A New Doctrine of God?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome to the Truth Exchange Podcast. This is a weekly program with Dr. Jeffrey J. Ventrella where he answers questions from subscribers around the globe, answering questions about worldview, cultural apologetics and other miscellaneous items. I'm your host, Joshua Gilo, and this is another edition of the Director's Bag I had wondered about. And I've been thinking about this for a while now, just for the past year, from Pete Leithart's book creator. I'm gonna have to reread it. Pete. He is so widely read that sometimes I just can't make sense of him and know where he is, where does he land on some of these things, because it's almost like their brand, it's new terrain. So regarding, like the doctrine of God, I wonder, do, do you think that we're. There's going to be a new evolution in rethinking or development and how we understand God? [00:01:09] Speaker A: That's a great question. Is this part of the podcast? [00:01:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I think it should be. Because, I mean, you touched on some things that I know that the old classical guys. I mean, so you think about the whole controversy with the eternal sonship of the sun and the ESS controversy and how a lot of that is really is anti trinitarian. And so some of the. There was a revival or a retrieval pointing back to some of your dictus from last year, where they're bringing back to everyone's remembrance some of these classical, classical theist argumentation and some of these categories of natural theology or theology proper are Greek mindsets. And some of the danger, as you pointed out in this recent dicta, is it's kind of dualism, light, it's anti material, pro spirit. But yet at the same time, how we understand, like how do you. How does one understand just the terms what is spirit? We don't really have words to. To describe it other than what it's not. Spirit is not matter or not material. [00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. Yeah. Part of the problem happens when we interface with those concepts. You're going between, you know, Greek and Latin, which the fathers had to address, and then also a this kind of enlightenment idea that, oh, the ethereal is the spiritual. Well, that's not what the Apostle Paul uses it oftentimes when he says that we have spiritual bodies, he's not saying that we have apparitions or ghosts, he's saying that we have physical bodies that are animated by the spirit of God. So I think that we need to understand that whole idea as well that how is he using that terminology with respect to that in terms of are we going to have a new understanding of God? That's of course. And you don't intend this. That could be a loaded question because it can come to sound like, you know, process theology. We're going back to Rudolph Boltman or one of those guys. But by the same token, we. We ought to be honest enough to say, you know, when we. Not everything is anthropological when it comes to God. I mean, and. And I think the one thing I think we have to be careful of is. Is oftentimes explaining away these. Oh, that's just anthropological. Oh, that's just anthropological. And we end up backing into kind of an Aristotelian. You know, God is, you know, he's the first mover, kind of this impersonal horse, which means we really can't know. And I think one of the ways that I hope crystallize it in my mind is I believe with John Frame, that there is in fact a real transition by God from wrath to grace toward the objects of his affection. Yes, he loved us in eternity, but until we have redemption applied to us, we are objects of wrath. We are dead in our trespasses and sins, we are hostile in our minds, and so on and so forth. And then we are in a position to have what our minds renewed. And so that's a real thing. And it's not as if God is, you know, part of a pie. Okay. God is sovereign in this part of his pie, and he's loving in this part of the pie, and he's wrathful in this part of the pie. He's all these things. And part of the problem is we don't have comprehensive conceptions to encompass God. We can't think. We think God's thoughts after him, but they're in a sense. And this is where people get crabby about Van Till, but it's like his point was to preserve the creatorness of God, saying, you can never. When God says a road, that's a rose, we can apprehend what he means, but we can't apprehend it in all the depth of what he means because he knows all facts presently and simultaneously. And so. [00:05:53] Speaker B: Right, right. The. The Westminster divines talk about how God condescends to us in human language. And so. But the human language also comes from God. He's given that to us. But there's still. There's still a barrier that I think you're talking about that Van Till is trying to protect, that we're not going to truly get to the full depth and so we have to be careful even of those barriers that we create or that are in our createdness. Is, is that right? Am I understanding what you're saying? [00:06:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's right. I think, you know, that the notion of condens being is condescension, I think is helpful because it does creature, creator, but it can also be misapprehended too. Oh, well, you know, we really can't know anything. That God cannot be contained by human language. That's, that backs into a form of liberalism. Right? God is there, but he's revealed this. He's. He's lisped toward us. Calvin says, okay, that's fine. But then it's like, but he did say this. He is the word. He is omnipotent and can communicate exactly what he intends to communicate that we can receive by the illumination of the Spirit. Ephesians 1. So, I mean, sometimes we forget that we talk about natural revelation or general revelation. We talk about special revelation. We forget there's illumination too, that's real. And so, you know, yeah, fools to the Greeks, this is foolishness. Well, part of that is because they have the wrong categories. Right? [00:07:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:31] Speaker A: So we want to be careful with just using baptizing pagan categories. A lot of the medieval church did that, of course, and syncretism of a sort. [00:07:42] Speaker B: Right. Well, in, in your, in the dicta, you, you, you quote the Westminster divines, and what is God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, and as being wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. And in the children's catechism that, that I use with my children, and I'm sure that you've, you've used with your children was what is God? God is a spirit and does not have a body like a man. Well, then one time one of my children asked the. What I would think is a natural question then is, well, what about Jesus? Doesn't Jesus have a body? [00:08:20] Speaker A: Yep. [00:08:21] Speaker B: The second and the second person of the Trinity, who is fully God and fully man, hypostatic union has now chosen for the rest of eternity to dwell in a body. And so we even have, even in our catechisms, there's limits there. So now every time I run through that question, I always think, well, God is spirit, but yet the second person who is spirit also does have a body. [00:08:51] Speaker A: That's exactly right. I mean, I pointed that out. The ascension is a bodily ascension. Very important that whole. Again, I was teaching on my class last night on Jesus and the powers, you know, write birds book. And to some of These folks, they have some Catholic backgrounds and some, you know, evangelical dispensational backgrounds. This is like revolutionary kind of stuff because they're so used to, you know, the kingdom's future and then this, the end times are coming and we're almost there and all this sort of stuff. And it's like, no, that's not the burden of Paul at all in the Book of Acts or otherwise. So I think, I guess on some of the, getting back to some of these, we need to be respectful of the past. It's a fifth commandment issue. But I also think we need to be modest in that we can know some things. We do know some things, but we have to be careful in my view, not, not to absolutize formulas that were utilized in particular times and places because sometimes, you know, the scripture seems to have, have a little more flexibility than what some of our brethren want to say. And I mean, some of it just drives me crazy. You know, when I, when I, when I was doing early on apologetics, you know, and they give all these, you know, the traditional classical proofs for God. And I'm just kind of going, but you didn't prove Troyune God. You didn't get to Jehovah. Well, but then we can just go and say, hey, the Bible reflect said, no, the smart atheist is going to eat you for lunch when you do that. And yeah, yeah, I just think we've got it. And I love Light Heart's point about we only know the God as creator. That's how he reveals himself. It's not some, well, there's this divine presence and you know, he's just there. And then one of the things he does is create. He only discloses himself as creator and then of course, subsequently as redeemer. [00:11:01] Speaker B: This concludes a recording of the Director's Bag. For more resources from Truth Exchange, please visit us online at www.truthexchange.com. you can follow us on X as well as Facebook for more updates and content related to Truth Exchange. Be sure to join us next week for more questions from the Director's Bag. I'm your host, Joshua Gilo, and this is the Truth Exchange podcast.