Pharaoh’s Hardened Heart
Calvinism and Reform Tradition will often point to Romans 9:17-19 as proof text for their doctrine that before creation itself,
Calvinism and Reform Tradition will often point to Romans 9:17-19 as proof text for their doctrine that before creation itself,
Philosophy is a broad term for the discipline of rational critical thinking and reasoning in the study of the fundamental questions – and answers – pertaining to existence, knowledge and values. Theology – a term formed from the Greek words theos and logos – is a specialized branch of intellectual inquiry – distinct yet related to philosophy – in so much that it too involves rational critical thought and reasoning but seeks answers in the study and examination of the divine nature of God, the divine and human relationship, salvation and the Church as per the Christian perspective of faith, divine revelation and Scripture. Many of those who we today regard as our earliest theologians – Justin Martyr, Clement, Origen, Tertullian and Augustine in mention of but a few – did not refer to themselves nor did they understand themselves as “theologians” in contrast to “philosophers”. In fact, and in form of Christian apologists they reasoned about their Christian commitments in the intellectual language of the ancient Mediterranean world which was of the language of Plato, Aristotle and stoic philosophy. Thomas Aquinas borrowed philosophical concepts from Aristotle and scholasticism. Justin Martyr looked to people like Heraclitus and Socrates as possessing true light of revelation and believed them to be true philosophers. He believed Christianity as the true philosophy and – like the Apostle Paul himself – argued for Christianity using philosophical methods and terminology. Augustine believed philosophy and theology complimented each other. Both early and later Christian thinkers often drew on philosophy and philosophical concepts to help answer difficult questions. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity was formed by early Church Fathers who were much influenced, directly or indirectly by Platonic and Greek philosophy regarding metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, substances, knowing, identity, time, and space. Kenosis is another example of borrowing a philosophical concept and language to give answer as to how Christ could be both the divine and human. The answers to these and many other questions are not always or necessarily directly spoken of in Scripture, but they are often inferred and or can be deduced through – God given – sound and critical reasoning based on faith, and on evidence of revelation and Scripture.
Just as there is sound and unsound reasoning there too is both sound and unsound philosophy and theology. Therefore, it is not a matter of avoiding or disregarding rational critical thinking and reasoning – be it called philosophy, theology or by any other name – but instead it is a matter of discerning and understanding that rational critical thinking and reasoning must and will always align with the evidence found in divine revelation and Scripture which is the basis of our faith. Accordingly, rational and critical thinking, as well as reasoning consistent with divine revelation and scripture, can be employed within the Christian faith to discern certain truths – whether explicitly stated or indirectly implied -concerning the nature of God.
Even the earliest philosophers, particularly Plato and Aristotle, believed that God must be infinitely perfect. Plato’s concept of the “Form of the Good” suggests that God is the ultimate reality, eternal, and immutable, guiding all existence. Aristotle, influenced by Plato, posited that God is the “unmoved mover,” an infinitely perfect being that exists independently of all change and is the source of all motion and order in the universe. These ideas laid the groundwork for classical theism, emphasizing that God’s perfection is essential for understanding His perfect divine attributes.
The English word “good” translated from the Hebrew word “tov” H2896 means pleasant, agreeable, excellent of its kind, appropriate, right, of benefit or welfare, prosperity and or happiness. It is used hundreds of times in the Hebrew Bible and most notably in Genesis 1:31 to describe creation. It implies more than just pleasant or morally right but that it is something functional and brings benefit and is fulfilling the purpose for which it was created. Depending on the context in which it is used, it can refer to:
In context of Genesis 1:31, when God calls creation “very good”, it is understood to mean created functional, fully harmonious as per the perfect purposes and design of God. In Greek the word “good” means of good constitution or nature. Useful, salutary, pleasant, agreeable, joyful, happy, excellent, distinguished, upright and or honourable.
English word “perfect” means to absolute or complete, as per having all required or desirable elements, qualities and characteristics – being as good as is possible to be. It means to be free from fault or defect and refers to maturity in the spiritual sense. Jesus is a perfect man – absolute – and God’s nature is complete and wholeness.
Biblical contexts
Old Testament Hebrew
Perfect = “tamim” H8549 / 8535 – meaning complete, completeness, whole, wholeness, sound, wholesome, unblemished and or undefiled. In Genesis 17:1 – blameless = tamim. Noah in Genesis 6:9 was tamim (perfect in KJV) / (blameless in ESV) / (tamim in Hebrew). In Hebrew, rather than implying a state of absolute flawlessness or error-free behaviour, it often denotes integrity, maturity in action, and a state of being without spot or being blameless.
New Testament Greek
Perfect – “telios” G5046 meaning mature, complete, brought to its end, finished, prefect, completeness, adult, full-grown. Applications include labor, growth in mental or moral character. Perfect in Greek (teleio or teleiosis) means complete or having reached a final aim or maturity as in finished. Telos itself means end, goal or purpose as well as upright. Thus, not always referring to a flawless state but sometimes refers to having reached a goal.
Perfect means “without flaw.” God is perfect in every way. He is flawless. “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4).
Being perfect, God is the standard by which everything else will be measured. It would be impossible for God to be imperfect because that would mean that another standard has found a flaw in Him. But whose standard would that be? If there is another standard higher than God’s standard, then that means God is subject to judgment by something else, making that other thing god. Humanity often tries to elevate its own opinions above God’s decrees, thereby implying that He is flawed. Any time someone says, “If I were God, I would do such and such” or “If I were God, I would never do this or that,” he reveals his own haughty spirit, not the imperfection of God. When we judge God by our own standards, we are in effect placing ourselves on His throne.
Psalm 18:30 says that all God does and says is perfect: “As for God, his way is perfect: The LORD’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.” God’s perfection is seen in His character, His Word, and His actions. God is characterized by a set of core attributes that define God as absolute, perfect, and transcendent. These attributes are not limited to but include aseity, divine simplicity, eternality, immutability, Omnibenevolence, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Omnisapience and Omniscience.
Aseity refers to God’s unconstrained, self-existence and independence from anything else outside of himself. God is the uncaused cause, existing by the necessity of his own nature, and does not depend on anything external for his existence. For example, God does not have life, as if life were of some cosmic force that exists apart from Him that He should need acquire life or that life should be taken from Him. Rather, God and God alone “is” life. Life is a natural attribute of God and God alone is the giver and the maintainer of life of all that “have” life. The attribute of aseity underscores God’s absolute sovereignty and the idea that everything else in the universe is contingent upon him.
Divine simplicity asserts that God is not composed of parts, be they physical or metaphysical. Unlike created beings, which are made up of various components and attributes, God’s essence and existence are identical. This means that all of God’s attributes – such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence – are not separate qualities but are harmoniously unified in God’s simple being and substance. The doctrine of divine simplicity ensures that God is absolutely one, indivisible, and not subject to conflict or any form of composition or change.
When Jesus declared – in John 4:24 – that “God is spirit,” He was making a foundational statement about the nature of God. In the original Greek, the phrase is “pneuma ho theos,” emphasizes that God’s essence is not material or physical but instead pure spirit. To reconcile that God is spirit while Jesus had a physical body involves the doctrine of the incarnation, where God the Son – regarded the second person of the trinity – took on human nature. The doctrine of the incarnation attests to the Scriptural truth that the eternal Word – the logos, the Son – became flesh. John 1:1,14. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [14] And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. God the Son therefore did not cease to be spirit but added human nature to Himself so as to dwell among humans. This is often referred to as a hypostatic union where Jesus is one person with two distinct natures: a divine nature – spirit – and a human nature, having body. God the Son had taken on a body for the purpose of redeeming humanity through a tangible, historical act rather than just abstractly. When Jesus was resurrected, His body was not just a spirit but physical flesh, blood and bones. Luke 24:39. See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. When Jesus declared “God is spirit”, He was indicating that God the Father does not have a human body, but rather is an invisible, incorporeal being. Therefore, Jesus having a body does not contradict God being spirit but instead signifies the unique, voluntary union of the divine with humanity. In John 4:24 Jesus also makes the connection between God being spirit and worshiping Him in spirit and in truth. The idea is that, since God is spirit, people must worship Him accurately in truth and in spirit – with their soul or heart -, as opposed to relying on traditions, rituals, and physical locales.
God is eternal, meaning that He is not subject to time and is not subject to temporal succession. Perhaps the easiest way to explain “time” is to explain it as that which prevents all events from happening all at once. Without chronological sequence of Future, Present, and Past, everything would occur simultaneously in a timeless state describable as an eternal “now”. A state that by the attribute of timelessness, is a state of being without beginning, from everlasting to everlasting, without end. The attribute of absolute timelessness belongs only to God, Psalm 90:2 ESV: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God”. God is not governed by the properties of His creation; consequently, He is not subject to the constraints of time. To say that God is not subject to time and the chronological order of events, does not however preclude a logical order of events, inherent of His nature. All things created, have a beginning and are hence, by the very nature of God’s creating act, subject to time. This is echoed in the first five words of Scripture, “In the beginning God created …”, which refers to both the “time of beginning” of all created things and thus the “beginning of time” itself. It is important to understand this because while Scripture is written for our perspective, it is written from God’s perspective. When we interpret Scripture with our own perspective lenses, solely through the lens of time, we risk clouding our understanding with inaccuracies and paradoxes. Thus, for example we should understand that God simply does not need to, nor does He, traverse time but by our perspective. God is neither inside nor outside of time. Likewise, while we cannot know what the absolute timelessness – the now – of God looks like, we should understand that God, without subjection to time, is in no way frozen in some moment of time. It is by God’s purposes that man is unable to perceive “now”, even though it is woven into the very nature of our being and the physical dimensions of space and time. It is by God’s design that before visual information can reach our brain and be processed into conscious awareness, what we perceive as “now”, is in reality but only the past. Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end”. The timelessness of God should not be confused with His Omniscience. Truly, the past, present and future of what is called time, hang in the full display of God to see and control. However, Omniscience is God’s attribute of knowing not only what will come to pass in this reality that He created, but so too, knowing all that could have come to pass in all other realities that He could have created.
Immutability means that God does not change over time or in response to anything. God “is” absolutely perfect, and any change would imply a movement away from or towards perfection, which is impossible for a being that is already infinitely and absolutely perfect. This attribute is closely related to divine simplicity, as any change in God would imply that he is composed of parts that can be altered. The immutability of God means that God is consistent and reliable in his actions and decrees.
While the term “infinite” refers to a state of being “complete”, it emphasises the idea of being unbounded or limitless. That which is infinite is unmeasurable and uncalculatable in so much that it can neither be reduced nor increased in any way without remaining as it has always been, both complete and limitless. While one can properly say that God is infinitely powerful, the term “Omnipotent” is generally more preferred and believed to better convey the concept that God can do everything and anything that is intrinsically or logically possible. It is for example impossible for God to create from nothing that which is equal to or greater than Himself.
The Latin prefix “omni” means “all” or “every” and is used to form compound words that both encompasses and conveys the scope of ultimate, maximal and supreme completeness in whatever the root word is referencing. Therefore, the compound word “Omnipotent” means All powerful in the sense of and to the degree that nothing can be more powerful than that which “is” Omnipotent. This attribute underscores God’s supreme sovereign authority and ability to govern all of creation, acting according to his will without any limitations external to his nature.
The term “benevolent” originates from the Latin word “bene”, meaning “good” and the Latin word “velle”, meaning to wish or desire. Benevolence is characterized by the moral disposition of doing good in acts of kindness and generosity that bring happiness and prosperity – benefit – to others in need. Omnibenevolence, or perfect goodness, is another essential attribute of God. Although the term good is “relative” in so much that, that which is “very good” is better than that which is “good” and yet lesser than that which is “very, very good”, God alone “is” perfectly – infinitely – good! Matthew 19:17. And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments”. God and God alone is the source of all goodness. James 1:17 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change”. This asserts that all of God’s actions are directed toward the good and that his will is always aligned with what is good and morally right. God’s Omnibenevolence means that he cares for the creation that he created “very good” as per His perfect benevolence, His perfect design and His perfect purposes.
Omniscience is the natural attribute of God’s infinite, all-encompassing perfect and complete knowledge of all things. God’s Omniscience goes beyond knowledge of everything past, present, and future to include complete knowledge of all possible realities, be they created or uncreated. In other words, God not only foreknows all that shall come to pass but God also knows what would have come to pass under any other set of circumstances or conditions.
This means that God’s knowledge is not contingent upon creation but that it is inherent to His nature – of knowing every and all things eternally. His knowledge is not anticipatory, accidental, derivative, manufactured, nor is it achieved – or acquired – through learning and or observation.
intrinsic
Although Omnipresence is generally understood to mean that God is “everywhere”, it more accurately means that God is “all present”, as in wholly, completely, or fully present everywhere and everywhen simultaneously. God, as the eternal and limitless creator of space, time, and matter, exists beyond their restrictions and transcends the natural laws that govern our physical world. For example, while two objects can move around each other or interact, each must always occupy its own distinct position—no single object can be entirely present in multiple places at once, and no two objects can share the same exact location simultaneously. While these restrictions apply to all things created – including angels – they do not apply to God who is the eternal creator of all things created. As understandably difficult as it may be for us to comprehend, it is vital to our proper understanding of God, that we do not confuse omnipresence as pantheism, the idea that God is everything. God is not everything, God is a distinct being and His creation is distinct from Him. Likewise, we must be careful to not unconsciously cast our constraints – our limitations – to space, time and matter, onto God. As the early Church Father, Augustine, wrote. “Although in speaking of him we say that God is everywhere present, we must resist carnal ideas and withdraw our mind from our bodily senses and not imagine that God is distributed through all things by a sort of extension of size, as earth or water or air or light are distributed. None of these can be wholly everywhere, since they are necessarily composed of numberless parts, some here and some there; however large or however small the substance may be, it occupies an amount of space, and it fills that space without being entire in any part of it. Nevertheless, God is not distributed through space by size so that half of him should be in half the world and half in the other half of it. He is wholly present in all of it in such wise as to be wholly in heaven alone and wholly in the earth alone and wholly in heaven and earth together; not confined in any place, but wholly in himself everywhere”.
God simply “is”, and by His eternal nature, He both transcends and permeates our physical realm in so much that there is no place and there is no time inside or outside of our realm that God isn’t. However, that which is of flesh – of physical nature – cannot see, hear, feel or know of the existence or presence of that which is of the spirit nature, unless that which is of spirit nature manifests – makes evident – its presence. God in His immanence – how he interacts with space, time and matter – has made evident His existence, and He has manifested and continues to manifest His presence – His Omnipresence – in many ways and in many places. In Matthew 18:20 for example God says. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. This verse is not saying that God would otherwise not be there but instead is saying that His presence will be made manifest – seen, heard, or felt – or in some way realized, where two of more gathers in His name. Therefore, our obedience or disobedience has no bearing on God being everywhere. However, our disobedience can result in the absence of His blessings and the absence of His presence being made manifest. In Luke 3:22 we see the Omnipresence of God at Christ’s baptism. and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased. Here we see the simultaneous manifested presence of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The more mature of ones proper understanding of Omnipresence, then so too the more mature and better understanding of the triunity of God.