What is God?

Theology Proper

To kick off August, we are going to dive into a study that highlights the whole reason this blog began. We are going to study God. Now hopefully every blog up until this point has taught us a little more about God than we already knew before by studying the church and studying His word, but this month we are going straight to the fountain itself by studying what scholars call, ‘Theology Proper’. According to Proclaim and Defend Ministries, “Theology proper is a systematic, theological approach to the biblical teaching concerning God’s existence, His attributes, His deeds, His Persons, and His interaction with mankind.” As you can tell, theology proper is a simple explanation with a vast and endless well of knowledge and wisdom due to all there is to learn about God Himself. This is why we personally picked the month of August to tackle such a subject where we will have 5 weeks to address this topic and not just 4. However, even with 10 blog posts essentially being written on the character of God, these alone will barely scratch the surface of what there is to learn about our Lord. 

Even Solomon, the wisest man to walk the earth besides Jesus Himself, had this to mention about the knowledge of God in Ecclesiastes 8:17, “17 I saw every work of God, I concluded that one cannot discover the work which has been done under the sun. Even though a person laboriously seeks, he will not discover; and even if the wise person claims to know, he cannot discover.” Sure we can’t understand God 100%, but as we grow in love and reverence for the Lord, we should always be seeking to understand our creator more than we did yesterday. With that being said, this month will be used to introduce our minds to God’s nature, attributes, and works so that we may view our Lord in a better light than we may have ever been able to previously. And what better way to start learning about the nature of God than by asking the simple yet momentous question, ‘What is God?’. So let’s dive in. 

By Defenition

To understand what God is, I find it vastly important that we understand what Wayne Grudem tells us in his Introduction to Bible Doctrine. Grudem notes, “The Bible alone tells us how to understand the testimony about God from nature. Therefore we depend on God’s active communication to us in scripture for our true knowledge of God.” To put it simply, we can only know about God, whatever He decides to reveal to us. The Gospel Coalition has probably one of the best descriptions of what God is and this description is backed by multiple passages from scripture. TGC says, “God is the creator and sustainer of everyone and everything. He is eternal, infinite, and unchangeable in his power and perfection, goodness and glory, wisdom, justice, and truth. Nothing happens except through him and by his will.” John MacArthur even has a list of four points he uses to describe God. MacArthur mentions, “One, God is one God, secondly, God is in three persons, third, God is a spirit, and fourthly, God is Creator.” 

From these definitions and the verifications from scripture, we can see that God is a triune, infinite, perfect, unchangeable, spiritual creator. (John 1:1; Psalm 139:7; Psalm 18:30; Malachi 3:6; John 4:24; Genesis 1:1) From scripture alone, we can see that God Himself has made this knowable to us. Many more things have been revealed to us through His word, but for this study and this month, I want to focus heavily on not just why God is the way He is, but who He is. These characteristics that our Lord has revealed to us, I believe will help us truly see God in the light that He has ordained us to view Him in, and not through the lens of what we may have thought about Him from watching televangelists growing up. 

The Goal This Month

Now I could have written out each of these verses and dove into each of them separately, but that would make for a very long blog for just one post. Instead however, since we have all month to dive into our study of theology proper, we are going to take each of these attributes and study them separately, week by week to gain a better picture of the nature, character, and work of God. This week as you may have been able to tell already, we are studying what and who God is, and how exactly He came into being. The following week we will be addressing the perfection of God and His unchangeable character. Week 3 we will take what we know about God’s perfection and see how the evil in this world affects Him. In the fourth week we will be studying how God reveals Himself to us through His creation and what we can learn about Him through His works, and finally, in the last week of August we will be diving into the trinity and how this spiritual being we call God can be one God in three persons. 

As much as I have to say on all of these topics and as much I want to reveal more about our Lord’s perfect character, I want to slow myself down and invite you on this journey with me to really take the time and understand what we are studying. Theology Proper is not just some fancy term that scholars use to sound smart, it is a field of study where we as human beings get the privilege to learn about our God from what He has revealed to us. So as we close this first blog and take in what we have seen and learned today, study your own Bibles this week and see for yourself throughout God’s word how He has revealed Himself as a triune, infinite, perfect, unchangeable, spiritual creator. I want to invite you as we continue this study to pray with me that God may reveal Himself more and more to us so that Proverbs 9:10 may come to fruition in our lives, “ 10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

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Sources

[1] “Access Your Bible from Anywhere.” BibleGateway.Com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 150 Versions and 50 Languages., www.biblegateway.com/. Accessed 2023.

[2] Herbster, M., & Herbster, M. (2019, December 13). THE FUNDAMENTALS: Who is God? Theology proper – Proclaim & defend – a ministry of the FBFI. https://www.proclaimanddefend.org/2019/12/13/the-fundamentals-who-is-god-theology-proper/

[3] What is God? (2021, January 5). The Gospel Coalition. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/new-city-catechism/what-is-god/?childrens_mode=false

[4] Who is God? (1972, March 19). Grace to You. https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/1213/who-is-god

[5] Grudem, W. (1994). Systematic Theology : An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA79455700