성경 공부 게시판

[[0]] THE PERFECTIONS OF THE DIVINE FREEDOM
• THE DIVINITY OF THE FREEDOM OF GOD CONSISTS AND CONFIRMS ITSELF IN THE FACT THAT IN HIMSELF AND IN ALL HIS WORKS GOD IS ONE, CONSTANT AND ETERNAL, AND THEREWITH ALSO OMNIPRESENT, OMNIPOTENT AND GLORIOUS.
[[1]] Subsection 1. THE UNITY AND OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD one_year 03-25 -- 440 --
[bb • We are not turning to any new object, nor are we opening a new volume, if we now turn our attention to the perfections of the divine FREEDOM.
• We have already spoken about the divine freedom as we spoke about the divine love.
• We were not able to speak about the latter without continually glancing over to the divine freedom.
• In speaking of God's holiness, righteousness and wisdom, we have already anticipated in the true sense the content of this second part of the doctrine of the being of God.
[bb • For it was simply the recollection of the divine freedom which forced us to keep before our eyes particularly God's holiness beside His grace, His righteousness beside His mercy, and His wisdom beside His patience, thus establishing, safeguarding and clarifying the fact that we were not speaking of any kind of GRACE, mercy and patience but of the DIVINE grace, mercy and patience.
• The divine nature of God's love consists and confirms itself in the fact that in His very love God is free and therefore in His very grace, mercy and patience He is holy, righteous and wise.
[[2]] { -- 441 -- (1) The Unity and Omnipresence of God; God's love is divine as the love of his freedom and in these perfections we are glancing back from God's freedom to his divinity (441) . }
• We have now to consider this cohesion, this unity of the being of God from its other side as well.
• Our thinking now moves in some sense in the opposite direction.
• We now begin at the point at which we continually ended in the previous section.
• We now start from the divine freedom.
• We put this second in correspondence with the order of the divine life.
• We have seen, however, that this order does not imply a subordination.
• God's freedom is no less divine than His love.
[bb • God's freedom is divine as the freedom in which God expresses His LOVE.
[bb • The opposite is also true. • God's love is divine as the love which is FREE.
• This entitles and requires us to take His freedom just as seriously, and, as we now consider His being in this second way, to start from His freedom with no less seriousness than we did before from His love.
• Again, we are already aware that God's freedom does not exist alone by itself.
• All the time, then, we shall have to remember His love as we now turn to His freedom.
• Necessarily, therefore, in -- 441 -- this second part of the doctrine of the being of God we must recapitulate the first part both implicitly and explicitly. • Whatever was perceived and expressed there must always accompany and be present with us.
[bb • Our recollection of the divine love will require us here as well to consider our subject in two ways. • This time they will both be directed to God's freedom, but the second in such a way that it reminds us of the cohesion and unity of God's FREEDOM with His LOVE, thus establishing, safeguarding and clarifying the fact that it is not with any kind of freedom but with the DIVINE freedom that we have to do.
• The divine nature of God's freedom consists and confirms itself in the fact that even in His freedom, as the One who is free, God is the One who loves.
• God is One. • He is constant and eternal in Himself and in all His works.
• This is His freedom.
• This is His majesty and sovereign power.
• This will be our first concern at each point in this second part of the doctrine of His being.
• But it is in no accidental or arbitrarily determined way that God is free, majestic and sovereign. • It is in a manner wholly determined by Himself.
• He is, therefore, One in such a way that He is omnipresent, constant in such a way that He is omnipotent, and eternal in such a way that He is glorious.
• His freedom is the freedom of His love.
[bb • As we speak of His omnipresence, omnipotence and glory, we glance back again from His freedom to His LOVE, and THEREFORE -- in this context -- to His DIVINITY.
• The divinity of His freedom consists and confirms itself in the fact that even in His unity He is omnipresent, in His constancy omnipotent, and in His eternity glorious.
• This fact is the criterion of the divinity of all the perfections of His freedom.
[3] excursus
• The question may be raised again at this point how we come to mention these six attributes of the divine freedom in this particular juxtaposition.
• And again we have to acknowledge that we certainly cannot rely on, or appeal to, any direct (or verbal) precept of Holy Scripture or even to the precedent of any other dogmatics. • We have to admit that basically this selection and juxtaposition can possess and claim only the character of an attempt or suggestion.
[bb • In the light of the biblical witness to revelation -- not of some general idea of the being of God -- we are asking two questions. • First, what are the specific determinations in which the love of God attested in the Bible becomes event and reality in the FREEDOM of God, so that we can and must see them as determinations of His being?
• The answer to this first question is given by the series: unity, constancy and eternity.
[bb • And second -- again in the light of the biblical witness to revelation -- what are the specific determinations of this LOVE itself in so far as it is the love which becomes event and reality in His freedom, so that we can and must understand these determinations as those of the divine being?
• The second series, omnipresence, omnipotence and glory, is the answer to this question.
• It may now be seen that the questions are the same in substance as those asked at the beginning of the previous section, only now they have been put in the opposite order.
• We could not ask any others because, keeping to the same source, we have to speak about the same God, the One who loves in His freedom, and therefore the same love and the same freedom, which occupied us earlier as the context of the biblical witness to God.
• Our selection and juxtaposition of attributes is supported by no previous authority, so that -- 442 -- whether it is correct and satisfactory, a significant and serviceable attempt and suggestion, is a question which can be answered, as previously, only by the presentation itself, or its relation to the biblical witness to God. • Thus the question must be thrown straight back at the one who raised it.
• Anyone who wishes to object to the selection and juxtaposition here proposed can do so only by himself making another attempt and suggestion which corrects the inevitable defects and deficiencies.
• And it must not be forgotten that the unavoidable schematic form here in evidence is only a means to an end. • On no account should it attract independent attention, for example on account of the symbolic numbers 2, 3 and 12.
• Our purpose, now as previously, is to give "the most fully concrete answer to the question: Who and what is God? i.e., the answer which most faithfully follows and corresponds to the object in its self-manifestation."
• This is the only purpose to be served by a development of concepts which is as well ordered and clear as possible. • Its opposite, a chaotic or riotous presentation, would certainly not be worthy of this purpose, and presumably, therefore, could not serve it.
[[4]] { -- 442 -- Regarding unity, God is one in the sense of uniqueness and simplicity (442). ; }
[bb • We begin with the UNITY of God.
[bb • All the perfections of God's freedom can be summed up by saying that God is One. • And to this extent all the perfections of His love, real and operative in His freedom, and all the perfections of the divine being taken together, can be summed up in this one conception. • If we understand it rightly, we can express all that God is by saying that God is ONE.
• By this He differentiates Himself from everything that is distinct from Himself. • By this He rules and determines it, and by this He is also in Himself what He is. • He is One.
• The word oneness has two meanings.
[bb • It can mean both UNIQUENESS  (singularitas) and SIMPLICITY  (simplicitas).
• As a statement about God it must in fact mean both, and we shall have to deal with both under the one heading.
[[5]] { Uniqueness does not mean that he alone exists but that he alone is God in his life of love and freedom. None can be compared to him and none can compete with him. No other is to be worshipped and glorified alongside or in place of him (442ff.). }
[bb • First we take unity in the sense of UNIQUENESS.
• What is meant when we say that it belongs to God to be unique?
• Naturally not that He alone exists.
[bb • The world He has created also EXISTS.
• But God alone is God.
• He is the only one of His kind.
• There is not another God, either a second god or many gods.
• We cannot fail to recognise the fundamental character of the statement that God is One when we use the word in this first sense.
• From the beginning the Church understood the prophetic and apostolic testimony in such a way that in its confession of faith, in which it responded to that testimony, it had to say first and foremost that He whom this testimony calls God, and whose revelation and work are to be found in this testimony, is One, a unique being, this unique being.
• A being which was not unique, and not this unique being, would not be God.
• For this reason any so-called or would-be God which has a second god alongside it is bound to be a false god or no god.
• The very moment we conceive of a second person or thing of the same kind as God, even if it possesses only one attribute of the divine being, we cease to think of God as God.
• It is He alone who lives. • It is He alone who loves. • He alone is gracious, merciful and wise. • He alone is holy, righteous and patient. • And -- 443 -- He alone is also free, with all that this involves.
• To be one and unique is true only of Him in the sense proper to Him.
• For it is only in Him that everything (including uniqueness) is essential, original, proper, and for this reason also creative, so that now it can all belong to other forms of being also in a created, dependent, derived and improper way.
• In comparison with everything else, God is unique -- as who He is and what He is -- while everything else is what it is by Him, and therefore only dependently, in a contingent and figurative sense, and therefore not in a way that competes with God.
• Whatever its nature and mode of existence, it is not God. • It cannot stand beside Him as a second of His kind or a multiple of His kind.
• Thus the knowledge of God, the God attested in His revelation by prophets and apostles, means that all so-called or would-be deities and divinities apart from Him lose their character as gods. • The faith and worship offered to them cannot be taken seriously. • They fade away as idols and nonentities. • And so God's freedom, majesty and sovereignty shine out in His uniqueness.
• Knowledge of this God brings those who partake of it under a claim that is total and unlimited as regards what is divine. • It isolates them unescapably. • It confronts them with an exclusive demand that nothing can soften.
• In respect of God it sets bounds for them which they can break only by giving up the knowledge of this God.
• In this they experience God's love as grace, mercy and patience.
[bb • They experience it as God's election in virtue of His freedom, an election in which God not only chooses them for Himself, but in doing so chooses HIMSELF FOR THEM, and marks Himself out as the one, true and therefore unique God. • They experience His love as an election in which a final decision is reached at every point regarding what is and what is not divine. • The decision is reached that this God who chooses them is God alone, and that all other so-called or would-be gods are not what they claim to be.
• He alone is God, because all that He is and does has its significance and power and stands or falls by the fact that He is it and does it in an incomparable and unique way. • There is no other like Him. • He does not have to face any competition, either hostile or friendly. • His Word does not need to fear any contradiction or His work any opposition, nor of course do they stand in need or are they capable of any assistance, supplementation or authorisation from any other source.
[6] excursus
• Because the Church from the beginning understood the prophetic and apostolic testimony in this way, it responded from the first with a confession of His uniqueness as a kind of primary assertion.
• Quod unus est Deus is, according to ORIGEN, the first [au]origenspecies eorum quae per praedicationem apostolicam manifeste traduntur  (Περὶ ἀρχῶν I, Praef. 4).
• [au]tertullianRegula fidei una omnino est, sola immobilis et irreformabilis: credendi scilicet in unicum Deum …  (TERTULLIAN, De virg. vel. 1).
• [au]tertullianDeus, si non unus est, non est  (Adv. Marc. 1, 3).
• [au]irenaeusNeque super eum, neque post eum est aliquid; neque ab alio. motus sed sua sententia et libere fecit omnia quum sit solus Deus et solus Dominus et solus conditor et solus pater et solus continens omnia et omnibus ut sint, praestans  (IRENAEUS, Adv. o. h. II, 1, 1).
• [au]libellusPraeter -- 444 -- hanc nullam credimus esse naturam vel angeli, vel spiritus, vel virtutis alicuius, quae Deus est credenda  (Libellus in modum Symboli[5th century?]Denz. No. 19).
• God is the One [au]novatiancuius nec magnitudini neque maiestati, neque virtuti quidquam, non dixerim praeferri sed nec comparari potest  (NOVATIAN, De trin. 31).
[bb • Knowledge of God in the sense of the New Testament message, the knowledge of the triune God as contrasted with the whole world of religions in the first centuries, signified, and still signifies, the most radical "twilight of the gods," the very thing which SCHILLER so movingly deplored as the de-divinisation of the "lovely world."
• It was no mere fabrication when the Early Church was accused by the world around it of atheism, and it would have been wiser for its apologists not to have defended themselves so keenly against this charge.
• There is a real basis for the feeling, current to this day, that every genuine proclamation of the Christian faith is a force disturbing to, even destructive of, the advance of religion, its life and richness and peace.
• It is bound to be so. • Olympus and Valhalla decrease in population when the message of the God who is the one and only God is really known and believed.
• The figures of every religious culture are necessarily secularised and recede. • They can keep themselves alive only as ideas, symbols, and ghosts, and finally as comic figures. • And in the end even in this form they sink into oblivion.
• No sentence is more dangerous or revolutionary than that God is One and there is no other like Him.
• All the permanencies of the world draw their life from ideologies and mythologies, from open or disguised religions, and to this extent from all possible forms of deity and divinity.
• It was on the truth of the sentence that God is One that the "Third Reich" of Adolf Hitler made shipwreck.
• Let this sentence be uttered in such a way that it is heard and grasped, and at once 450 prophets of Baal are always in fear of their lives.
• There is no more room now for what the recent past called toleration.
• Beside God there are only His creatures or false gods, and beside faith in Him there are religions only as religions of superstition, error and finally irreligion.
[7] excursus
• There is no doubt that theoretically the ancient and medieval Church worked out the knowledge of the uniqueness of God with great clarity.
• But except for the significance of this for the original conflict of Christianity with paganism, and especially for the exclusion of Gnosticism, it was really the Reformation of the 16th century, above all the Calvinistic Reformation, which first brought into true focus the character of practical decision, the critical significance which belongs to this knowledge.
[bb • To be sure, THOMAS AQUINAS  (S. theol. I, qu. 3, art. 5 s.c.) had already advocated and established the statement, which is of incalculable importance for the logic of theology, that Deus non est in aliquo genere, because nihil est prius Deo nec secundum rem, nec secundum intellectum.
[bb • And ANSELM OF CANTERBURY had already declared (Monol. 80) -- in remarkable anticipation of the tendencies of the Reformation -- that God is non solum Deus sed solus Deus ineffabiliter trinus et unus, de quo solo prospera sunt operanda, ad quem solum ab adversis fugiendum, cui soli pro quavis re supplicandum.
• But after the struggles of the Early Church against Gnosticism, it is the Reformation which first seriously and comprehensively makes practical application and especially critical application of this knowledge. • It does this internally and not merely externally -- in relation to the Church itself and the apostasy which is both possible and real within the Church.
[bb • CALVIN now writes: Religio means a binding, and the decisive content of this "binding" is: ne aliquo transferatur quidquid in divinitatem competit.
• If everything divine is not recognised, sought and honoured as the sole possession of the one God, He is robbed of His honour, and the worship apparently offered to Him is profaned (Instit. I, 12, 1).
• By demanding from Jesus ([bb]Mt. 4:9) that He should fall down and worship him Satan showed himself to be Satan, while the angel of God  ([bb]Rev. 19:10) revealed himself to be an angel of God by refusing for himself the proskynesis which belongs only to God.
• [au]calvinSi volumus unum Deum habere, meminerimus ne tantulum quidem ex -- 445 -- eius gloria delibandum quin retineat, quod sibi proprium est … • Quaecunque pietatis officia alio transferantur quam ad unicum Deum, sacrilegio non carere  (ib. 12, 3).
• And for this reason the SCOTS CONFESSION begins with the weighty sentence: [au]scots"We confesse and acknawledge ane onelie God, to whom ONLY we must cleave, whom ONELIE we must serve, whom ONELIE we must worship and in whom ONELIE we must put our trust."
[bb • Everything depends on God's not only being RECOGNISED as the One who is unique, but on His being TREATED in the way which is His due, as the One who is unique. • Everything depends on the fear, trust, honour and service, which are His due, being given Him as the only One to whom they can possibly apply.
• It is to be noted that on this knowledge, i.e., the practical and critical application of this knowledge of God as the unique, the one and only God, depends the Scripture principle of the Reformers, their doctrine of justification, and especially their Christology, with all the antitheses and the positive rules for doctrine and life which this involves.
• Yet this knowledge must be made even more fruitful in its implications than even the Reformers made it.
• It is not an easy thing to apply it with the required universality.
[[8]] { -- 445 -- Simplicity means that in all he is and does he is wholly and undividedly himself (445) . }
• We now turn to the other side or meaning of the assertion of the unity of God.
[bb • It means also that God is SIMPLE.
• This signifies that in all that He is and does, He is wholly and undividedly Himself.
• At no time or place is He composed out of what is distinct from Himself.
• At no time or place, then, is He divided or divisible.
• He is One even in the distinctions of the divine persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
• He is One even in the real wealth of His distinguishable perfections.
• In specific things that He is and does, He never exists in such a way as to be apart from other things that He also always is and does.
• But in all other things He also is and does these specific things.
• And as He is and does these specific things, He also is and does all other things.
[[9]]
[bb • In this second sense, too, the assertion of God's unity can be called the basic proposition of the doctrine of God's FREEDOM.
• Being simple in the sense described, God is incomparably free, sovereign and majestic.
• In this quality of simplicity are rooted, fixed and included all the other attributes of His majesty: His constancy and eternity, His omnipresence, omnipotence and glory.
• Nothing can affect Him, or be far from Him, or contradict or withstand Him, because in Himself there is no separation, distance, contradiction or opposition.
• He is Lord in every relationship, because He is the Lord of Himself, unconditionally One as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and in the whole real wealth of His being. • For every distinction of His being and working is simply a repetition and corroboration of the one being and, in the one being, of all that He was from eternity and therefore from all time, and of all that He will be in eternity and therefore for all time.
[[10]]
[bb • Finally, His UNIQUENESS too is based on His SIMPLICITY. • As the One who is simple, God clearly cannot without self-contradiction -- and there is no such contradiction -- tolerate a second or third Almighty which is equally simple and eternal.
• The simplicity of God means that within the Godhead there is no additional or subsequent being. -- 446 -- • There is no God beside God. • Everything that is Godhead and divine is always God Himself and therefore always the one being.
[[11]] { -- 446 -- In relation to the world he cannot be identified with it nor can emanations of the divine be isolated in it (446). ; }
[bb • From the knowledge of the simplicity of God, it follows as a matter of course that His relation to the WORLD cannot on any account be understood and interpreted as a combination, amalgamation or identification of God with the world.
• From the same standpoint there are also no effluences, emanations, effusions or irruptions of God into the world, in virtue of which, apart from God Himself, there are in a sense islands or even continents of the divine in the midst of the non-divine.
• We must not understand or interpret creation, or even the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ, either as a commixture or identification of God with the world, or as a kind of outgoing of God from Himself.
• God's creation of the world out of nothing means that He does not abandon or give His glory as Creator to anyone else.
• The fact that Jesus Christ is very God and very man means that in this oneness of His with the creature God does not cease for a moment or in any regard to be the one, true God.
• And the strength and blessedness and comfort of His work of creation as of reconciliation and revelation consists in the fact that in these works of His too He is never less than wholly Himself.
[12] excursus { Recognition of the simplicity of God is recognition of the trinitarian and christological unity. Philosophical concepts can help to explain it but they cannot form a foundation for it. The simplicity at issue is that of the divine triunity, of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son, and of the hypostatic union in Jesus Christ. Only thus is it God's simplicity (446f.). }
• The early battle for a recognition of the simplicity of God was the same as for the recognition of the Trinity and of the relation between the divine and human natures in Jesus Christ.
• We can put it equally well both ways. • The Church clarified its mind about the simplicity of God by means of the essential unity of the Son and the Holy Spirit with the Father, and the undivided but unconfused unity of the divine with the human nature in Jesus Christ. • But it also clarified its mind about the homoousia of the Son and the Holy Ghost in the one divine being, and the unity of the two natures in Jesus Christ, by means of the simplicity of God.
[bb • Properly considered, the two things are one. • The unity of the triune God and of the Son of God with man in Jesus Christ IS itself the simplicity of God.
• We shall have to return to the point later, but this background must not be forgotten when we find that the development of the conception in the later theology of the Church appears to be of a purely logical and metaphysical kind.
• For example, we read in AUGUSTINE that this is the [au]augustinenatura simplex: cui non sit aliquid habere, quod vel possit omittere, vel aliud sit HABENS aliud quod HABET  (De civ. Dei XI, 10, 2).
• God is simplex for this reason and in this way: [au]augustinequia non aliud illi est ESSE, aliud VIVERE quasi possit esse non vivens; nec aliud illi est vivere, aliud INTELLIGERE, quasi possit vivere non intelligens; nec aliud illi est intelligere, aliud BEATUM ESSE, quasi possit intelligere et non beatus esse; sed quod est illi vivere, intelligere, beatum esse, hoc est illi esse  (ib. VIII, 6).
• And ANSELM OF CANTERBURY tells us that in God is [au]canterburyidem quodlibet unum eorum, quod omnia sive simul sive singula  (Monol. 17).
• [au]canterburyQuomodo ergo, Domine, es omnia haec?
• An sunt partes tui, an potius unumquodque horum totum es quod es?
• Nam quicquid est partibus iunctum, non est omnino unum, sed quodammodo plura et diversum a se ipso et vel actu vel intellectu dissolvi potest: quae aliena sunt a te, quo nihil melius cogitari potest. Nullae igitur partes in te sunt, Domine, nec es plura sed sic es unum quoddam et idem tibi ipsi, ut in nullo tibi ipsi sis dissimilis; immo tu es ipsa unitas, nullo intellectu divisibilis  (Prosl. 18).
• Or using a mathematical concept: Punctum in puncto non est nisi punctum: habet enim punctum  (understood in a spatial or temporal sense) non nullam similitudinem non parum ad eiusdem  (God's) [A point in a point does not exist except as a point (…). A point, then, has some likeness that is not insignficantly useful for the contemplation of his (God's) eternity]  (De fide trin. 9).
• The -- 447 -- older Protestant orthodoxy, too, usually adopted much the same arguments and explanations when it placed and expounded the simplicity of God first among the divine attributes.
• A typical example is J. WOLLEB's definition: [au]wolleb[Simplicity is that by which God is understood as being truly one, and utterly free from composition]  (Chr. Theol. Comp., 1626, I, cap. 1, 3).
• There could be no objection to the logic, metaphysics and mathematics of these lines of thought if they had been used only to perform the service of explanation -- a service which it is quite possible and even up to a point necessary to render in this way.
• But we cannot read these things in the older writers with unmixed joy. • The trouble is that they are put at the head, and not, as we are trying to do here, in their proper turn. • They thus give the impression that what is argued and considered is the general idea of an ens vere unum[being truly one] and not the God of the doctrine of the Trinity and of Christology -- although this is in flat contradiction to the way in which this recognition originally forced itself on the Church. • But again, if the basic concept in the doctrine of God is taken in this way, it leads to an underlying nominalism or semi-nominalism in the doctrine of the attributes, in the light of which the different perfections of God inevitably take on the colourlessness and lack of form which undoubtedly characterise this section of the older Protestant dogmatics and constitute its weakness.
• On the other hand, this must not be allowed to mislead us in regard to the necessity and scope of the recognition itself.
• We will have to give it a more distinctly biblical and therefore Christian basis than it had in the Early Church, the Middle Ages and Protestant orthodoxy.
• We have so far avoided the fatal consequences of a possible non-Christian basis for this recognition and we shall have to continue to do so.
• But we must still hold fast to the recognition itself.
• As we have seen, it stands on a firm foundation as a decisive designation of the freedom and therefore of the divinity of God. • It is the basis of His uniqueness, the explanation of the diversity and unity of His perfections and finally the criterion for understanding His relation to the creature.
[[13]] { -- 447 -- We oppose an understanding of divine unity in terms of a general concept that might apply to other things as well. God is not relatively unique as is the individual specimen in a genus. He is absolutely and uniquely unique. Similarly, he is not relatively simple but absolutely and uniquely so (447). }
• But we must now try to lay even deeper foundations for the statement that God is one, grasping its meaning even more basically, i.e., more specifically than has so far been done.
• We understand the concept of the unity of God in the first instance as a designation of His freedom, of His being as it is self-grounded and therefore absolutely superior to every other being.
[bb • When we say that God is ONE, UNIQUE and SIMPLE, we mean something different from when we ascribe unity to any other quantity.
• Anything else to which we can ascribe unity is one side by side with one or many others which are comparable with it and belong with it to a species.
• It is one instance in a genus.
• It is, therefore, only relatively unique.
• But God is an instance outside every genus.
[bb • God is, therefore, ABSOLUTELY UNIQUE, in a way that is itself unique and cannot be denoted by any concept.
• Openly or secretly, anything else to which unity can be ascribed is internally divisible and therefore composite, and externally linked with something else and therefore combined or amalgamated.
• Everything else is only relatively simple.
• But God is simple without the least possibility of either internal or external composition.
• God is completely in-dividual.
[bb • He is ABSOLUTELY SIMPLE.
[bb • In regard to His uniqueness and equally in regard to His simplicity God is therefore the ONLY being who is really one.
• His unity is His freedom, His aseity, His deity.
• It is with His deity alone that our concern must be when we ascribe to Him unity, uniqueness and -- 448 -- simplicity.
• It is His deity alone that we must seek to magnify by these concepts.
• We have to accept, then, that these concepts are determined and also circumscribed wholly and completely by His deity.
[bb • We CANNOT accept the converse that His deity is CIRCUMSCRIBED by the concepts of unity, uniqueness and simplicity -- concepts which are at our disposal.
• The relation between subject and predicate is an irreversible one when it is a matter of God's perfections.
• We shall have to watch this with particular care in this as in all the designations of God's freedom.
• Otherwise we shall fail to understand them as the designations of God's freedom and therefore of real freedom.
• We shall violate the mystery of God's majesty in our very desire to glorify it.
• Necessarily, then, we must say that God is the absolutely One, but we cannot say that the absolutely one is God.
• This concept of the "absolutely one" is the reflection of creaturely unities. • By making them absolute we do not in any sense conceive or proclaim God the Creator, but one of the gods, which as gods (not of themselves, but in virtue of their origin in our imagination, in which alone they can be gods, and also of their plurality) are empty caricatures of God.
[14] excursus { -- 448 -- He is truly individual and not just an absolutized or divinized unity – as in the abstract monotheism of Islam. }
[bb • A good example of the absolutising of "UNIQUENESS" is provided by the noisy fanaticism of Islam regarding the one God, alongside whom, it is humorous to observe, only the baroque figure of His prophet is entitled to a place of honour.
[bb • "MONOTHEISM" is obviously the esoteric mystery behind nearly all the religions with which we are familiar, as well as most of the primitive religions.
• "Monotheism" is an idea which can be directly divined or logically and mathematically constructed without God.
• It is the reflection of the subjective sub-consciousness, the requirement of freedom and the claim to mastery on the part of the human individual; or it is the reflection of this as already reflected in the various cosmic forces of nature or spirit, fate or reason, desire or duty; or more concretely it is perhaps one of the various "incarnations" of these cosmic forces which in his occasional doubts about the divinity of his own individuality man absolutises in an attempt to reach out beyond himself and in this inverted way to advance his own elevation to deity.
• The artifice adopted by Islam consists in its developing to a supreme degree what is at the heart of all paganism, revealing and setting at the very centre its esoteric essence, i.e., so-called "monotheism."
• In this way it was able to become a deadly danger to all other forms of paganism and to a Christianity with a pagan conception of the oneness of God.
• The fact should not be overlooked that this danger, its seductive profundity, consists in what is (compared with other forms of paganism) simply the greater primitiveness with which it proclaims the unique as God instead of God as the One who is unique.
• Monotheism, the religious glorification of the number "one," the absolutising of the idea of uniqueness, can be impressive and convincing as knowledge of God only so long as we fail to note the manysided dialectic in which we are thereby inevitably entangled and in which Islam is incurably entangled. • For the cosmic forces in whose objectivity it is believed that the unique has been found are varied. • It is only by an act of violence that one of them can be given pre-eminence over the others, so that to-day it is nature and to-morrow spirit, or to-day fate and to-morrow reason, or to-day desire and to-morrow duty, which is regarded as the unique thing which constitutes the common denominator of everything else and therefore the theoretical and practical principle for the knowledge and direction of human life.
• The one objective reality of to-day is quickly enough limited and replaced by another -- 449 -- which makes the same claim to divinity.
• For all his heavenly divinity each Zeus must constantly be very anxious in face of the existence and arrival of very powerful rivals.
[bb • And even when the CONFLICT in OLYMPUS is settled, will THE God who is claimed to be unique and recognised as such be able to master the HUMAN "in-dividual," PROMETHEUS?
• Who is first and foremost and really the one who is unique -- Allah or his prophet, Allah or his devotees?
• Monotheism is all very well so long as this conflict does not break out.
• But it will inevitably break out again and again.
[bb • A HEGEL will always give rise to a FEUERBACH and a Feuerbach to a MAX STIRNER. • The individual will continually and inevitably resist every universal, however unique, with the claim that he is something even more unique.
• And is there any end to this conflict, even if every conflict in Olympus is settled?
• Once we grasp this aporia we shall avoid absolutising the idea of uniqueness just as much as any other idea.
• That which men can divine or construct as well as believe, that which, as an object of human divining or constructing, is as dialectical as the absolutised idea of uniqueness, may be anything we like to call it -- and we certainly cannot deny that it is something -- but it is not God.
• It is, therefore, unthinking to set Islam and Christianity side by side, as if in monotheism at least they have something in common.
• In reality, nothing separates them so radically as the different ways in which they appear to say the same thing -- that there is only one God.
[15] excursus { Nor is God mere simplicity, as in equally abstract philosophical conceptions (448-450) . }
[bb • Similarly, the assertion of the SIMPLICITY of God is not reversible in the sense that it could equally well be said that the simple is God.
• The simple, the concept of a whole which is indivisible or an indivisible which is whole, can certainly be an object and a very natural object of human divining and construction. • Indeed, whenever men have begun to worship the unique as a deity, they have always more or less consistently tried to describe it as the simple as well.
• It is very understandable that, complex as he is and suffering from his own complexity as he does, man would like to be different, i.e., simple. • He therefore ascribes simplicity to his own reflection, his would-be deity, believing that he sees true deity in the simplicity he longs for and extols.
• It is further understandable that, moving from direct to indirect self-deification, man should ascribe this simplicity to the cosmic force which he venerates at any given time, thus believing that he sees the simple and to that extent the divine in one or other of these cosmic forces.
• But unfortunately it is not true that the simple as such, the simple which can be the object of our divining and constructing, can be unequivocally and with certainty contrasted as that which is divine with what is not simple but complex.
[bb • For, on the ONE hand, we may try to think out the idea of the simple to its conclusion, attempting to think of it as a being which exists ONLY FOR ITSELF, in abstraction from all that is complex. • But in this case the simple is an utterly unmoved being, remote from this world altogether, incapable of sound or action, influence on or relation to anything else. • And over against it we have to understand this whole complex world either as an autonomous world or as a mere appearance, the veil of Maia, so that either way the simple cannot be thought of as having the mastery over it.
[bb • Or, on the OTHER hand, we may shrink from this conclusion and understand the simple as the unconditioned. • In this case we can find room for the existence of a related, conditioned and complex world here. • But we have to admit that this relationship, and therefore the existence of this world, and therefore its complexity, are all essential to the simple, that it would not be the unconditioned without the correlated totality of the conditioned.
• Indeed, may we not even have to bring the unconditioned and the conditioned close together until at last they are dialectically identified?
• We shall certainly be forced to abandon again the absolute simplicity of the would-be simple, and with it that in which we were seeking the divinity of God.
• This is the dialectic which enmeshed the orthodox doctrine of God, as it did that of Hegel and Schleiermacher after it, to the extent that its basis was the concept of the ens simplicissimum[most simple being].
• And if this is the particular difficulty of -- 450 -- the concept of simplicity it must not be forgotten that all the time the concrete question necessarily arises: What in fact is the simple?
• Where is it to be found?
• Which of the cosmic forces can be proclaimed as that which is simple and therefore as God?
• With what right and authority is it to be this one and not that one?
• And if it is one of them, what about man's own rivalry to it and all of them?
• Who will prevent him from regarding perhaps his own vital impulse as the most simple thing of all, and opposing it as truly and properly divine to every would-be simple being in heaven and earth?
[bb • In a word, deliverance from the complex to simplicity, the proclamation of the simple as the truly divine, does NOT prove on examination to be quite so simple as it usually appears to be as a slogan.
• God is certainly simple and the divine deliverance is certainly deliverance from complexity.
• But the absolutised idea of simplicity itself belongs to the complexity from which man must be delivered.
• As such it is no more the divine which saves than is the idea of uniqueness. • On the contrary, it is itself enmeshed in complexity and calculated to increase the misery which complexity actually involves.
[[16]]
• When the unity of God is turned into the divinity of unity there can only result what are actually caricatures of God.
• If we are not to end with these caricatures, we cannot think out to its conclusion the unity of God as a determination of His freedom without recalling that, if we are speaking of the one, unique and simple God, we are speaking of the God who is love.
[bb • Knowledge of the unity of God is not in any sense the result of human divining or construction. • It is the result of the ENCOUNTER between man and God, brought about by God.
[bb • It is the human result of the event in which THE "I" meets the human "Thou" and becomes the reality and determination of its existence. • It bears all the marks of that which is INCOMPARABLE  (God's uniqueness) and that which is UNDIVIDED  (His simplicity).
• Recognition of the unity of God is the human response to the summons and the action of this incomparable and undivided being.
• It is the recognition of His promise under which man is placed.
• It is obedience to His command, which is given man and accepted by him.
• Knowledge of the unity of God breaks through the arbitrary assumptions of all monotheism as of all pantheism.
• This knowledge is necessarily a stumbling block to monotheism and foolishness to pantheism, because its concern is wholly with God and not at all with unity in itself, and because it knows that it is indebted and responsible to the love of God and the love of God alone. • For it is in this indebtedness and responsibility that it is knowledge of the One who is both unique and simple.
[[17]] { -- 451 -- Knowledge of God's unity comes from meeting with the one God who shows himself to be the God of electing love. }
[bb • It is in His love above all that God reveals Himself as the ONE who is incomparable and therefore unique; which means that He reveals Himself as the true and essential God. • This revelation is of such a nature that He accomplishes at one stroke what the idea of uniqueness is unable to accomplish in any of its various forms and applications.
[bb • We have referred already to the fact that divine revelation has the character of ELECTION, and to the twofold aspect, that as He chooses man in order to reveal Himself to him as God, God also CHOOSES HIMSELF, that He may be revealed to man as God.
• It is not, however, from -- 451 -- the principle or concept of this twofold election that the knowledge of the divine uniqueness comes.
• It is not unique in this character of election as such.
[bb • The IDEA of election itself leads us back only to the IDEA of uniqueness. • Knowledge of this does not give or complete knowledge of the divine uniqueness.
[bb • This takes place in the ACTUALITY of the twofold election as it occurs in God's revelation according to the witness of the Old and New Testament. • It is a CHOICE, but it is a choice as an EVENT.
• It is in this event as such that the love of God reveals itself and acts with the incomparability to which the only appropriate response is the confession of God's uniqueness.
• It is in this event that the twofold choice is made which excludes even the very idea that God may be subject to the rivalry of other gods.
[18] excursus { An examination of Old and New Testament sayings on the unity of God (451-457) . }
• It is worth while recalling first the whole passage, [bb]Deut. 4:32-40 : "For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and from the one end of heaven unto the other, whether there has been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? • Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live? • Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
• Unto you it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God: there is none else beside him.
• Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee: and upon earth he made thee to see his great fire: and thou heardest his words out of the midst of the fire.
• And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them, and brought thee out with his presence, with his great power, out of Egypt; to drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as at this day. • Know therefore this day, and lay it to thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. • And thou shalt keep his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever."
• And then this recalling of the acts of God's love becomes the basis of the repetition of the Ten Commandments ([bb]Deut. 5:1f.). • The first of these: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" is explicitly based on the words: "I am the Lord thy God THAT BROUGHT THEE OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT, OUT OF THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE," and the inculcation of the divine law in Deut. 6 has as its basis the [au]mastricht[classical foundation]  (so P. V. MASTRICHT, Theor. Pract. Theol., 1698, II, 8): "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is ONE Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might"  ([bb]Deut. 6:4).
• If we consult Exodus 20 we see that this is not a mere Deuteronomic construction. • There the first commandment has the same decisive basis. • And in the context in which they appear the whole ten can have the significance only of the proclamation of the truth which is immediately seen to be valid life-truth for Israel by reason of what Yahweh has actually given Israel, a truth which draws its power, and therefore supreme power, wholly from this actuality.
• It is not at all the case, then, that we have here first a God who says and does all kinds of things, and then an idea of uniqueness, and that these two have to be brought together in some way, so that this God clothes himself or is even clothed with the characteristic of uniqueness.
[bb • On the contrary, this God is unique from the very first in the things that He IS and SAYS and DOES.
• The exhibition of His being and -- 452 -- action is the proof of His uniqueness.
• He has only to place Himself beside the would-be gods of the nations, as He really does in the establishing, upholding and guiding of Israel, and He becomes ipso facto[in so doing] manifest as the only God among them.
• "Thus saith the Lord, the king of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts: I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.
• And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people?
• and the things that are coming and that shall come, let them declare.
• Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have I not declared unto thee of old, and shewed it?
• and ye are my witnesses.
• Is there a God beside me?
• yea, there is no rock: I know not any.
• They that fashion a graven image are all of them vanity: and their delectable things shall not profit: and their own witnesses see not, nor know; that they may be ashamed"  ([bb]Is. 44:6-9).
• Hence the prayer of Hezekiah: "Incline thine ear, O Lord, and hear: open thine eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, wherewith he hath sent him to reproach the living God.
• Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed them.
• Now therefore, O Lord our God, save thou us, I beseech thee, out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only"  ([bb]2 Kings 19:16-19).
• Hence, too, the references in [bb]Exod. 20:5; Exod. 34:14 and many later passages to the JEALOUSY of God, which is established with painful fulness in the description in Ezek. 23 of the harlotry committed by Judah and Israel, and wonderfully deepened and superseded by the recollection in Hos. 1-3 of the faithfulness of God which forgives and overcomes the unfaithfulness of His people.
• It is against this background and this background alone that we can understand the commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and with it the "monotheism" of the Old Testament in general.
[bb • It has absolutely nothing to do with the ambiguous charm of the number "one" or the subjective and objective monism of human self-consciousness and world consciousness, On the contrary, it is in conflict with this monotheism, detecting and passing judgment on its hidden dialectic. • It attacks man as a fallen creature who is utterly IGNORANT of the one and only God and therefore of the true GOD, a creature who is always looking for the one and never finds it. • He finds only what is multiple, because the one is THE one person from whom man has fallen away and who is hidden from him and can be revealed to him only by that One Himself.
• Old Testament monotheism consists in God's disclosing and giving Himself to man as the One who is also the one for which man for his part can only ask in vain.
• He is not, then, an -- ism or a system, which is capable of turning into its opposite. • On the contrary, He is the divine reality itself in its uniqueness.
• For this reason and in this way He possesses power as well. • This is not the precarious power of an idea that for a while brings conviction and sets up a school, and later fades again and is replaced by another idea. • His is the concrete power that preserves the people of Israel through its long history, which from Israel's standpoint is a continual history of opposition and apostasy. • It is the power that preserves it in spite of itself (as depicted in Hosea 1-3) in constant selection and separation at the name of Yahweh as the name of the only true God. • It is the power of the divine grace, mercy and patience in which His holiness, righteousness, and wisdom do in fact triumph.
• It is the power to bind this people in the way in which God Himself, as contrasted with an idea, binds men, so that it is not always evident how far men glorify Him, but it is always evident that He does glorify Himself among and in these men, and in such a way that His love in its uniqueness never fails or is renounced or becomes equivocal in relation to these men.
• The God of the Old Testament is not, then, the God to whom uniqueness accrues or is ascribed as a kind of embellishment drawn from the stores of creaturely glory, which He may now wear as the images of the heathen gods wear their embellishments of gold and -- 453 -- silver.
• On the contrary, He is the God who possesses uniqueness in the love that is actively at work on Israel, a uniqueness that is His own, a divine, a unique uniqueness, unique in comparison with all human uniqueness. • He is the God who is unique in Himself, quite apart from any corresponding knowledge or service contributed or offered or provided by Israel. • Indeed, Israel's knowledge of God and service of God is to be understood as a divine gift subsequent to God's existence and action and to that extent as obedience to God's command.
• It is drawn always by "the cords of grace," by the "bands of love"  ([bb]Hos. 11:4). • There is continual resistance from the human side. • There is always breaking out to the left hand or the right. • This is how Israel comes to the knowledge and service of God, as God opposes to it His own faithfulness.
[19] excursus
• "Jewish monotheism?"
• It was just when something like this had begun to take shape, when apparently all opposition had been broken and apostasy seemed to belong to the past, when polytheism had apparently become a matter of past history and the idols Israel had worshipped were apparently recognised only as the idols of the despised Gentiles or in recollection of the abomination of their disobedient fathers -- it was just then, under the sway of this victorious monotheism, that Israel's Messiah was handed over by Israel to the Gentiles and nailed by them to the cross with Israel's approval.
• Could there be a better proof that this monotheism is not a final achievement and expression of Israel's obedience to the first commandment? • On the contrary, is it not a proof that, like the monotheism of Islam (its later caricature), it is simply the supreme example, the culmination and completion of the disobedience which from the beginning constituted the human side of the dealings of the one and only God with His chosen people?
• The conception of the one and only being now actually reached by Israel has as little as that to do with the uniqueness of God. • It is -- always -- the form taken by the supreme and as it were mature contradiction of the one and only God. • This does not occur in the remoter ages when Israel worshipped idols, but at the height of its religious development, when it seemed as if the indictments of Moses and the prophets and the threatenings of the Law no longer applied, and the dogma of God's uniqueness had become something that all the parties of the Jewish Church would of course hold in honour. • In these very conditions the fulfilment of the whole history of Israel could be and inevitably was misunderstood. • The one and only Son of the one and only God, the very incarnate Word of God to which Moses and the prophets had borne witness, could be and inevitably was rejected by Israel, and its whole history could be and was inevitably proved to be the history of human disobedience to the one and only God in a manner both awesome and final.
[bb • Could there be any better proof that God's uniqueness is really His, GOD's uniqueness, not a matter of a human idea of God, but of His revelation, of His speaking and acting, of His inmost being, inseparable from His grace and holiness? • Could there be any better proof that it is as little the discovery of a human mind as His grace and holiness and all His other perfections, and that as a divine reality it is diametrically opposed to creaturely reality, including even the highest human faculty of construction and foresight, and can become an object of human knowledge only in the way in which God in any of His perfections can become such an object?
• In face of the cross of Christ it is monstrous to describe the uniqueness of God as an object of "natural"knowledge.
[bb • In face of the cross of Christ we are bound to say that knowledge of the one and only God is gained only by the begetting of men anew by the Holy Spirit, an act which is always unmerited and incomprehensible, and consists in man's no longer living unto himself, but in the Word of God and in the knowledge of God which comes by FAITH in that Word.
• But faith in that Word means faith in the One whom this very Judaism with its monotheism rejected as a sinner against its monotheism, a blasphemer against God.
[bb • This is the gulf which separates CHRISTIAN monotheism, if we can use the term, from Jewish monotheism and monotheism of -- 454 -- every other kind.
• It is strange but true that confession of the one and only God and denial of Him are to be found exactly conjoined but radically separated in what appears to be the one identical statement that there is only one God.
• This one sentence can actually mean what it says, and it can actually not mean this, but its opposite.
• What distinguishes these two possibilities, raising the one to reality and invalidating the other, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and faith.
[20] excursus
• That God is a single unique being is of course stated expressly and in many forms by the New Testament as well ([bb]Mt. 19:17, [bb]Gal. 3:20, [bb]1 Cor. 8:4f., [bb]1 Tim. 2:5).
[bb • It says this ACTUALLY and not merely verbally because, like the Old Testament, it makes the statement in attestation -- this time retrospective -- of the Word and work of God.
[21] excursus
• The passages which speak expressly of the uniqueness of God are only in a sense the spokesmen for a far more extensive conception of the uniqueness of the FORM and CONTENT of the event between God and man in which the being of God as the one and only God has been revealed. • They are to be read and understood against this background, and not by themselves as abstract statements about God in Himself. • The very remarkable fact is to be noted that (in harmony with the predominant "henotheism" of the Old Testament) Paul not only did not deny the existence of many that are called (λεγόμενοι) gods and lords in heaven and on earth ([bb]1 Cor. 8:5), but actually affirmed it: ὥσπερ εἰσὶν θεοὶ πολλοὶ καὶ κύριοι πολλοί[just as there are many gods and many lords].
• To such an extent is the New Testament doctrine of the singleness or uniqueness of God based on the conception of that event, and so little on a preconceived theory.
• That God is a single being is clearly reflected, according to the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, in the fact that there is more joy in heaven over ONE sinner that repents than over ninety and nine just persons, who need no repentance ([bb]Lk. 15:7-10). • Such is God and such His mercy and righteousness that He is concerned about the individual man in his need and his redemption.
• Again God as the One who is single and unique is reflected in the fact that Martha is wrong to be worried and anxious about many things.
• "But ONE thing is needful: for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her"  ([bb]Lk. 10:41f.). • Such is God and such His grace and holiness that there is simply one thing which He wants from men.
• Again, in [bb]Gal. 5:14 the whole Law is fulfilled in one saying (the saying: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself").
[bb • For Paul there seem to have been two objects of what is in the first instance an INDIRECT view of the singleness and uniqueness of God. • First, there is the embracing together OF JEW AND GENTILE both in sin and in the mercy of God or faith -- a decisive mark of his Gospel: "Or is God the God of Jews only?
• is he not the God of Gentiles also: if so be that God is ONE, and he shall justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith?"  ([bb]Rom. 3:29f.).
• "For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the SAME Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon him"  ([bb]Rom. 10:12).
• Or again (and already the connexion with the direct view of God's uniqueness is present here): "For he is our peace, who made both ONE, and brake down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; that he might create in himself of the twain ONE new man, so making peace; and might reconcile them both in ONE body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby"  ([bb]Eph. 2:14-16).
• The saying IN [bb]Jn. 10:16 belongs to this context: "And other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be ONE flock, ONE shepherd."
• The second indirect view of the divine singleness and uniqueness in Paul -- and it is of course directly connected with the first -- is that of the CHURCH as the one BODY  ([bb]Rom. 12:4f., [bb]1 Cor. 10:17; 1 Cor. 12:12f.).
• "There is ONE body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in ONE hope of your calling: ONE Lord, ONE faith, ONE baptism, ONE God and Father of all, who is over all, and through -- 455 -- all, and in all"  ([bb]Eph. 4:4f..).
• This passage makes it obvious how Paul simply reads off the truth of the singleness and uniqueness of God from the reality of the life of His people created by His Word and work.
• That this reality represents for him a divine reality is shown by the fact that it is traced back to the reality of the ONE HOLY SPIRIT both in this very passage ([bb]Eph. 4:4) and in many other places ([bb]1 Cor. 12:11f., [bb]2 Cor. 12:18, [bb]Eph. 2:18).
• For this reason the gift of revelation and reconciliation, visible in the life of the community in all its unity, may and must be described also as a task, and made the object of apostolic exhortation.
• It is the singleness and uniqueness of God which is proclaimed when in [bb]Gal. 3:28  (cf. [bb]1 Cor. 12:13) not only the distinction between the Jews and Greeks but also that between slave and free and male and female is relativised by the statement that "ye are all ONE in Christ Jesus."
• And it is the singleness and uniqueness of God which is proclaimed when in [bb]Phil, 1:27Christians are called to stand fast in ONE spirit, "with ONE soul striving for the faith of the gospel," or in [bb]Phil. 2:2 "to be of the SAME mind," having the SAME love, as σύμψυχοι to be of ONE mind; or in [bb]Rom. 15:5f. to GLORIFY the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ "with one accord, with ONE mouth;" or when it can in fact be said of the community in Jerusalem in [bb]Acts 4:32 that the multitude of them that believed were "of ONE heart AND soul."
[22] excursus
[bb • But all this is, after all, only the INDIRECT conception which serves as a basis for confession of the one God.
[bb • It cannot be understood except against the background of the proper, DIRECT conception which now calls for consideration.
[bb • But this direct conception, the one with which knowledge of the singleness and uniqueness of God in the New Testament stands or falls, is that of JESUS the MESSIAH, rejected by monotheistic Judaism.
• Already in Ephesians 2 and 4 this view is clearly enough visible as the constitutive centre of what is said about the unity of the congregation. • It is dominant, however, in the principal passages [bb]1 Cor. 8:6 and [bb]1 Tim. 2:5. • The first passage says first: εἷς θεὸς ὁ πατήρ and then: εἷς κύριος 'Ιησοῦς χριστὸς[There is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ] ; the second: εἷς θεός[one God] and then: εἷς μεσίτης θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων,ἄνθρωπυς χριστὸς 'Ιησοῦς[one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ]  ("who gave himself a ransom for all"). • In neither passage is the connecting Καί[and] to be understood as if a second unique being is named alongside a first, but what comes after the καί[and] strengthens, emphasises and interprets what stands in front of it -- a common usage. • Thus mention of the one Lord or Mediator simply expresses the fact and extent that God the Father is the unique being.
• He is it in and with the fact that our Lord, the Mediator between God and man, is as such the one unique being.
• This twofold εἷς[one] does not involve in the least the introduction of a new polytheism, as in the conception of a higher unique being and a lower -- analogous to "Allah is great and Mohammed is his prophet." • On the contrary, it means the final establishing of the monotheism of Moses and the prophets, the monotheism of the God who is real and revealed, who has His being and makes it known in His Word and work. • And it is established by the specific naming of His name.
• Christian monotheism results from and consists in the fact that Jesus Christ bears witness to Himself and reveals Himself as the Son of His heavenly Father, distinguishing Himself and separating Himself as reigning Lord from the powers and forces of this age, and manifesting Himself as their Conqueror and Master.
• In the events which not only are caused by God or proceed from Him, but which are identical with His being and action. • He reveals Himself and is known in His being as the One who is unique.
• He is not a unique being in the way in which there are many such.
[bb • He is THIS unique being.
[bb • As this unique being He is THE unique being.
• Thus everything depends on the revelation and knowledge of this unique being if it is to be a matter of the revelation and knowledge of the uniqueness of God in the New Testament sense.
[23] excursus
• We must now consider the passages in which the unique God and the unique Christ are not expressly connected, as in 1 Cor. 8 and 1 Tim. 2, but the uniqueness of the divine Word and work as it occurred in Jesus Christ is itself -- 456 -- described and emphasised.
[bb • It is these passages which will be finally decisive for the understanding of New Testament monotheism. • For in these passages we go even beyond what has been said above, where the two are set together, and learn the EXTENT to which, in fact, uniqueness -- and uniqueness that is divine -- is Jesus Christ's by right.
• According to [bb]Mt. 23:8-10, it is His in the sense that He Himself says to His disciples: "But be not ye called Rabbi: for ONE is your teacher, and all ye are brethren.
[bb • And call no man your father upon the earth: for ONE is your Father, which is in heaven.
[bb • Neither be ye called masters: for ONE is your Master, even Christ."
• The passage frankly sounds intolerable if we fail to realise that this is the claim of the one and only God. • Yet it should be noted that the very thing which would be completely intolerable if it were a man's testimony to himself -- Jesus' witness to Himself as Messiah -- is the basis of New Testament monotheism, just as the basis of Old Testament monotheism is the witness of Yahweh to Himself as He acts on Israel.
• We cannot listen to what the New Testament calls "the one God" without listening to His self-testimony.
• Naturally we may reject this.
• But in that case we reject not only what is here called "the one God." • but this God Himself.
• This God, the God of the Old and New Testaments, is in His being not only unique, but this unique being.
• We can react to His self-witness in which He reveals Himself as unique: "I and the Father are one"  ([bb]Jn. 10:30), in the same way as the Jews did according to [bb]Jn. 10:31 : "They took up stones to stone him."
• But for all that, it still stands as this self-witness and as such it is the one and only approach to what the Old and New Testaments call "God."
• For a being which is not the unique being attested by this self-testimony may also be unique in its own way, but it is certainly not this God.
• This and this alone is the admittedly strait way, the admittedly narrow gate, to the one God of the prophets and apostles.
• And everything that Paul says in his letters about the unity of the Spirit and the Church has as its background this self-witness.
• "Keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are"  ([bb]Jn. 17:11).
• But it is not only through words that this self-witness takes place.
• For instance, if we read Paul in [bb]Rom. 5:12-21  (cf. [bb]1 Cor. 15:21),
there does not seem to be a single word about the uniqueness of God. • It is all about the alteration that has taken place in the human situation through Jesus Christ, an alteration from the dominion of sin to the dominion of righteousness, from death as man's destiny to the gift of life.
• It should be noted, however, on the one hand how utterly unsymmetrical is the relationship of these two sides or possibilities. • Grace, righteousness and life are absolutely superior, as becomes more and more impressively clear as the end is approached. • And it should be noted, on the other hand, how in relation to the power that has been overthrown the victorious power is epitomised in the form of the εἷς ἄνθρωπος[one man] who has redressed the evil done by another and first εἷς ἄνθρωπος[one man].
• This latter "one man" was Adam.
• The other "one man" is Jesus Christ and it is He who is the bringer of the grace and righteousness of the life that triumphs over death, a grace and righteousness which shows itself divine by its superiority.
[bb • This happening is now the Messianic WITNESS OF JESUS TO HIMSELF.
[bb • At the same time and as such it is witness to the UNIQUENESS OF GOD.
[bb • Or, to put it the other way round, here too the witness to the UNIQUENESS OF GOD is simply the Messianic WITNESS OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. • This witness outdoes the testimony to sin and death offered by the human race as embraced in the one man Adam. • It does so by a victorious decision which ends and excludes all dispute or competition.
• This one being has gained His right and lordship over the lives of all -- or we may also say, this one being has revealed His dignity as Creator and Lord of all -- by dying for them all ([bb]2 Cor. 5:14).
[bb • And if human priests proved themselves merely witnesses and types by daily sacrifices, which have always to be repeated and "can never take away sins," He, Jesus Christ, "when he had offered ONE sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made the footstool of his -- 457 -- feet.
• For by ONE offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified"  ([bb]Heb. 10:11-14).
• This, it must be said, is the unique New Testament proof of the uniqueness of God.
[24] excursus
[bb • We conclude by referring to the fact that this was recognised and acknowledged in the REFORMATION doctrine of justification with the statement that it is only by faith that man possesses righteousness and holiness.
• This sola fide[by faith alone'] is simply the reflection of the soli Deo gloria[to the glory of God alone] with which the fathers of the Protestant Church were equally accustomed to sum up their profession of faith, just as conversely this soli Deo gloria[to the glory of God alone] is simply the reflection of the sola fide[by faith alone'].
• Rightly understood these two sola[only']  (and the third one, sola scriptura[Scripture alone] too) mean one and the same thing. • Unicus Deus[the one God], because [au]scot.[the one most high priest, patron and peacemaker]  (Conf. Scot. Art. XI), is the archetype, reflected by both, indeed by all three sola[onlys'].
• The uniqueness of faith is based on the uniqueness of its object, and therefore soli Deo gloria[to the glory of God alone].
• But the uniqueness of this object requires faith to be unique, because it is only God who is feared, loved and glorified by us, and therefore sola fide[by faith alone].
• But the power of this uniqueness is the power of the name under which God reveals His being and in which faith may believe.
• The Reformation recovered and brought to light the testimony of the whole of Holy Scripture when it sang: [au]hymn"Ask ye who is this same? • Christ Jesus is His name. • The Lord Sabaoth's Son; He, and no other one, Shall conquer in the battle."
[[25]] { -- 457 -- In scripture God's simplicity is his own. It is God in the actuality, power, and facticity of his presence and dealings according to the testimony, }
[bb • The SIMPLICITY or indivisibility of God too, the deeper essence and ground of which we have still to investigate, reveals itself to us with the invincible truth of a determination of the freedom of God only when we allow ourselves to be reminded, by the witness of Scripture, that God's freedom and therefore His simplicity are the freedom and simplicity of His love.
• Not an idea of simplicity, for, as we have shown, this could only draw us away from the knowledge of God.
• In Scripture the utterly simple is "simply" God Himself in the actuality, the superior might, the constancy, the obviousness, or even more simply, the factuality, in which He is present as God and deals as God with the creature, with man.
[26] excursus { not of logical or mathematical reflection, }
• If we examine its treatment of the simplicitas Dei[simplicity of God], we can only be amazed at the way in which orthodox dogmatics entered on and lost itself in logical and mathematical reflections. • For the results reached it naturally could not produce a single scriptural proof, and yet this was to form the fundamental presupposition of its whole doctrine of God and therefore finally of its whole Christian doctrine.
• Could it not see the wood for the trees?
• Fortunately its subsequent progress was generally better than its customary beginning.
• Later it said everything about God which has to be said if Scripture is guide.
• And the rest of Christian doctrine, too, it tried to present and develop in loyalty to the guidance of Scripture.
• It is a pity that this happy inconsistency did not survive in the teaching of a later period.
• But the question remains why orthodoxy was not consistent when it worked back to its starting-point, but gave a later period the possibility of deducing from this unhappy starting point far more unhappy consequences.
• Rightly it saw that God must be described as the absolutely simple. • But this absolutely simple can only be God Himself -- and not "God Himself" as interpreted by the idea of the absolutely simple, but God Himself in His self-interpretation. • Theoretically, of course, this was what orthodoxy sincerely wished to discover in His self-revelation attested in Scripture. • But in practice, for some strange reason, it was not satisfied at this point.
• It seemed to imagine that the simplicity of God can be attested and presented -- more simply than by reference to God Himself -- by all kinds of speculation on the idea of -- 458 -- the uncomposed and indivisible as such and in general.
• It did not see that the scientific accuracy necessary to present this object requires us absolutely to accept God Himself in His revelation attested in Scripture as the absolutely simple One, the One who is in fact uncomposed and indivisible, and to allow Him to assert Himself as such.
[bb • God Himself, this God in His reality, is THAT which is simple, HE who is simple.
• It is He who is incomparably, uniquely simple -- infinitely more simple than all the complexities and even all the would-be simplicities of the rest of our knowledge.
• God Himself is the nearest to hand, as the absolutely simple must be, and at the same time the most distant, as the absolutely simple must also be.
• God Himself is the irresolvable and at the same time that which fills and embraces everything else.
• God Himself in His being for Himself is the one being which stands in need of nothing else and at the same time the one being by which everything else came into being and exists.
• God Himself is the beginning in which everything begins, with which we must and can always begin with confidence and without need of excuse. • And at the same time He is the end in which everything legitimately and necessarily ends, with which we must end with confidence and without need of excuse.
• God Himself is simple, so simple that in all His glory He can be near to the simplest perception and also laugh at the most profound or acute thinking -- so simple that He reduces everyone to silence, and then allows and requires everyone boldly to make Him the object of their thought and speech. • He is so simple that to think and speak correctly of Him and to live correctly before Him does not in fact require any special human complexities or for that matter any special human simplicities, so that occasionally and according to our need He may permit and require both human complexity and human simplicity, and occasionally they may both be forbidden us.
[bb • For the simplicity of God is His OWN simplicity.
• His simplicity is God Himself as comfort, exhortation and judgment for all men and over all human endeavour.
• [au]mastricht[Thus it is the case that we have accustomed our minds, in holy self-sufficiency, to simplicity, and we substitute for a number of different things the one God, most sufficient in all things and for all things], (P. V. MASTRICHT., Theor. Pract. Theol., 1698, II, 6, 29).
[27] excursus { but of what the apostles and prophets say about God himself (457-461) . }
• Who and what is God Himself?
• We must not now go back and give an answer which declares what we think the conception of God ought to be, what God must be to be God according to all necessary postulates and ideas in respect of the concept of deity.
• God Himself is in fact simply the One of whom all prophets and apostles explained that they had heard His voice and had to obey Him, executing the messages and tasks He laid on them, and bearing witness of His will and work to others. • In a remarkable way they also recognised His voice in the testimony of each other, at least to the extent that, in a long unbroken chain, admittedly in quite different ways, but in ways which at this point involved no contradiction, they all aimed to be servants and messengers of one and the same God.
• This One is God Himself, described by the unanimous testimony of prophets and apostles as the Subject of creation, reconciliation and redemption, the Lord. • And as they describe and explain these works of His and His dignity, they characterise Him as the One who is gracious and holy, merciful and righteous, patient and wise, but also omnipresent, constant, omnipotent, eternal and glorious.
• According to this testimony all these perfections are the perfections of this one being.
• According to this testimony they all have their existence and their essence, not outside of Him, but absolutely in Him.
• The One who is all this, and in whom all this is, is God Himself.
• And He is simple, i.e.. He is all this indivisibly, indissolubly, inflexibly.
• The reason for this is that He is in Himself indivisible, indissoluble, and inflexible.
[bb • According to the testimony of the Bible (which refers us to His revelation as to Him Himself), the simplicity of God consists in the TRUSTWORTHINESS, TRUTHFULNESS and fidelity which He is Himself, and in which, therefore, He also is what He is, and does what He does.
• If He were divisible, dissoluble, or flexible, He would not be trustworthy.
• But the God of the prophets -- 459 -- and apostles is trustworthy. • And He is not merely casually or accidentally trustworthy, so that He could also be untrustworthy. • On the contrary, He is trustworthy in His essence, in the inmost core of His being.
[bb • And this is His SIMPLICITY.
• It is also, of course, what orthodox dogmatics had in mind when it usually began its doctrine of God with this conception of simplicity.
• It is to be wished that it had only made clear that this was what it had in mind -- the trustworthiness of the God who demonstrates His nature in His Word and work attested in Scripture.
• In this sense God in His simplicity is what the Bible so often calls Him, the "rock," the unshakable foundation, on which is based not only the doctrine of God but all the doctrines, and not only these but the whole life of the Christian Church, all Christian life, and finally all human life as a whole, and the promise of eternal life. • Without this foundation all this necessarily dissolves into nothingness.
• This divine simplicity, however, is not to be looked for in any other place than that in which the prophets and apostles found it, when it offered itself for them to find and they were found by it -- in God's self-demonstration, given by Him in His Word and work, which is in itself the demonstration of His trustworthiness, truthfulness and fidelity.
[bb • God's simplicity is to be SOUGHT in the prayer: "GRANT us faithfulness and deliver us from all our distresses," and the flame of this prayer can be kindled only at the fire which Moses saw alight on Horeb, a fire that is always consuming and always preserving, always judging and always saving, always killing and always making alive.
• The prophets and apostles came to know the One who is active there and in that way as One who is trustworthy in His Word and work, and they attested Him as such.
• He grants constancy because He Himself is constant.
• We can trust Him because His essence is trustworthiness.
[bb • When we know this we KNOW God's simplicity. • For revealing Himself in this way He REVEALS His simplicity.
• Thus you cannot know it except by knowing Him and we cannot know Him except in the place and way in which He has demonstrated Himself and given Himself to be known as the One He is.
• In this place and in this way -- in His Word and work -- He bears witness to Himself as the One who is simple, as He does also to Himself as the One who is unique.
[28] excursus
• It is, then, what may be called an analytical judgment when in [bb]Deut. 7:9 God is called the "faithful God," or in the Song of Moses in [bb]Deut. 32:4 the "God of TRUTH." • [The `truth' of the English A.V. carries, like the Hebrew 'emeth[truth], the idea of faithfulness, as in the German rendering. -- Tr.] For this is said of the God "which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations."
• And when Paul takes up the phrase: "God is faithful," it is with his eyes on the God "by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord"  ([bb]1 Cor. 1:9), "who shall stablish you and keep you from evil"  ([bb]1 Thess. 3:3).
• According to [bb]1 Jn. 1:9 God is faithful and just "to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
• Because "thou hast redeemed me," He is addressed in [bb]Ps. 31:5 as the "God of truth."
• Note how often this is said in contrast to men's unfaithfulness: [bb]Deut. 32:5, [bb]Rom. 3:3, [bb]2 Tim. 2:13.
• Equally involved in this analytical judgment is the fact that the man to whom this faithful God reveals and binds Himself as faithful has to confess like Jacob: "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which thou hast shewed unto thy servant"  ([bb]Gen. 32:10).
• If [bb]Ps. 33:4 applies to Him the cognate conception of "TRUTHFULNESS" and says "the word of the Lord is true (or right); and all his works are done in truth," it is matched by [bb]Rom. 3:4 : "God is true, but every man a liar."
• In [bb]Jn. 1:9 His Word is called the true Light that comes into the world, but we must also note what follows in verse 10: "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not."
• It is precisely God's faithfulness and truthfulness and therefore His simplicity which characterise His love too, His grace and mercy and patience, as matters of His free and sovereign choice, unmerited by us.
• It is precisely God's faithful -- 460 -- ness and truthfulness and therefore His simplicity which in a special way characterise God Himself as the One who gives Himself to be known by Himself, and for His own sake lends and gifts Himself to man to be his God.
• He who is holy, He who is true according to [bb]Rev. 3:7, is "he who hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth and no man openeth."
• "True and faithful" is the name of the rider on the white horse in [bb]Rev. 19:11.
• The "true witness" of [bb]Rev. 1:5  (identical with "the true and faithful witness" of [bb]Rev. 3:14) is Jesus Christ, "the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth," "the faithful high priest in things pertaining to God"  ([bb]Heb. 2:17).
• Those who receive HIS testimony confirm that God is true ([bb]Jn. 3:33).
• He has come and "hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even his Son Jesus Christ"  ([bb]1 Jn. 5:20).
• God is true because Jesus Christ is "in truth ARISEN" according to [bb]Luke 24:34.
• Finally, then, we reach the same point in regard to God's simplicity as we reached in regard to His uniqueness and all the other divine perfections.
• When we hear Paul call the "true God" to witness that his own word as an apostle was not Yes and No, but a word of truth and therefore a simple word, he finds the one basis for this appeal in the recollection that "the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea.
• For all the promises of God in him are yea and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us"  ([bb]2 Cor. 1:18-20).
[bb • God's simplicity reveals itself and consists in His continual self-confirmation in His speech and action; His continual self-confession and self-attestation in His identity. • This involves the REPETITION and also the FULFILMENT of His promise, which does not mean that it ceases to be a promise, but that for the first time it really becomes one. • It involves the UNITY of His promise and His command, of the Gospel and the Law, and in such a way that the Gospel is the fulfilling of the Law, while the Law is the form of the Gospel. • It involves the UNITY of the election and calling of the sinful people Israel and of the Church of Jews and Gentiles sanctified by grace. • It involves the unity of grace and holiness, mercy and righteousness, patience and wisdom, in the total work of His love.
• It is in this way that God confirms Himself, that He is One and the same. • And everywhere that this takes place, even at the points where at first we may think we see difference, opposition, or contradiction, but later find unity, He attests Himself and gives Himself to be known by faith in His simplicity.
[bb • But the name in which this witness to His unity is made is the name of JESUS CHRIST, as all the New Testament passages cited above show.
• All the lines we mentioned, promise and fulfilment, Gospel and Law, Israel and the Church, the love and freedom of God, are not separate, but meet and unite in Christ.
• The Yea and the Amen of the whole prophetic-apostolic message of all Scripture is, in fact, in Him: for in Him is the Yea and the Amen of the one God Himself.
• This is the reason why the faithfulness and truthfulness of God are to be regarded and understood as the real meaning and basis of His simplicity.
[bb • And this is the reason why the meaning and basis of the knowledge of His simplicity is FAITH, in which man for his part ascribes to God's faithfulness and truth the glory due to it, acknowledging its legitimate right, and to that extent himself (πιστεύειν[having faith (fulness)]) becoming faithful and true and himself simple.
• Faith is trust placed in the divine faithfulness.
• Faith is straightforwardness corresponding to the divine truthfulness.
• "I believe" means "I put my trust on the fact that I have to do with the God who is trustworthy, and I put my trust on Him in the way in which trust may and must be put on Him."
• But the God who is trustworthy is the God who, in the incarnation of His Word, has borne witness to both His love and His freedom and in both to Himself.
• The God who is trustworthy is the Father who is one with the Son and the Son who is one with the Father in the Holy Spirit.
[bb • It is right to extol the virtue of Christian SIMPLICITY as the climax of the attitude required and necessary in the Church.
• According to Scripture, however, there -- 461 -- is no simplicity in the Church except for the simplicity of faith in this God who is trustworthy. • There is no simplicity except for that of straightforward trust in the power of the mystery now revealed of the incarnation of the Word and the divine triunity.
• The simplicity of this straightforward trust will show itself to be the required and necessary simplicity, the true divine simplicity of the Christian, by the fact that it does not deviate a hair's breadth from its committal to the name of Jesus Christ.
• In this committal it is in fact the conditio sine qua non[necessary condition] of a knowledge of the simple God, of God Himself, who as such is the unique, the one God.
[[29]] { -- 461 -- Being unique and simple, God is omnipresent. Omnipresence is a determination of his freedom. }
[bb • Because and as God is one, unique and simple, He is for this reason OMNIPRESENT.
• Omnipresence is certainly a determination of the freedom of God.
[bb • It is the sovereignty in which, as the One He is, existing and acting in the way that corresponds to His essence, He is PRESENT to everything else, to everything that is not Himself but is distinct from Himself.
• It is the sovereignty on the basis of which everything that exists cannot exist without Him, but only with Him, possessing its own presence only on the presupposition of His presence.
[[30]]
[bb • God's presence includes His LORDSHIP. • How can He be present without being Lord?
[bb • And His lordship includes His GLORY. • How can He be Lord -- without glorifying Himself, without being glorious in Himself?
• And if nothing exists without Him, this means that everything is subject to Him.
• And that it is subject to Him means that it can and must serve His glory.
• But while we will not forget all this, we can leave it on one side for the moment, since it will have to be weighed and considered in its own place.
[[31]] { He is everywhere present as Lord in a unity of proximity and distance which is first that of himself -- near and distant in the one being (461f.) -- then that of his relation to the creature (462f.). ; }
[bb • The presupposition of all divine sovereignty is that of the divine OMNIPRESENCE.
• The whole divine sovereignty is based on the fact that for God nothing exists which is only remote, i.e., which is not near even as it is remote, so that there is no remoteness beside and outside Him which is remoteness without His proximity.
• There is remoteness as there is proximity. • Otherwise there would be no creation.
[bb • And because creation is GOD's creation, there is also a divine remoteness and proximity.
• But in God Himself remoteness and proximity are one.
[bb • And so in His creation, although there can be remoteness without proximity and proximity without remoteness for His creatures, no remoteness or proximity can exist apart from the divine remoteness AND proximity.
• Remoteness and proximity in created things rest on their multiplicity and differentiation, on the fact that they exist beside one another.
• But the divine remoteness and proximity rest on the wealth of the divine perfections.
• And God is One in this wealth of perfections.
[bb • Therefore God is Lord OVER these antitheses. • He is Himself distant and near in one being.
• For the same reason He is also, as Creator, both the author of the multiplicity and the differentiation of things which exist side by side in creation, and yet also independent of it. • Therefore there is in it no proximity -- 462 -- and no remoteness without His proximity and remoteness, and no presence without His presence: a presence with all the wealth and unity of His perfections; His presence as Himself in the uniqueness and simplicity in which He is Himself.
[[32]] { -- 462 -- This unity of proximity and distance reminds us that God is love, for omnipresence implies love both in God himself and outward to what is other than himself (462f.). }
[bb • It is at once apparent that this very freedom of God's being over all and in all, which is the basis of His whole sovereignty, compels us to remember that God is LOVE.
• The love of God is not contained in the concept of the divine unity as such.
• We have seen, of course, that, provided we think of it as the unity of the God attested in Scripture, we cannot think through or state clearly the concept of unity without already looking away from the freedom of God  (the perfection of which it denotes in the first instance) to the love of God which alone can make the freedom of God clear and understandable as His freedom.
• It is only if God's freedom is interpreted in this way that we are justified in stating, as we have already proceeded to do, that God is omnipresent because He is One.
• But the concept of God's omnipresence adds something new to the concept of God's unity as unity, for in the first instance this concept seems to refer only to God's being as such.
[bb • The concept of omnipresence, on the other hand, contains the reference to a UNIVERSE, or the possibility of a universe, to which God stands in a very direct and very intimate relationship. • He is PRESENT to it, yet He is not identical with it, but distinct from it as it is distinct from Him.
• We are not saying that God is omnipresent only in so far as there is this universe.
• God's omnipresence, like His other perfections, cannot be resolved into a description of His relationship to His creation.
• All that God is in His relationship to His creation, and therefore His omnipresence too, is simply an outward manifestation and realisation of what He is previously in Himself apart from this relationship and therefore apart from His creation.
• Even if creation and this relationship of God to creation did not exist, proximity and remoteness in irresolvable unity (and therefore the basis of what is externally manifested and realised in His omnipresence in relation to His creation) would still be a divine perfection.
• It is in the fact that there is in God proximity and remoteness in irresolvable unity, no proximity without remoteness and remoteness without proximity; it is in this fact -- we recall anew His triune essence -- that God is love.
• In the outward manifestation and realisation of this eternal love of His, He is also the Creator, and there is also a creation, and in it a creaturely proximity and remoteness, where there is proximity apart from remoteness and remoteness apart from proximity. • In relationship to it, not tied but sovereign and controlling, and yet in a real relationship to it, stands God's omnipresence in the meaning of the term in which it does in fact presuppose the existence of a universe distinct from God.
[bb • We can now say more precisely: The concept of the UNITY of God as such does not seem to describe God's being in such a way as to explain His being as LOVE.
[bb -- 463 -- • The concept of the divine OMNIPRESENCE, however, does this without any ambiguity, and when this term is associated with that of the divine unity, the latter also does. • So then we can see why it is that we cannot think through this latter concept without recalling that the God who is unique and simple is the One who loves.
• The fact that He is this must be our starting-point as we now try to understand His omnipresence as an attribute of His majesty and sovereignty.
[[33]]
• Such is God's nature and in such manner is He the One who is unique and single, that He can be the Creator of a world separate from Himself and be its Lord.
• There does exist in Him the wealth of His attributes.
• But above all there exists in the very unity of this wealth of His the triunity of His essence.
• Thus there exists a divine proximity and remoteness, real in Him from all eternity, as the basis and presupposition of the essence and existence of creation, and therefore of created proximity and remoteness.
• God can be present to another. • This is His freedom. • For He is present to Himself.
• This is His love in its internal and external range.
[bb • God IN HIMSELF is not only existent. • He is CO-EXISTENT. • And so He can co-exist with another also.
• To grant co-existence with Himself to another is no contradiction of His essence. • On the contrary, it corresponds to it. • And this is true also of His own entering into co-existence with this other.
• This co-existence, of course, can be only one which is posited, limited, conditioned and circumscribed by His own essence.
• It will be characterised by the unlimited priority of His, the divine existence and therefore by the unlimited subordination of the existence of the other which co-exists with Him.
• Yet under these presuppositions and in this order this co-existence has both its basis and its possibility in God.
• God is love in Himself.
• For this reason and to this extent omnipresence is proper to Him as an attribute of majesty and sovereignty.
• Without the divine love this would be incomprehensible.
• For without the divine love there could be no other, no universe beside God and therefore no divine omnipresence in relation to it, and therefore no revelation or knowledge of the omnipresent being of God.
• But we must note also that there would be no love of God, no incarnation of His Word, and therefore no revelation of His action as Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer, if God were not present to another distinct from Himself on the basis of the fact that He is the One who is omnipresent in Himself.
• The attributes of God's love about which we have already spoken, His grace and mercy and patience, are in their revelation more precise determinations of His omnipresence, of His sovereign co-existence with another distinct from Himself; and in their identity with the divine essence they are determinations of the way in which God as the One who is primarily present to Himself can love a world distinct from Himself and can therefore be its Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer.
• This connexion ensures for us that in considering this divine perfection too we are at the well-known place -- 464 -- where we have to hold fast to the Word and work of divine love as the first and last court of appeal for our attempt at interpretation.
[34] excursus { -- 464 -- For this reason Barth resists the common equation of God's omnipresence either with his eternity or, more generally, with what is called his infinity (464-468) . }
[bb • In the older theology God's OMNIPRESENCE was usually coupled with His ETERNITY. • The reason is not far to seek.
[bb • His omnipresence seems to have reference to His relation to SPACE, His eternity to His relation to TIME.
[bb • The two, it was thought, could be comprehended under the more general conception of INFINITY  (infinitas) and expounded according to the common pattern thus provided.
• [au]gerhard[For two, as it were, kinds of infinity can be determined: eternity and immeasurability. Eternity is that property of God by which he is signified to be unlimited by any time, and to have neither beginning nor end of his existence; rather he is beyond all sequence of time -- always and at the same time complete. The immeasurability of God is that property of God by which he is signfied to be unable to be measured or determined in any place. Rather, he penetrates and fills every individual place without multiplication, extension, inclusion or division of his essence]  (J. GERHARD, Loci theol., 1610 f., II, 171).
[bb • The parallel between omnipresence and eternity appears obvious. • It gives a logical and metaphysical clarity which has perhaps seemed even more satisfactory since the conceptions of space and time began to play their prominent role in KANT's theory of knowledge.
• For space and time can be understood as the limits within which we ourselves exist and within which the world also exists for us. • They are the conditions under which the activity of our human existence, our knowing and willing, take place as such (in time), and in relation to objects (in space). • On the other hand, the eternal and omnipresent God is understood as the supreme principle of existence and the universe, which is not itself bound by these limits and conditions, but posits and embraces them.
[35] excursus
• The first objection we have to bring against this very illuminating scheme is a formal one. • It does not represent a true outworking of the Christian knowledge of God if we try to understand and present God's essence (as clearly takes place in this parallel treatment of omnipresence and eternity) from the point of view of the problems of our created existence and our created world, i.e., as the answer and solution to these problems.
• The Christian doctrine of God has to face and answer questions put to it by the God who confronts man and not by the man who confronts God.
• If it does this, it will not appear quite so obvious that the divine omnipresence and eternity should be treated as parallel for all the parallels between the problems of space and time.
• In the last instance we are, of course, saying one and the same thing when we speak of God as omnipresent and when we speak of Him as eternal.
• But this is true of all the perfections of the divine essence, and not more true of His omnipresence and His eternity than of the others.
• On the contrary, we are at this point directed along remarkably different lines if we are really dealing with the Christian knowledge of God.
[bb • As we have seen, God's OMNIPRESENCE is to be understood primarily as a determination of His LOVE, in so far as God is not only One, unique and simple, but as such is present to Himself and therefore present to everything which by Him is outside Him.
[36] excursus
[bb • This cannot, however, be said in the same way of His ETERNITY.
[bb • It is true, of course, that we cannot think through this conception either without understanding God's eternity as qualified by His love, indeed as identical with it, just as we must try to think through the unity of God as the unity of His love if we are really to understand it as His unity. • Yet the fact remains that in the first instance, as a distinct perfection in the wealth of God's essence, eternity in itself and as such is to be understood as a determination of the divine FREEDOM.
• Like the unity and constancy of God, it primarily denotes the absolute sovereignty and majesty of God in itself and as such, as demonstrated in the inward and outward activity of His divine being and operative in His love as His, the eternal love.
• God's love requires and possesses eternity both inwards and outwards for the sake of its divinity, its freedom. • Correspondingly it requires, creates -- 465 -- and therefore possesses in its outward relations what we call time.
[bb • TIME IS THE FORM OF CREATION IN VIRTUE OF WHICH IT IS DEFINITELY FITTED TO BE A THEATRE FOR THE ACTS OF DIVINE FREEDOM.
• In order that in His outward relationships too God may be the eternal and may act as such, time is required as a determination of creation.
• If creation were eternal instead of temporal, God, as the Eternal, could not be eternal in the creation, i.e., He could not be free, sovereign and majestic, nor could He act accordingly. • In a sense He would be as much bound to creation's eternity as to His own.
• Thus God's eternity is bound up both with His love and also with time as a determination of creation in the freedom in which both inwards and outwards He is always Himself, one and the same.
[37] excursus
[bb • All this, again, cannot be said in the same way of the divine OMNIPRESENCE.
[bb • It too, of course, is an attribute of God's freedom, like God's omnipotence and glory. • But it is not an attribute of God's freedom as such. • It is an attribute of God's freedom operative in His LOVE, first in its inward and then in its outward relationship.
• As this demonstrates and expresses itself as love and in love, it requires and possesses omnipresence both inwards and outwards. • Correspondingly, it too requires, creates and therefore possesses in its outward relations what we call space.
[bb • SPACE IS THE FORM OF CREATION IN VIRTUE OF WHICH, AS A REALITY DISTINCT FROM GOD, IT CAN BE THE OBJECT OF HIS LOVE.
• That God may be omnipresent outwards (as He is in Himself), space is required as a quality of creation.
• If creation were itself omnipresent instead of spatial, God, as the Omnipresent, would not be omnipresent in His creation. • He would, in a sense, be crowded out by its omnipresence. • It could not be the object of His love.
• God's omnipresence is, then, connected with His freedom, and it is with space as a quality of creation, in the love in which He not only is always and always will be one and the same both inwards and outwards, but is always and always will be the One who encounters and is related and present, first to Himself and then to others also.
[bb • There is, therefore, an undeniable relationship between God's omnipresence and His eternity, as there is also between these and the problems of space and time. • But the relationships are of such a nature that, to understand them, we must NOT think of them as PARALLELS, as we should have to do if we followed the advice of the older theology. • On the contrary, our thinking must first take DIFFERENT directions, and only in this way will it reach the unity which here too, of course, constitutes the object of our whole consideration of the divine essence.
• It is only by a tour de force that the omnipresence and eternity of God can be fitted to the pattern of the anthropological parallelism of the problems of space and time -- the demonstration of which is beside our present purpose and may be cheerfully left to the logician, metaphysician or epistemologist.

다니엘 8:7 내가 본즉 그것[숫염소]이 숫양에게로 가까이 나아가서는 더욱 성내어 그 숫양을 쳐서 그 두 뿔을 꺾으나 숫양에게는 그것을 대적할 힘이 없으므로 그것이 숫양을 땅에 엎드러뜨리고 짓밟았으나 숫양을 그 손에서 벗어나게 할 자가 없었더라 I saw him attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against him; the goat knocked him to the ground and trampled on him, and none could rescue the ram from his power.

다니엘 8장에 기록된 숫양과 숫영소의 환상은 세계사적으로도 매우 중요한 사건들을 상징합니다. 구약의 마지막 선지자들인 학개, 스가랴, 말라기 등이 활동했던 페르시아 시대는 갑자기 종말을 고하고, 그리스 변방에서 무시받던 마케도니아의 젊은 왕 알렉산더가 대륙 정벌을 감행하여 유럽-아프리카-아시아에 걸친 유례 없는 대제국을 건설하게 되었습니다. 알렉산더는 단지 군사적으로 정복한 것이 아니라 그가 가는 곳마다 그리스 문명을 전파하였고 유럽과 아시아를 통합하는 거대하고 지속적인 문명을 새롭게 건설하려 하였습니다.

다니엘 8:8 숫염소가 스스로 심히 강대하여 가더니 강성할 때에 그 큰 뿔이 꺾이고 그 대신에 현저한 뿔 넷이 하늘 사방을 향하여 났더라 The goat became very great, but at the height of his power his large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven.

그러나 알렉산더는 정복전쟁이 끝난 후 갑작스레 사망하였고 그의 쟁쟁한 장군들이 정복된 땅들을 나누어 갖기 위한 전쟁의 시기에 돌입하게 됩니다. 전투와 술수가 난무하던 시기가 정리되자 남은 것은 그리스 본토를 다스린 안티고노스Antigonos와 아들 드미트리오스Demetrios, 트라키아 (발칸 반도)와 소아시아 (터키)를 차지한 라이시마코스Lysimachos, 이집트를 다스린 톨레미Ptolemy, 그리고 시리아 (아시아)를 차지한 셀류코스Seleucos 등의 세력들이 자리잡게 됩니다.

다니엘 11:11 남방 왕은 크게 노하여 나와서 북방 왕과 싸울 것이라 북방 왕이 큰 무리를 일으킬 것이나 그 무리는 그의 손에 넘겨 준 바 되리라 Then the king of the South will march out in a rage and fight against the king of the North, who will raise a large army, but it will be defeated.

그 가운데 가장 경쟁관계에 놓인 것은 이집트(남왕국)와 시리아(북왕국)를 각각 차지한 톨레미와 셀류코스 왕조들인데 그들의 경쟁과 공방 관계가 다니엘 11장에 자세히 묘사되어 있습니다. 셀류코스 왕들은 이집트 세력를 몰아내고 그리스 문명을 전파하기 위해 피지배 민족들에게 그리스 종교와 문화를 강요하였습니다. 유대인들은 순교적인 신앙으로 그것에 강하게 저항하면서 결국 메시야가 오실 것과 하나님이 순교자들을 살리실 것이라는 부활신앙을 갖게 되었습니다.

다니엘 12:1 그 때에 네 민족을 호위하는 큰 군주 미가엘이 일어날 것이요 또 환난이 있으리니 이는 개국 이래로 그 때까지 없던 환난일 것이며 그 때에 네 백성 중 책에 기록된 모든 자가 구원을 받을 것이라 At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people--everyone whose name is found written in the book--will be delivered.

주님의 백성들이 겪어야 했던 이 모든 세계사적 환란은 하나님이 이 세상을 심판하시고 구원하시기 위해 일시적으로 허락하신 것입니다. 비록 잠시동안은 고난이 있어도, 믿음을 지키고 하나님의 공의와 자비를 세상에 전하기 위해 헌신하는 자녀들에게는 영원한 생명과 영광을 주십니다. 번면에 하나님을 외면하고 세상적인 권세와 물질을 추구하며 비인간적인 욕망과 압제에 동조하던 사람들은 영원한 멸망과 수치를 당하게 될 것입니다.

그리스도인들은 세상의 나라들을 멸하시고 하나님의 나라를 세우시기 위해 오신 예수님을 따르며 그의 나라를 위해 헌신하는 사람들입니다.

전능하심 (Omnipotence)
“우리는 십자가에 못 박힌 그리스도를 전하니 유대인에게는 거리끼는 것이요 이방인에게는 미련한 것이로되 오직 부르심을 받은 자들에게는 유대인이나 헬라인이나 그리스도는 하나님의 능력이요 하나님의 지혜니라”(고린도전서 1:23-24)

하나님의 능력은 우리가 생각하는 방식과 다릅니다. 세상은 힘과 성공, 눈에 보이는 결과를 능력이라고 생각하지만, 하나님은 십자가를 통해 자신의 능력을 나타내셨습니다. 예수 그리스도의 십자가는 겉으로 보기에 실패와 약함처럼 보이지만, 그 안에서 하나님은 죄와 죽음을 이기시고 구원을 이루셨습니다. 이것이 바로 하나님의 능력입니다. 하나님의 전능은 무엇이든 할 수 있는 힘이 아니라, 사랑과 지혜로 이루어지는 능력입니다. 하나님은 억지로 우리를 굴복시키지 않으시고, 십자가의 사랑으로 우리를 구원하십니다. 그러므로 우리는 세상의 기준이 아니라 십자가를 통해 하나님의 능력을 알게 됩니다.

아름다우심 (Beauty)
“내가 여호와께 바라는 한 가지 일 그것을 구하리니 곧 내가 내 평생에 여호와의 집에 살면서 여호와의 아름다움을 바라보며 그의 성전에서 사모하는 그것이라”(시편 27:4)

하나님의 영광은 단지 위엄과 두려움만이 아니라, 우리를 끌어당기는 아름다움으로 나타납니다. 하나님은 우리를 억지로 복종시키시지 않고, 그분의 아름다움으로 우리를 이끄십니다. 이 아름다움은 예수 그리스도의 삶과 십자가에서 가장 분명하게 드러납니다. 예수님께서 낮아지시고, 죄인을 사랑하시며, 자신을 내어주신 그 모습 속에서 하나님의 영광이 빛납니다. 세상의 눈에는 초라하고 약하게 보일 수 있지만, 믿는 자에게는 가장 깊은 감동과 기쁨을 주는 하나님의 영광입니다. 우리는 이 아름다움을 바라볼 때 하나님을 더 사랑하게 되고, 그분께 가까이 나아가게 됩니다.

하나님을 아는 것은 단순한 지식이 아니라 삶의 변화입니다. 하나님은 우리를 창조하시고, 구속하시며, 우리를 자신의 백성으로 부르셨습니다. 우리의 예배와 기도, 그리고 일상의 삶 속에서 하나님을 신뢰하고 순종하는 것이 하나님께 영광을 돌리는 길입니다. 하나님은 지금도 우리를 붙드시고 인도하십니다. 그러므로 우리는 두려워하지 말고, 우리를 부르신 하나님을 신뢰하며 믿음의 길을 걸어갑시다.

동일하심 (Constancy)
“예수 그리스도는 어제나 오늘이나 영원토록 동일하시니라” (히브리서 13:8)

하나님은 변하지 않으십니다. 그러나 이 불변성은 움직임이 없고 감정이 없는 상태를 의미하지 않습니다. 성경은 하나님께서 인간의 죄를 보시고 마음 아파하시며(창세기 6:6), 또한 긍휼을 베푸시고 돌이키시기도 하신다고 증언합니다. 이는 하나님이 변하신다는 뜻이 아니라, 살아 계신 인격적인 하나님으로서 관계 속에서 역사하신다는 의미입니다. 하나님은 언제나 사랑과 공의 가운데 동일하신 분이며, 그 신실하심은 결코 변하지 않습니다. 그래서 우리는 우리의 감정과 상황이 흔들릴 때에도 하나님을 신뢰할 수 있습니다. 하나님은 언제나 같은 분으로서 우리를 향해 사랑과 은혜를 베푸십니다.

어디에나 계심 (Omnipresence)
“내가 하늘에 올라갈지라도 거기 계시며 스올에 내 자리를 펼지라도 거기 계시니이다”(시편 139:8)

하나님은 어디에나 계십니다. 그러나 이것은 단순히 하나님이 공간 속에 퍼져 있다는 의미가 아니라, 하나님께서 살아 계신 인격으로서 우리의 모든 삶의 자리에서 우리와 함께하신다는 뜻입니다. 우리는 때로 외롭고 버려진 것처럼 느낄 때가 있지만, 성경은 어떤 상황에서도 하나님이 우리와 함께 계심을 분명히 말합니다. 더 나아가 하나님은 예수 그리스도를 통해 우리 가운데 오셨습니다. “말씀이 육신이 되어 우리 가운데 거하시매”(요한복음 1:14)라는 말씀처럼, 하나님은 멀리 계신 분이 아니라 가까이 오셔서 우리와 함께하시는 분입니다. 그러므로 우리는 어디에 있든지 하나님 앞에서 살아가는 존재입니다.

하나님의 은혜와 거룩
하나님의 사랑은 완전합니다. 성경이 그분의 사랑을 표현하는 가장 대표적인 단어는 하나님의 은혜입니다. 은혜는 하나님이 자격과 공로 없는 사람에게 베푸시는 선하신 뜻입니다. 하나님은 우리보다 훨씬 높으신 분이시지만, 자신을 낮추셔서 우리에게 다가오십니다. 이것이 바로 은혜입니다. 은혜는 단순히 하나님이 가끔 베푸시는 선물이 아닙니다. 하나님은 본래 은혜로우신 분이며, 자신의 존재 방식 자체가 은혜입니다. 그래서 하나님은 죄가 있는 곳에서도 물러서지 않으시고, 오히려 죄를 이기시는 은혜로 나타나십니다.

그러나 하나님의 은혜는 결코 죄와 타협하지 않습니다. 바로 여기서 하나님의 거룩하심이 나타납니다. 거룩은 하나님이 죄와 악에 대해 분명하게 “아니오”라고 말씀하시는 방식입니다. 하나님은 우리를 사랑하시기 때문에 죄를 그대로 두지 않으십니다. 때로는 우리를 책망하시고 징계하시기도 합니다. 이것은 오히려 그가 사랑하시기 때문에 일어나는 일입니다. 성경이 말하는 하나님의 거룩은 은혜의 또 다른 모습입니다. 하나님은 죄를 심판하시면서도 죄인을 구원하시는 방식으로 자신을 드러내십니다. 이 두 가지가 가장 분명하게 나타난 사건이 바로 예수 그리스도의 십자가입니다.

하나님의 자비와 의
하나님의 사랑은 또한 자비로 나타납니다. 자비는 고통 가운데 있는 사람을 향한 깊은 연민입니다. 하나님은 인간의 고통을 멀리서 바라보는 분이 아닙니다. 하나님은 우리의 아픔을 외면하지 않으시고, 그것을 마음 깊이 느끼시는 분입니다. 성경은 하나님이 죄를 미워하신다고 말하지만, 동시에 죄인을 불쌍히 여기신다고 말합니다. 하나님은 인간의 죄와 그로 인한 비참함을 보시며 불쌍히 여기십니다. 이 자비는 단순한 감정이 아니라 하나님의 실제 행동으로 나타났습니다. 그분은 예수 그리스도를 통해 인간의 고통 속으로 직접 들어오셨고, 우리가 져야 할 죄의 짐을 친히 짊어지셨습니다.

이 자비와 함께 나타나는 것이 하나님의 의입니다. 사람들은 하나님의 의를 단지 죄를 벌하시는 공정한 정의로만 생각합니다. 그러나 하나님은 죄인을 단지 심판하시는 분이 아니라, 죄인을 의롭다고 선언하시는 방식으로 자신의 의를 드러내십니다. 하나님은 예수 그리스도의 십자가에서 죄에 대한 심판을 실제로 행하셨습니다. 그러나 그 심판은 우리에게 직접 내려진 것이 아니라, 우리 대신 그리스도에게 내려졌습니다. 그래서 하나님은 죄를 가볍게 여기지 않으시면서도 동시에 죄인을 용서하실 수 있습니다. 십자가는 하나님의 의와 자비가 하나로 만나는 자리입니다.

하나님의 인내와 지혜
하나님의 사랑의 또다른 완전성은 그의 인내입니다. 하나님은 죄를 보시면서도 즉시 세상을 멸망시키지 않으십니다. 하나님은 여전히 세상을 붙드시고, 우리에게 시간과 기회를 주십니다. 이것은 하나님의 약함이 아니라, 오히려 그의 능력의 표현입니다. 하나님은 우리의 죄에도 불구하고 우리와 함께 살아가시며, 우리를 지탱해 주십니다. 성경은 하나님이 “능력의 말씀으로 만물을 붙드신다”고 말합니다. 하나님이 우리에게 시간을 주시는 이유는 우리가 하나님께 돌아오도록 하기 위해서입니다. 하나님은 우리가 회개하기를 기다리십니다. 그러나 그 기다림의 근거는 우리의 가능성에 있는 것이 아니라, 이미 예수 그리스도 안에서 이루어진 구원의 역사에 있습니다.

하나님의 인내와 관련된 완전성은 그분의 지혜로 나타납니다. 하나님의 모든 행동에는 의미와 목적이 있습니다. 하나님은 변덕스럽게 행동하시는 분이 아닙니다. 하나님은 무엇을 하시는지, 왜 하시는지 잘 아십니다. 우리가 당장 이해하지 못할 때에도 하나님의 행동은 무작위가 아니라 지혜로운 계획 안에 있습니다. 성경은 하나님의 지혜가 예수 그리스도 안에서 나타났다고 말합니다. 인간의 지혜는 세상적인 권력과 성공을 추구하지만, 하나님의 지혜는 십자가에서 나타납니다. 십자가는 인간의 눈에는 어리석어 보일 수 있지만, 그 안에서 하나님은 세상을 구원하시는 가장 깊은 지혜를 보여 주셨습니다.

이 모든 완전성은 서로 따로 존재하지 않습니다. 은혜와 거룩, 자비와 의, 인내와 지혜는 서로를 설명하고 완성합니다. 하나님의 사랑은 거룩함 없이 이해될 수 없고, 하나님의 의는 자비 없이 이해될 수 없습니다. 그리고 이 모든 것은 결국 예수 그리스도 안에서 하나로 나타납니다. 우리는 인간적인 개념이나 추상적인 정의가 아니라, 예수 그리스도의 삶과 십자가와 부활을 통해 하나님의 완전한 사랑에 대해 온전히 보게 됩니다.

출애굽기 3:14 하나님이 모세에게 이르시되 나는 스스로 있는 자이니라 또 이르시되 너는 이스라엘 자손에게 이같이 이르기를 스스로 있는 자가 나를 너희에게 보내셨다 하라 God said to Moses, I am who I am . This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.

히브리서 11:6 믿음이 없이는 하나님을 기쁘시게 하지 못하나니 하나님께 나아가는 자는 반드시 그가 계신 것과 또한 그가 자기를 찾는 자들에게 상 주시는 이심을 믿어야 할지니라 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

하나님은 존재하십니다. GOD EXISTS. 이 사실만 확실히 믿어도 우리의 삶은 달라질 것입니다. 그런데 하나님이 계신다는 것을 어떻게 알 수 있을까요? 우리는 하나님의 존재를 어떤 고정된 대상이나 관념으로 생각하기 쉽습니다. 그래서 사람들은 때로 하나님을 너무 멀고 어렵게 생각합니다. 반대로 그 분을 너무 쉽고 가볍게 여기기도 합니다.

성경이 계시해 주는 하나님은 살아계신 분, 행동하시는 분, 우리와 함께 하시는 분입니다. 그는 언제나 우리를 위해 무언가를 하시는 분으로 나타나십니다. 그래서 하나님은 “명사”라기보다 “동사”라는 말도 있습니다. 우리는 하나님의 행동을 통해서만 그 분의 존재를 알 수 있습니다. 성경은 우리와 상관없이 홀로 가만히 계시는 하나님을 전혀 말하지 않습니다.

요한일서 4:7-8 사랑하는 자들아 우리가 서로 사랑하자 사랑은 하나님께 속한 것이니 사랑하는 자마다 하나님으로부터 나서 하나님을 알고 / 사랑하지 아니하는 자는 하나님을 알지 못하나니 이는 하나님은 사랑이심이라Beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. / Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

로마서 8:30 또 미리 정하신 그들을 또한 부르시고 부르신 그들을 또한 의롭다 하시고 의롭다 하신 그들을 또한 영화롭게 하셨느니라 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

우리를 위한 하나님의 행동은 그 분의 사랑입니다. “하나님은 존재하신다”를 다른 말로 하면 “하나님은 사랑하신다”입니다. 하나님의 우리를 향한 사랑은 아무런 조건이 없습니다. 우리가 아무런 자격이나 성공이 없어도 하나님은 우리를 사랑하십니다. 마치 부모님이 자녀를 무조건 사랑하시는 것과 같습니다. 성경은 하나님이 세상을 창조하시기도 전에 우리를 미리 선택하셨고, 부르셨고, 의롭게 하셨고 영화롭게 하셨다고 말합니다 (롬 8:30)

로마서 5:6-8 우리가 아직 연약할 때에 기약대로 그리스도께서 경건하지 않은 자를 위하여 죽으셨도다 / 의인을 위하여 죽는 자가 쉽지 않고 선인을 위하여 용감히 죽는 자가 혹 있거니와 / 우리가 아직 죄인 되었을 때에 그리스도께서 우리를 위하여 죽으심으로 하나님께서 우리에 대한 자기의 사랑을 확증하셨느니라 At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. / Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. / But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

로마서 8:32 자기 아들을 아끼지 아니하시고 우리 모든 사람을 위하여 내주신 이가 어찌 그 아들과 함께 모든 것을 우리에게 주시지 아니하겠느냐 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

하나님의 우리에 대한 사랑의 증거가 예수 그리스도이십니다. 하나님의 아들이신 그 분이 사람으로 이 땅에 오셨습니다. 그리고 우리의 허물을 대신하여 죽으시고 3일만에 살아나셨습니다. 우리를 위해 가장 귀한 선물인 아들을 주신 하나님 아버지께서 무엇인들 아끼시겠습니까? 그러니 우리도 그 사랑을 믿고 감사하며, 그분이 주시는 놀라운 은총의 삶을 누리며 사는 것이 합당합니다.

하나님의 사랑이 인간의 사랑에 비해 다른 것은 무엇일까요?
하나님은 사랑이시라는 말이 나에게만 특별히 갖는 의미가 있나요?

시편 19:1 하늘이 하나님의 영광을 선포하고 궁창이 그의 손으로 하신 일을 나타내는도다

로마서 1:20 창세로부터 그의 보이지 아니하는 것들 곧 그의 영원하신 능력과 신성이 그가 만드신 만물에 분명히 보여 알려졌나니 그러므로 그들이 핑계하지 못할지니라

우리는 하나님을 어떻게 알 수 있을까요? 자연에 새겨진 창조주의 손길은 떄로 강력한 단서가 됩니다. 드넓은 우주와 그 속의 별과 은하, 생명을 구성하는 세포와 그 복잡하고 정밀한 기능, 그 모든 것을 탐구하고 이해하는 인간의 빛나는 지성 … 그 속에서 창조주이신 하나님의 마음과 능력을 엿볼 수 있습니다. 이와 같이 자연 속에 나타나는 하나님의 모습을 통해 그 분을 알고자 하는 탐구를 옛부터 “자연 신학 (Natural Theology)”라고 불렀습니다. 여기서 자연은 좁은 의미의 Nature 뿐 아니라, 인간과 만물의 타고난 본성을 가리킵니다. 즉 인간의 본래적인 능력과 이성을 통해 하나님을 알고자 하는 것입니다. 여기에는 성경과, 그것을 통한 하나님의 특별한 계시가 없이도 하나님을 알 수 있다는 전제가 있습니다. 시편 19:1, 로마서 1:20은 그와 같은 생각을 도와줍니다.

시편 22:24 그는 곤고한 자의 곤고를 멸시하거나 싫어하지 아니하시며 그의 얼굴을 그에게서 숨기지 아니하시고 그가 울부짖을 때에 들으셨도다

그와 같은 접근이 떄로 효과적인 이유는, 아직 성경과 하나님을 알지 못하는 사람들에게 효과적으로 대화를 시작하도록 도와줄 수 있기 떄문입니다. 아직 신앙이 없는 사람도, 자연이나 인간 세상에 대한 일반적인 대화를 통해 하나님에 대한 주제로 자연스럽게 넘어갈 수 있습니다. 그리고 인간은 하나님의 특별한 피조물이기 때문에 하나님에 대한 진지한 탐구와 노력이 있다면 본성적으로 (naturally) 그 분에 대해 어느 정도 알 수 있으리라 기대할 수 있습니다. 때로 아주 힘들고 막다른 상황에서, 하나님을 모르던 사람이 간절히 기도하여 신앙을 갖게 되는 사례도 있습니다 (시편 22:24). 깊은 기도와 수련을 통해 심오한 영적인 체험으로 들어가기도 합니다.

이사야 55:9 이는 하늘이 땅보다 높음 같이 내 길은 너희의 길보다 높으며 내 생각은 너희의 생각보다 높음이니라

그러나 성경이 알려주시는 하나님은 인간의 지혜와 능력을 아득히 뛰어넘는 분이십니다. 인간이 아무리 순수하게 열심히 하나님을 간구한다 하여도, 인간은 근본적으로 한계가 있고 자기중심적이기에 하나님을 제대로 알 수 없습니다. 하나님은 절대적으로 의로우시고 거룩하시며 무한하십니다. 반면에 우리가 생각하고 이해하는 하나님에 대한 그림은 결국 인간적인 한계에 의해 제한되고 왜곡되어 있습니다. 그러므로 우리는 성경과 설교를 통해 하나님이 누구신지, 올바른 믿음은 어떤 것인지를 계속 탐구해야 합니다. 성경을 멀리하는 신앙은 처음에는 순수하게 시작했을지 몰라도 결국 개인 중심적이고 이기적인 신앙으로 변질됩니다. 현대 미국과 한국의 그리스도교는 이와 같이 인간중심적이 된 신앙으로 인해 하나님의 은혜를 가리는 경우가 많습니다.

로마서 5:8 우리가 아직 죄인 되었을 때에 그리스도께서 우리를 위하여 죽으심으로 하나님께서 우리에 대한 자기의 사랑을 확증하셨느니라

요한일서 4:15 누구든지 예수를 하나님의 아들이라 시인하면 하나님이 그의 안에 거하시고 그도 하나님 안에 거하느니라

결국 우리의 유일한 소망은 예수 그리스도이십니다. 우리의 신앙이 인간적으로 변하지 않고 오직 하나님의 은혜 안에 머물도록 하려면 우리는 예수님만을 바라보아야 합니다. 그러면 예수님은 누구십니까? 우리는 교회의 가르침 가운데 가장 중요한 내용, 즉 삼위일체이신 하나님을 다시 살펴야 합니다. 하나님은 온전히 하나의 본체 (substance)이십니다. 또 하나님은 세 위격 (persons), 즉 아버지, 아들, 성령으로 계십니다. 예수님은 영원하신 “아들 하나님”이십니다. 또한 우리를 위해 인간이 되심으로, 진정한 “참 하나님, 참 인간”이십니다. 그는 우리의 연약함과 형벌을 대신 지시고 십자가에서 죽으셨습니다. 그리고 사흘만에 살아나셔서 우리에게 새 생명을 주시고 하나님과 복된 관계에 들어가게 하셨습니다. 이 사실을 믿으면 하나님의 자녀가 되며 영원한 생명을 누리게 됩니다. 우리는 오직 그 예수님을 통해서만 하나님을 올바르게 알 수 있습니다.

교회는 하나님께서 자신을 알리시는 공동체라는 점에서 특별합니다. 하나님은 예수 그리스도를 통해 자신을 나타내셨고, 그 증언을 성경에 기록하게 하셨으며, 오늘도 교회의 선포를 통해 그 말씀을 계속 들려주십니다. 비록 교회의 말은 항상 완전하지는 않지만, 하나님께서 교회의 연약한 인간의 말을 사용하여 자신의 말씀을 들려주십니다. 그러므로 교회의 선포는 단순한 인간의 의견이 아니라, 하나님께서 자신을 알리시는 통로가 됩니다.
하나님은 성경을 통해 교회에 무엇을 말해야 하는지 알려 주셨고, 교회는 그 말씀에 기초하여 선포합니다. 교회의 선포는 오직 성경에 근거하며, 성경을 떠난 교회의 말은 참된 권위를 가질 수 없습니다. 하나님은 성경의 말씀을 통해 지금 우리에게 살아 있는 하나님의 음성을 들려주십니다.
하나님은 인간의 말을 사용하십니다. 설교자는 연약하고 제한된 인간입니다. 인간의 능력으로는 하나님에 대해 완전히 말하는 것이 불가능합니다. 그러나 하나님께서는 성령을 통해 인간의 말을 사용하시어 자신의 말씀을 전하게 하십니다. 이것은 인간의 능력이 아니라, 하나님의 은혜에서 나오는 일입니다. 그러므로 우리는 설교를 들을 때 단순히 인간의 말이 아니라, 그 말씀을 통해 하나님께서 무엇을 말씀하시는지를 겸손히 들어야 합니다.
이 사실은 교회와 성도에게 큰 위로와 동시에 중요한 책임을 줍니다. 위로는 하나님께서 지금도 교회를 통해 말씀하신다는 사실입니다. 하나님은 멀리 계시지 않고, 말씀을 통해 우리 가운데 역사하십니다. 동시에 책임은 우리가 그 말씀 앞에서 겸손히 서야 한다는 사실입니다. 우리는 하나님의 말씀을 판단하는 자가 아니라, 말씀에 의해 판단받는 자입니다. 교회는 자신의 생각을 전하는 공동체가 아니라, 하나님께서 말씀하시는 것을 듣고 전하는 공동체입니다.
교회의 선포는 교회의 생명과 기초가 됩니다. 하나님께서는 자신의 말씀을 교회에 맡기셨고, 그 말씀을 통해 교회를 세우시고 인도하십니다. 우리가 성경을 읽고, 설교를 듣고, 그 말씀에 순종할 때, 우리는 하나님이 우리에게 주시는 말씀을 듣고 그분과 살아 있는 관계 안으로 들어가게 됩니다. 그러므로 교회의 선포는 인간의 말로 시작되지만, 하나님의 은혜로 하나님의 말씀이 되어 우리를 살리고 변화시키는 능력이 됩니다.

🕮 나눔과 적용 🕮

1. 나 자신을 돌아보기
   • 나는 설교를 “유익한 이야기”나 “좋은 조언”이라기보다 하나님께서 지금 들려주시는 말씀으로 기대하나요?
   • 나는 설교자의 말솜씨나 전달 방식보다 설교를 통해 들려지는 하나님의 말씀을 더 중요하게 생각하나요?
   • 하나님이 오늘도 교회를 통해 말씀하신다는 것은 나에게 실제로 의미 있는 사실인가요?

1. 말씀과 교회의 관계
   • 하나님은 왜 직접 하늘에서 말씀하시기보다, 성경과 교회의 인간적인 말을 통해 말씀하실까요?
   • 설교자가 불완전한 인간이라는 사실은 하나님의 말씀의 선포와 어떤 관계가 있나요?
   • 하나님께서 인간의 연약함에도 불구하고 말씀하신다는 사실은, 하나님의 어떤 모습을 보여주나요?

1. 말씀을 듣는 태도
   • 말씀을 들을 때, 하나님께서 나를 변화시키시도록 열려 있나요?
   • 말씀을 듣고 그것을 실제 삶에서 순종하려는 구체적인 노력이 있나요?
   • 하나님께서 말씀하시는 중요한 통로인 교회 공동체를 소중히 여기고 있나요?

삶에 적용하기
• 설교를 들을 때 “하나님, 지금 저에게 말씀해 주세요”라고 기도합시다.
• 말씀을 통해 깨달은 한 가지를 선택하여 실제 행동으로 옮겨 봅시다.
• 늘 말씀 앞에 겸손히 서고 신뢰하는 삶을 실천해 봅시다.

성경은 하나의 종교 문서가 아니라, 하나님께서 자신을 드러내시는 계시의 통로입니다. 하나님은 역사 속에서 선지자들과 사도들을 통하여 말씀하셨고, 그 증언이 기록된 것이 성경입니다. 그러므로 성경은 과거의 유산일 뿐 아니라 오늘 교회를 향해 말씀하시는 하나님의 살아 있는 증언입니다. 성경의 권위는 교회의 인정에서 비롯되는 것이 아니라, 말씀하시는 하나님 자신에게서 비롯되는 것입니다.

그러므로 성경 해석은 매우 중요한 신앙적 과제입니다. 성경은 인간의 언어로 기록되었기 때문에, 우리는 그 역사적 배경과 문맥, 문학적 형식, 저자의 의도를 진지하게 고려해야 합니다. 본문의 흐름을 무시하거나 부분적인 구절만을 떼어 해석하는 태도는 성경이 의도하는 바를 왜곡할 위험이 있습니다. 따라서 올바른 해석은 본문 전체 안에서, 그리고 성경 전체의 맥락 안에서 이루어져야 합니다. 성경은 스스로를 해석하는 통일성을 지니고 있으며, 개별 본문은 더 큰 구속사의 흐름 속에서 이해되어야 합니다.

또한 성경 해석은 단순한 지적 분석이 아니라, 신앙의 태도를 요구하는 작업입니다. 우리는 성경 위에 서서 판단하는 자가 아니라, 그 말씀 아래에서 듣는 자입니다. 해석은 곧 순종을 향한 과정이며, 이해는 삶의 변화를 동반해야 합니다. 성경을 연구하는 목적은 지식을 축적하는 데 있지 않고, 하나님께서 무엇을 말씀하시는지를 듣고 응답하는 데 있습니다. 그러므로 해석은 학문적 엄밀성과 더불어 겸손과 기도를 동반해야 하는 영적 행위입니다.

교회는 언제나 성경으로 돌아가야 합니다. 교회의 전통과 경험, 시대의 요구는 중요하지만, 그것들이 성경의 권위를 대신할 수는 없습니다. 오히려 모든 가르침과 실천은 성경에 비추어 검증되어야 합니다. 성경이 하나님의 계시를 참되게 증언한다는 고백 위에서만 교회는 자신을 바로 세울 수 있습니다. 성경을 바르게 해석하고 충실히 따르는 공동체만이 하나님의 뜻을 분별하며 살아갈 수 있습니다.

🕮 나눔과 적용 🕮

1. 나는 성경을 어떻게 생각합니까?
   • 나는 성경을 하나님께서 말씀하시는 자리로 믿고 있습니까?
   • 나는 정기적으로 성경을 읽고 있습니까, 아니면 필요할 때만 찾고 있습니까?
   • 성경을 통해 하나님을 더 알고 싶다는 갈망이 있습니까?

1. 나는 성경을 어떻게 읽고 있습니까?
   • 한 구절만 떼어 내어 나의 생각에 맞게 이해하고 있지는 않습니까?
   • 말씀의 앞뒤 문맥과 성경 전체의 흐름을 생각하며 읽고 있습니까?
   • 이해되지 않는 부분을 만날 때 더 깊이 탐구하고 있습니까?
   • 설교나 가르침이 성경에 근거하는지 살펴보고 있습니까?

1. 나는 성경 앞에 어떤 태도로 서 있습니까?
   • 하나님의 뜻을 알게 될 때, 실제로 순종하려는 결단이 있습니까?
   • 성경 말씀을 통해 삶이 변화되는 것을 받아들이고 있습니까?
   • 말씀이 내 생각과 다를 때, 내 생각을 내려놓을 준비가 되어 있습니까?

삶에 적용하기
• 성경을 읽기 전에 하나님께서 말씀해 주시기를 기도합시다.
• 읽은 말씀 가운데 마음에 남는 것을 삶에서 어떻게 실천할 수 있을지 구체적으로 생각해 봅시다.
• 설교와 여러 통로를 통해 들려주시는 하나님의 말씀을 분별할 수 있는 지혜를 주시도록 기도합시다.

🕮 참된 종교 🕮

우리는 흔히 종교를 하나님을 향한 인간의 진지한 노력으로 이해합니다. 그러나 성경이 말하는 하나님의 계시는 이 이해를 근본에서 흔듭니다. 하나님의 계시는 인간 종교의 한가운데서 일어나지만, 동시에 그것을 심판하고 폐기합니다. 계시의 빛 아래에서 종교는 더 이상 중립적인 인간 문화가 아니라, “불신앙”, 곧 하나님 없이 하나님을 대신하려는 인간의 가장 깊은 관심사로 드러납니다.

종교의 첫 번째 문제는 우상숭배입니다. 인간은 하나님이 스스로를 드러내시는 방식에 자신을 맡기지 않고, 자신의 이해와 욕망에 맞는 신의 형상을 만들어 냅니다. 칼빈이 말했듯이, 인간의 마음은 끊임없이 우상을 생산하는 공장과 같습니다. 성경은 이러한 종교적 열심을 긍정하지 않습니다. 바울은 로마서와 사도행전에서 이방인들의 경건조차 창조주 하나님을 거부한 배교의 한 형태로 규정하며, 인간의 지혜가 결국 어리석음과 우상숭배로 귀결된다고 증언합니다.

종교의 두 번째 문제는 자기 의입니다. 하나님은 은혜로 인간과 화해하시지만, 종교는 인간이 자신의 행위와 순종으로 스스로를 의롭게 하려는 시도입니다. 율법조차도 인간의 손에 붙들리면 자기 의의 도구로 변질됩니다. 바울은 이스라엘이 하나님의 의를 모르고 자기 의를 세우려 했다고 단호하게 말합니다. 종교적 삶이 거룩해 보일수록, 그 중심에는 자신을 증명하고 정당화하려는 욕망이 숨어 있을 수 있습니다.

그러나 하나님의 계시는 심판으로 끝나지 않습니다. 하나님은 은혜로 종교를 새롭게 하십니다. 기독교가 참된 종교가 되는 이유는 그것이 “은혜의 종교”라는 형식을 가졌기 때문이 아니라, 오직 예수 그리스도의 이름 때문입니다. 그리스도의 이름 안에서 하나님은 종교를 창조하시고, 선택하시며, 의롭다 하시고, 거룩하게 하십니다. 교회는 이 은혜로 존재하며, 언제나 자신이 죄인이라는 사실과 동시에 의롭다 함을 받았다는 사실 위에 서 있습니다. 이것이 기독교 신앙의 긴장이고, 또한 자유입니다.

🕮 나눔과 적용 🕮

종교와 불신앙
• “종교가 불신앙일 수 있다”는 말이 왜 불편하게 느껴질 수 있을까요?
• 우리의 신앙생활에서 ‘하나님을 믿는다’는 말이 ‘하나님을 관리한다’는 태도로 바뀔 위험은 어디에 있습니까?

우상숭배와 자기 의
• 오늘날 그리스도인의 삶에서 우상숭배는 어떤 모습으로 나타날 수 있나요?
• 신앙생활이 자기 의를 쌓는 과정으로 변질될 때 나타나는 징후들은 무엇입니까?
• 율법과 규범이 우리를 하나님께로 인도하기보다 우리 자신을 의롭다 여기게 만드는 경우는 언제입니까?

참된 종교와 은혜
• 기독교가 참된 종교가 되는 이유가 ‘예수 그리스도의 이름’에 있다는 말은 무엇을 의미합니까?
• 교회와 예배가 하나님의 은혜에 의해 유지된다는 사실은 우리의 신앙에 어떤 변화를 줄 수 있을까요?

삶에 적용해 보기
• 나의 신앙생활에서 하나님보다 나 자신이 더 중심이 되는 부분은 없는지 점검해 봅시다.
• 신앙의 기준이 은혜에 대한 감사인지, 아니면 나 자신과 다른 사람을 판단하는 겉모습인지 돌아봅시다.
• “나는 은혜로만 서 있는 사람입니다”라는 고백으로 이번 주를 지냅시다.