About God, His Nature and Monotheism in the Earliest Christianity

Though more detailed than previous indexes, this post is also an index to points later distorted that the New Testament--supplemented by other early writers--shows the earliest Church understood about God's person. Further links will be added as new articles are written.

• Jesus and the Apostles clearly taught a  form of monotheism
  • There is only one God.
  • God is a unified One, a complex unity that includes the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not an ontologically “simple” unity in the sense advocated by Greek (and later) philosophy.
  • Thus, the concept of the Trinity, though not called that until later, is fully consistent with monotheism.
• By the most fundamental attribute of his nature, God is love.
  • This implies God fundamentally is in a relationship—first within himself
  • God has no needs, but his relationship to his creation and humans in it is more complex than is suggested by the traditional theological term “aseity.” God can’t be simplified so as to comply with human descriptions.
  • That God is love, by nature, including that he is pure love toward his creation implies, other attributes the scriptures recognize as coming in otherwise-contradictory pairs, such as justice and mercy.
• Only God has existence in himself.  The existence of all other things and persons derives from him, at every moment of their existence.  Genesis 1:1; Exodus 3:14-15;  John 3:27; Acts 17:24-28; Colossians 1:15-16. 
• God is eternal and omnipresent—that is, he simultaneously exists at all times and places.  To him all times and places are present.
• Though we are limited to finite, unidirectional time, God is not so limited.
• God’s omnipresence and eternity also imply that God is all around us—in him we live and move and have our being, as Paul said.  He is not limited to an infinitely distant “Heaven” or an eschatological distant future.
• God is both “transcendent”–above (in power) and outside his creation (which he pre-existed)—and “immanent” (manifested throughout creation, active in it and accessible from all places within it).  There is no contradiction in this tension.  See, for instance, Acts 17:24-31..
• God’s eternity and change:
  • Because God exists at all times simultaneously, and simultaneously throughout his Creation, his being subsumes all of the changes that occur in his Creation without changing him—the changes are found in him from the beginning, and he has provided for them from the beginning. He is the same God yesterday, today and forever. Hebrews 13:8.
  • God frequently makes decisions that appear to have been made in time, basing those decisions on actions of humans or other events that occur in time, stating promises or threats in conditional form based on humans’ future actions,  and executes (or fails to execute) them in time.  See, e.g, See, e.g, 2 Kings 20:1-6; Ezekiel 18:21-32; Jonah 3:4-4:4.  
  • This implies that he is not “immutable” in one sense often urged—i.e., unable to be changed in any way (even as we see time) by anything we do or by any events that occur, so that nothing is real but his eternal decree  (on which we can have no effect whatever).
• God and emotions:
  • God can participate in his Creation, feel emotions as a result of the things that happen in it, and act in response to what we do in it, and not change himself at all, because he is above time.  The whole drama of the Creation which he is perfecting, including us, is simply permanently subsumed within him.
  • God’s thoughts, emotions, and manifestations of himself to his changing Creation and to his transient creatures appear to change with time when viewed by beings like us who are bound to time.
  • God is frequently described as having emotions, and these descriptions are not mere anthropomorphisms designed to make God’s totally dispassionate sovereign decisions more understandable to humans. See, e.g., Exodus 34:5-7 (“compassionate” part of God’s name); Hebrews 11:5-6 (God pleased); Hebrews 13:15-16 (God pleased); Genesis 6:5-7 (God grieved); Hebrews 3:7-11, 16-17 (God provoked and angry). 
  • Thus, God is not “impassible” (to use the formal, theological term), in the sense this is normally urged—that is, that God is unable to feel any emotion as a result of anything that happens to his creatures or his Creation.
  •  God feels, thinks and acts.
• Although God can feel emotion as a result of what we do, and changes—or, better, from eternity has changed—his actions in anticipation of ours, he remains sovereign, as he controls the outcome, in conformity with his nature, which is love.

Related Posts Already Published:

• Unity in Diversity as an Attribute of God
• The Trinity in Which We Share
• The Existence of Invisible Things
• Eternity and Invisible Time as a Creative Process
• Memorial Day: The Case for Mourning

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