of His own" (Peter Lombard).9. Precisely because God possesses perfect bliss and had no need to create, this shows how much He loves the creatures that He did create.GOD'S RELATION TO HIS CREATURES1. As Father, Son and Spirit, God is plenitude of life and incomparable excellence. The creator is "the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see" (1 Tim 6:15,16; Rev 19:16).2. The act of creation requires nothing but God's being. Saying "ex nihilo" is equivalent to saying "God alone."3. Every creature owes its being and its continuance to God.GOD CREATED US OUT OF HIS BENVOLENCEGod "is not made happy by making things, but through being all-sufficient to Himself and not needing the things He made" (Aquinas).Many recoil from this fact.But because God's infinitely extended relations to created things neither add nor subtract from His being, His work of bringing into being and maintaining creatures is wholly benevolent and beneficent. God is in Himself infinitely happy, in need of nothing from the creature.How could someone already perfect become more perfect? But His perfection includes His infinite love. God bestows life in His limitless generosity. He makes things for their own sake, not for His.THE THEOLOGY of PROVIDENCE: GOD IS FOR US"We know that is everything God works for good with those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom He justified He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" (Rom 8:28-32)Because God is in need of nothing, is rich in all things, and is good and kind, He cannot grow weary or exhausted through giving. He rejoices in giving. God's care extends beyond the moment of Him giving us life. He presides over us to bring us to perfection. This perfection is fellowship with God, in order "to become conformed to the image of His Son."Every creature so "depends upon God that they could not continue to exist even for a moment, but would fall away into nothingness unless they were sustained in existence by His power" (Aquinas).1. God's administration of creation is the execution of His "plan for the fullness of time" (Eph 1:10).This plan preexists in the mind of God, the one who wills us good, who "predestines us in love" and whose works issue in "the praise of His glorious grace" (Eph 1:5,6). His plan is to bless His creatures and to lavish His grace upon us (Eph 1:8). Providence is not fatalism, which is untrustworthy and has no goodness. Rather, it is comforting to live under God's deliberate will. Christ is the goal of what God's love establishes in creatures (Eph 1:10).2. God's providence is ceaseless and universal. It is not possible for there to be a moment in which He is not providential. “All things work together for good to those who love God to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28). The purpose of God's providence is to initiate and protect the fellowship of His creatures with Himself.3. Providence is always directed to the creature's good, even in suffering. "It belongs to the best sort of being [God] to achieve the best sort of effects. Failure to direct creatures toward their perfection is not consonant with God's absolute goodness" (Aquinas)."When the light of divine providence has once shone upon a godly man, he is then relieved and set free not only from the extreme anxiety and fear that were pressing him before, but from every care" (Calvin).SOTERIOLOGY -- "IT WAS THE WILL OF THE LORD TO BRUISE HIM" (ISAIAH 53)(Isaiah 53:2) “For he grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.(3) He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.(4) Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, SMITTEN OF GOD, and afflicted.(5) But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our well-being fell upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.(6) All of us like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way; but THE LORD HAS CAUSED THE INIQUITY OF US ALL TO FALL ON HIM.(7) He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth.(8) By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due?(9) His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death; because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth.(10) BUT THE LORD WAS PLEASED TO CRUSH HIM, PUTTING HIM TO GRIEF; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.(11) As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; by His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.(12) Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and he will divide the booty with the strong; because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors.”The chief task of soteriology is to show how the bruising of the man Jesus, the Servant of God, saves lost creatures and reconciles them to their Creator. Isaiah tells us that this Servant, marred beyond human recognition, without form or comeliness or beauty, is the one in whom God's purpose for creatures triumphs over their wickedness. His oppression and affliction, His being put out of the land of the living, is in truth not His defeat at the hands of superior forces, but His own divine act in which He takes upon Himself, and so takes away from us, the iniquity of us all.How can this be?How can His chastisement make us whole?How can others be healed by His stripes?Because God has put Him to grief.Because it is God who makes the Servant's soul an offering for sin.And just because He is smitten by God and afflicted, then the will of the Lord shall prosper in His hand, and the Servant Himself shall prosper and be exalted. The Servant shall also see the fruit of His travail of His soul and be satisfied. He shall see His offspring.(I John 4:10)“In this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”“It was from God's mere goodness, as from a fountain, that Christ flowed to us with all His blessings. And just as it is necessary to know that we have salvation in Christ because our heavenly Father has loved us of His own accord, so when we are seeking a solid and complete certainty of the divine love, we have to look to none other than to Christ” (Calvin).“It was His task to swallow up death. Who but Life could do this?It was His task to conquer sin. Who but very Righteousness could do this?It was His task to rout the powers of world and air. Who but a Power higher than world or air could do this?Now where does life or righteousness, or lordship and authority of heaven lie but with God alone?Therefore, our most merciful God, when He willed that we be redeemed, made Himself our Redeemer in the person of His only-begotten Son” (Calvin).

Webster at his best. A Reformed and catholic approach to the triune God. Theological and doxological. Truly a significant work.

John Webster's collection of essays here is profound, and enjoyable to read. In it, Webster pushes back against many trends in contemporary Protestant theology, by showing us that the rhetorical assaults of the modern theologians are without ground - in fact, classical theology possesses many of the characteristics which it is charged with not having (although, not in the sense that the moderns seem to want).Along with this pushback against modern theology, Webster has a strong unifying theme to his work here: theology is to be theological. That is, theology is about God. For theology to be about God, it needs to actually be about God (not redefine itself into only about God's works), it needs to follow the principles of theology (God's Word and the Spirit's illumination of regenerate intellect), it needs to be aimed at the right ends (fellowship with God, not academic scholarship), and it needs to be done with the requisite character. This last point is perhaps the most important, although least elaborated, or the qualifications for how theology is theological - theology is not "me-centric." Of course, this would bother the modern academic world, which focuses on process/method, rather than on the virtue of the practitioner. Explicit attention to "theological theology" is given in the closing essay - and this should be read by anyone who runs across a reference to Webster's concept of theological theology, as people will try to piggyback his concept onto their own work, while disregarding the substance of what he actually says (ex: Crisp's "Analyzing Doctrine"). You should consider reading the closing essay first.The essays move in the pattern of God in himself, to God in his works. Why this pattern? Because it follows the "material order" of theology. God precedes his works (even if the order of cognition is the reverse). And God makes himself known in his works - not his works known in his works. In fact, the latter essays on God's works also follow this pattern, first addressing God in himself as the ground of what is to be said on his works.The first 5 essays are on God in himself. The one on aseity as "life in himself" was fantastic. Webster helpfully points out that aseity is more than just "independence" (which ironically is dependent on other things for its definition - it is a definition in opposition), but actually is God's self-sufficient life in himself, of which the form is the Trinitarian processions. This is helpful, as it shows the positive content of theology (rather than theology only by negation), and defends classical Christianity from some charges leveled against it in modern theology.The final essay of the first part, which addressed the first four verses of Hebrews (a sort of extended exegetical reflection), was interesting, but seemed also to fall a bit flat as the climax to the first part. At this point, the reader is reminded that this book was not written as a book. It was written as a collection of essays, which were independently published. This leads to a thematic unity, but a lack of formal coherence at times, and quite a bit of repetition. More on this later.In the second part, Webster addresses the works of God. Creation (3 essays), providence (1), salvation (2), and ecclesiology (2).Creation has 4 components: God in himself, God's act of creation, the nature of created things, and God's relationship to created things. Webster's 3 essays on creation each mention these 4 items, and focus on one of them. The one omitted: the nature of created things. This is interesting, and it demonstrates the difficulty of Webster's project of "theological theology." It also led to a large amount of repetition between the 3 chapters. Key points: the Trinitarian appropriations in the work of creation (creation through the Son actually implies the equal divinity of the Father and Son); an excellent analysis of "ex nihilo;" and the concept of creaturely dignity (as creatures, being creatures is not dishonorable).The essay on providence was good, if brief. Webster helpfully addresses that providence is not an "abstract truth" or a throwaway affirmation, but rather a direct experience of God's action in all things. This includes, necessarily, suffering. Can one who has not suffered understand and believe in providence?The essays on salvation were also good. At times I found myself a bit lost in the one on the Son's work, and this essay was the only place where I recall Webster mentioning the concept of God's righteous anger against sin, and punishment of sin. Elsewhere, he seems to describe it passively, as an almost natural/automatic consequence of sin, rather than a judgement of God (which is weird, given his normal anti-mechanistic mindset). The essay on justification was almost "meta-theology," and gave a good discussion for why the buzzphrase "justification is the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls" is not entirely accurate.The two essays on ecclesiology had helpful thoughts. The first one was directly on ecclesiological principles (although it is difficult to see how they might be related to practice), and the second was a response of sorts to a Roman Catholic concept of tradition. These essays were probably the low point of the book. While the whole book contained profound points, and was helpful and interesting, the quality distinctly decreased throughout from section to section (the closing essay was one of the best though). Webster is at his best in theology proper.And this leads be back to the point of repetition, formal coherence, and thematic unity. Webster's goal for theological theology: that it would have God as its object, and all things relative to God. However, at times it seems like this is only previewed, and a bit undercooked. It is true that theology proper is the ground of God's works. Yet most of Webster's presentation of God's works is a reiteration and recapitulation of the same theology proper, before getting to the last 10% where he briefly discusses the work under consideration and says "there's more to be said, but too much for the present scenario." I'd enjoy reading what more there is to be said - but as it is, it seems like the specific subject area of the work under consideration has been evacuated in most of Webster's treatment. Perhaps this is a side-effect of the fact that this book is a collection of independent essays, and that he is attempting to get the reader in a mindset of God's being grounding God's works. Yet at the end...I long to see "creation" talked about "theologically," with the topic actually being creation, and not 90% of a repeat of theology proper.Highly recommended.