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January 1 - January 14, 2022
For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.
“Since at all times we should be praising him and blessing him, and yet no words of ours are capable of expressing him, I begin by asking him to help me understand and explain what I have in mind and to pardon any blunders I may make. For I am as keenly aware of my weakness as of my willingness.”
It is “palpably absurd of you,” says the church father Tertullian, “to be placing human characteristics in God rather than divine ones in man, and clothing God in the likeness of man, instead of man in the image of God.”
Charnock, who advises us that if we think about God, we should say to ourselves: “This is not God; God is more than this: if I could conceive him, he were not God; for God is incomprehensibly above whatsoever I can say, whatsoever I can think and conceive of him.”
As Augustine explains, “The truest beginning of piety is to think as highly of God as possible; and doing so means that one must believe that he is omnipotent, and not changeable in the smallest respect; that he is the creator of all good things, but is himself more excellent than all of them; that he is the supremely just ruler of everything that he created; and that he was not aided in creating by any other being, as if he were not sufficiently powerful by himself.”
God is perfectly fulfilled and happy in and of himself. “God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of himself,” says Jonathan Edwards,
But remember, the being of God is “infinitely simple, hath nothing in himself which is not himself, and therefore cannot will any change in himself, he being his own essence and existence.”
“God neither obeys the moral order, nor does He invent it,” says Katherin Rogers. “He is Goodness Itself, and all else that is good is good in imitation of God’s nature.”
But the God of the Bible is no weak, vulnerable God to be pitied, which is why it is wise to call him “pure act,” a phrase meant to convey that God is not acted on but is the one who acts on others.14
His perfection does not increase or decrease. He never needs to become more perfect than he is.19 He is a “being without becoming.”20 The God who is pure act has in and of himself “all the plenitude of perfection of all being.”
Thomas Weinandy captures this very point: “God is unchangeable not because he is inert or static like a rock, but for just the opposite reason. He is so dynamic, so active that no change can make him more active. He is act pure and simple.”
Our God is, by nature, incapable of suffering, and he is insusceptible to emotional fluctuation.
He is never at odds with himself, divided over conflicting expressions of his perfections.
“God is impassible in the sense that he cannot experience emotional changes of state due to his relationship to and interaction with human beings and the created order.” Or think of it this way: “God is impassible in that he does not undergo successive and fluctuating emotional states; nor can the created order alter him in such a way so as to cause him to suffer any modification or loss.”
Does that mean, then, that God is lifeless, stoic, and apathetic? Not at all. God is, as we saw with aseity, the fullness of Being, absolute life in and of himself. He is “supremely blissful,” pure act.
God is maximally alive. Impassibility does not mean that God is inert or static, which would preclude him from love. Rather, as the maximal God his impassibility certifies that he could not be any more loving than he already is. He is love in infinite measure.
