Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Dr. James Dolezal - The Character of God

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Jonny Ardavanis is the Lead Pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, TN and the President of Dial In Ministries. He formerly served as the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University and as a Camp Director at Hume Lake Christian Camps. Jonny’s heart is to see people understand and love the Word of God and more so, to love the God of the Word. Jonny is married to Caity Jean and they have two precious daughters.Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode, Jonny Ardavanis sits sits down with Dr. James Dolezal, author of “All That Is God” to discuss the character of God.Many people today view God as if He is composed of parts (10% justice, 20% sovereignty, 50% love and so forth) - Dr. Dolezal is going to explain to us why that is a faulty and dangerous way to view God.In coming to understand the character of God, we must come to terms with His simplicity, not that He is simple, but that He is not composed of parts.Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey folks, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. In this episode, I sit down with author and professor Dr. James Dolezal and I ask him some questions about the character of God. Specifically, I ask him to address one of the common misconceptions that people have about God. That being that God is composed of parts. That being that he is one part love, one part holiness, one part justice, and so forth. Dr. Dolezal is going to explain to us why that is a faulty way of thinking and much more. Let's dial in.

Well, Dr. Dolezal, thank you for sitting down. I want to talk to you now about the character of God. So often when we think about God's attributes, we think of God's attributes as the pieces of the pie that is God, meaning we view God as 90% love and 5% just, and then he's sovereign, but where is that? So I want us to think through how we look at God's attributes. Can you help us out? Yeah, I think maybe I'll unravel your question a little bit. And you set it up this way. So I'll take a stab at it. There's one sense in which we want to be careful not to say that the attributes of God are pieces or parts, though inevitably,

we will conceive of them one after another. So I will think of God as good and wise and loving and just and true and eternal. And there are many things I say about God. And I will think of God as good and wise and loving and just and true and eternal. And there are many things I say about God. And I say those things based upon his revelation of himself, both in nature and in scripture. So I can see the effects of his handiwork and I can infer something about his power or his wisdom. I can see the rain that falls on the just and the unjust, and I can perceive something true about His beneficence. And so I can say, God is generous. God is powerful.

God is wise. Look at the good order of things. And so that's a sort of natural theology. In Scripture, God Himself condescends to use human language to describe Himself and uses those same terms and attributes, that he is wise, that he is good, that he is loving, that he is just. And so, and other terms too,

that he is unchangeable, that he is eternal. There are other terms like this that are also given to us. Also that he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so that there are three who are God, and yet not three gods. So the basis for our God talk is really derived from our observation of the effects of God in creation, the stuff that he has made, and then what God must be like to be the maker of such and such, or the giver of such and such. And so from there, we can start to see the truth about God and apply language to it. So when we talk about attributes of God,

where are we getting the concepts and the language for the attributes? We're getting them from creation and from scripture, which uses the language of creation to describe him to us. The temptation at this point, though, might be to think that the way in which I think about God, which is bit by bit, I think about his goodness when I think of his beneficence or when I think of his generosity or the gifts that he gives us. I think about his justice when I think about the flood or when I see demonstrations of his justice throughout scripture. And so I come to the knowledge of God bit by bit and there's a sense in which my knowledge

of God is growing and it's being built up as I encounter him in the revelation of himself. And these are, and the reason we call them attributes is because we are attributing certain perfections of being to God based upon what he's disclosed about himself in creation and scripture. And yet there's a real sense in which we want to be careful when we start to kind of put it together, so to speak, that we not conceive of the attributes as discrete bits of God. Like toppings on the pizza. Toppings on the pizza or even the ingredients on an entree where we're sort of picking apart good and wise and love and justice and truth and eternality. And then what God is, is in fact,

God is just a nice, tasty congealing, so to speak, of all the ingredients. And then, you know, I like to say, and then bake well, and what pops out is the God of Holy Scripture. So that there isn't a sense in which God, we want to be careful not to suggest that God is in himself actually reducible to a conglomeration of discrete parts. So historically, Christians have been, and not just Protestants, but even long before the Protestant Reformation, East and West, theologians have been adverse to describing God as composed of parts. All the early Protestant confessions will describe God as either simple, or they will describe him, like the Westminster Confession says, as without parts. And it's a sort of a

strange qualifier, a negative qualifier. When I say God is loving, just, true, eternal, powerful, something like that, I need to then also turn around and say, but however he is these things, it's not in the manner of a part resulting from an assembly or a whole rather resulting from an assembly of parts. And the reason, there's a rationale behind that, and it's a fairly straightforward one, which is that God is the one from whom are all things. God is the absolute first cause of being. He's the, there's an absolute primacy of being that all Christians ascribe to God based on scripture, but also on a right contemplation of nature. And as we contemplate God as first cause or absolute creator, as the one who doesn't

have causes of his being, we recognize that however he has his attributes, they can't be the way that wholes have parts because parts are always causes of something or other in holes. There's a sense in which every composite hole depends upon the parts of which it's composed. So you're wearing a shirt, it's composed of various threads and some, probably some machine wove them together in just such a certain kind of knit. And the hole depends upon the dye that makes it dark blue. It depends on the buttons, the threads. It also depends in another sense as well upon whatever unifies the parts so that things composed of parts depend upon in a twofold way.

The parts on the one hand, which fund the being of the whole, even if the whole could survive the loss of the part, it still is receiving something or other from that part and also requires something that accounts for the unity of the parts as you have a have an automobile that's made of many different parts the complete car is for tires a steering wheel a combustion engine and maybe if you have air conditioning and air compressor

and that car the totality of it depends on every one of those parts. So that not a, not a sink in my car, for instance, there are many, many parts, which are not cars. The car is actually the result of the parts being assembled together. Uh, so it depends upon the parts, but it also depends on whatever unifies or composes them together. So that if God had attributes like a whole composed of parts, we could think of God as dependent on the good bit and the powerful bit and the wise bit and the loving bit. And then we'd also have to say that God also depends on whatever accounts for the togetherness of them.

Does that logic make sense? Let me just talk it back with you. for the togetherness of them. Does that logic make sense? Let me just talk it back with you. So then if you're saying, like if you put, let's take for example God's wisdom. If that was a part of God and you took away that part, it would be like you just took the fourth tire away from a car, which now makes that car immobile. It can't move and it's no longer effective or efficient.

But God is not one tire, two tires, an engine, a radiator, alternator, steering wheel. He is his attributes. So he doesn't possess his attributes. So it's not like you're saying this car has a tire. You'd be saying this car is a tire. It sounds strange to the ear, but in fact, historically, that is how theologians are happy to talk about it. They will say things like there is nothing in God that is not God. Whereas actually everything in my car, in my Toyota van that is not...

I mean, it's composed of many things, not a Toyota van and the consequent. So that there's nothing in God that is not God or more positively, all that is in God is God. So that there isn't God and then underneath God there's the assembly of bits which aren't really God but together God is the result. We want to be careful when we attribute absolute primacy of being and causality to God that we not think of his attributes as something he has. Yeah in fact that's it's interesting you say it that way. The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas says that in a certain sense, even with regard to being, that God doesn't precisely speak. You

could speak this way and it's okay, but we have to clarify it. God doesn't have being. He is being so that he's not a haver of is. He is his own is. And there's a certain existential irreducibility and absoluteness that belongs to God that belongs to no creature. So I can talk about an angel, for instance, and say that, let's just pick a holy angel and I'll pick Gabriel. I could say, Gabriel is good, wise, loving, just, true. And I could go through a whole list of attributes, all of which show up on my list of God's attributes as well. And then I have to ask whole list of attributes, all of which show up on my list of God's attributes as well. And then I have to ask the question, what's the difference between God being those things and Gabriel, a holy angel being those things? And it's derived. Yeah. I think at

the, at the fundamental level, God is all those things in and of himself, whereas Gabriel is all those things derivatively from God who gives them. So there's the derivation side. There's also the sense in which in Gabriel, Gabriel is actually not identical with his own wisdom. There are angels who had wisdom and then lost it in a great act of foolishness and they fell so that his wisdom is in fact an accidental property. It's something that he can lose. The same thing is true of certain powers of his. The same thing is certainly true of his moral goodness. These are in themselves something super added to him so that not everything in Gabriel is Gabriel.

There's a bit of goodness and a bit of wisdom and a bit of power and a bit of justice. And all of these are given by the one who put those parts together, namely God. So God composes his parts. So it's actually the way Gabriel has his attributes in a way differently than God does. God doesn't have attributes. He is all of his attributes, whereas Gabriel and you and I are havers of attributes. So like if I said, Dr. Dolezal is wise, that would mean in our understanding you have wisdom, you have experience, you've received education. When we say God is wise, it's not that he has experience in that sense or received an education. It's because wisdom by very definition is the mind of God or he is wisdom.

He doesn't possess wisdom. You would look at him and Yeah. There's a look at him and go, he's a wise guy. Like we would, you would say he is by very definition wisdom. You would never say James is wisdom. Yeah. Uh, you might say James has wisdom and then you could go and look for the causes of my wisdom. Yeah. Teachers, books, ultimately God. Uh, whereas with God, there's a sense in which God doesn't have wisdom. He is the wisdom by which he's wise. So it's not something he has over and above being himself. I'm not identical with my wisdom and evidenced by the fact of all the foolish things that I think

and do and say. So that my wisdom is certainly not the totality of me. And also there are things in me that are really distinct from my wisdom. We can talk about my power. We talk about my wisdom and we can even make a real distinction of those in me so that you can think of fools that have a certain amount of power in which you can have one attribute and lack the other in God. All that is in God just is God. So that we're not talking about, we're not talking about a negotiated relationship of a bit of power, but thankfully there's a bit of wisdom that's sort of controlling the power bit to make sure that the counterbalance it, to make sure that not, you know, we'll say like, and I think it's okay to say this, God is powerful and also wise, but we should understand that when we say,

and also, we're not saying that there's something in God that isn't power really distinct from it, namely wisdom that has a little controlling relationship over the power in God. To be wise and to be God is just the same thing. To be wise and be powerful are just the same thing. So that it's not an assembly of great making bits. Rather, it's just simply the greatness of God being God. So from a pastoral perspective, what comfort does it bring? And what, obviously, adoration of God does it bring? That we know that his attributes are never competing with each other. You just said he doesn't have to choose between his love and his mercy or his goodness, sovereignty, and power. That he's all of his attributes, all of the time, in full measure

for his glory and for our good. So how do we look at those, the hub of all that is God, and in your own book, All That Is God, and how does that change the way even we worship God and the way that we trust God? I think in one respect, what we're getting at with this discussion, which can seem a little bit technical, is that there's nothing in God, not God, making God to be or do. If I can put it like that. What do you mean by that? What I mean by that is this. If I ask somebody, why God? Philosophically?

Yeah, if I just said, why God? The answer actually is God. Now, if I say what caused God, there's nothing caused God. But if you want to ask, what's the reason for God? God is the reason for God, and he's the self-sufficient reason for himself. I think the value of that for the Christian who is trusting him for this life and the next, believing his word and trusting him for life, breath, and all things, the value of that is understanding that the God who supplies us, and the God who gives us all good gifts,

and the God from whom every good and perfect gift comes down, and who sustains us, and who gives us his own son, and gives us assurances and promises in his own son, is in fact himself not liable to fall apart. And by that I mean not because he just is really, you know, has great integrity, because there simply are no parts into which he might fall. And I think we should make this distinction. The reason God is reliable is in fact, because God is not the kind of thing that can come undone or come apart. He's not composed of parts to begin with. So when I say He's good, His goodness is identical with Himself.

So that there's no sense in which God could survive the loss of His own goodness. Whereas I could survive the loss of my goodness, and when I sin, I do. But God and His goodness are in fact identical. So that God is... You can never betray that reality about Himself. A lot of the Protestant confessions will describe God as most absolute. And by that, they mean irreducible, that God's being isn't relative to something not God upon which he's depending

that sort of has to hang together for him to be reliable for us. That's how my car is. That's how people are. That's how you and I are. If I gave you a promise and you had to depend on me to follow through on my promise, and let's say that my promise was not a lie and was well intended, I have no guarantee that my soul and body will not come apart and then I won't be able to follow through on my word because I will have been disintegrated, so to speak.

There's no possibility of divine disintegration because there's no integration underlying God. There's no bit of this, bit of that into which he could be reduced. Where there's like an enamel that hold all of those. Yeah, there's some kind of glue that makes sure all the parts stay together. Even better than that would be no parts at all, rather infinite fullness of divine being.

That is God. And I think the value for the believer is recognizing that I can rely on God, not the way I might rely on you. I rely on you so far as your parts hang together. But if your parts don't hang together, then my reliance on you, while it might not have been a bad idea, isn't going to follow through and give me everything I hoped for. With God, there's no possibility that he falls apart on you because there were no parts in the first place. So when we talk about his attributes, I think in terms of the way we think about God's attributes,

we want to be careful not to think that God is an assembly of God bits or something like that. No, it's so helpful. And even to think through all those attributes, if God is not composed of parts, all of those attributes correlating together, meaning his love is a holy love. His sovereignty is a wise sovereignty, meaning that he's exercising rule and reign over all of creation. But then his plan over creation is never divorced from his total wisdom of how that's going to transpire. And so we can trust God. And therefore he, I mean, ultimately he, that would, that's what makes him God. And so, no, that's so helpful what you're saying. And in some ways difficult to wrap our minds around, but if we could fully wrap our mind around it, we would be God and we're not. And so there's a level of difficulty there, but it's, it's a worthy study. God is infinite. Your thought of God isn't.

God is simple. Your thoughts of God are multi-parted. But nevertheless, they are still true thoughts of Him who exceeds even our greatest thoughts of Himself. Well, Dr. Dolezal, thank you for your time and help in this regard. Thank you.