RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
God
the other thought that the children of the One Father form a community, a kingdom of God, and that they can enjoy their union with God only when they are thus united with each other. According to Paul, the Spirit of God dwells in the Church as the motive power and principle of an entire new inner life in the sons of God — who have also attained to their faith in Christ and their sonshjp only through the same Spirit (I Cor. xii. 3). ^^The internal change effected from above is set forth as a new birth (see Regeneration). John contrasts this birth from God with the ordinary human, physical birth (John i. 12; I John hi. 9, v. 4). It is especially John and Paul who conceive God's relation to man under these aspects of self-revelation, foundation of a community, and self -communication; but I Peter also contains the idea of our being born again of incorruptible seed (i. 23), and James of our being begotten of God with the word of truth (i. 18). (The effect of this fatherhood is finally to be the filling of the children with all the fulness of God (Eph. iii. 19, iv. Q)7\
This whole relation of God to the faithful is brought about through Christ. He is called the Son absolutely, the only-begotten, just as he calls God his father with a distinction ("my father and your father," John xx. 17, not " our father "). This he is by virtue of his primary origin, not through a regeneration. It is through him that all the others become children of God; the spirit of their adoption is his Spirit (Gal. iv. 6; II Cor. iii. 17; cf. John xiv.-xvi.). The fulness of God is communicated to the Church and to the individual as it is comprehended and revealed in him (Col. ii. 10; Eph. iv. 13, ii. 22). And of him who, as the historic Christ and Son, is the partaker of the divine life and the head of the kingdom, and shall see all things put under him, it is asserted by Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Johannine writings (including the Apocalypse) that in like manner all things were created by him and through him, that in him they have their life and being, and that all divine revelation is his revelation — the revelation of the Logos. Thus the New Testament idea of God includes the doctrine that from the very beginning the Word was with God and of divine character and essence. With this relation of God to the Logos the elements appear which are treated at greater length in the article Trinity.
But this relation of God to his children must be clearly distinguished from God's relation to the universal natural life of personal spirits and to nature in general, (The expression " the Father of spirits " in Heb. xii. 9 (cf. " the God of the spirits of all flesh," Num. xvi. 22, xxvii. 16) refers not to the regenerate as such, and not to birth from God, but to creation by him, in which (cf. Gen. i. 2) he has imparted his image by the breathing of his Spirit^ With the same reference the saving of the pagan poet " We are also his offspring " is quoted in Acts xvii. 28. In this same passage Paul expresses the general relation of God to man, which subsists even in those who have rejected him, by the words " In him we live, and move, and have our being." At the same time, it is said of the glorified Christ, who fills the Church, that he fills all things
(Eph. i. 23, iv. 10). and this can only mean the whole world, over which he presides, his divine powers first penetrating humanity, and then through it bringing all things into harmony with his purposes. Thus, as all things proceed from God and exist in him, so he, and especially he as revealed in Christ, with his plan of salvation and his kingdom, is the final goal of all things (cf. Rom. xi. 36).
Both in Christian revelation and in the idea of the fatherhood of God, love is a fundamental element. It is most forcibly expressed in the assertion that " God is love " (I John iv. 8, 16) — not love in the abstract merely, still less a loving God. This is, in fact, the determining ele- 3. Attributes ment in God's nature. From it folof God. lows that the perfect, almighty One, who needs nothing (Acts xvii. 25), communicates himself to his creatures and brings them into union with him, in order to make them perfect and so eternally happy. Its highest expression is found in the fact that he gave his Son for us while we were yet sinners, and desired to make us his sons (I John iv. 10, iii. 1, 2; Rom. v. 8, viii. 32). But God is not only love; he is also light (I John i. 5). By this may be understood his perfect purity, which repels and excludes all that is unclean; his function as the source of pure moral and religious truth; and his glorious majesty. That the supreme, holy, and loving God, the Father of spirits, is himself a spirit is taken for granted all through the New Testament. In John iv. 24, where this is brought up to enforce the lesson that he is to be worshiped in spirit, without narrow confinement to a special place or to outward forms, it is spoken of as not a new truth but one which Jews and Samaritans were supposed already to know, and for whose consequences they should be prepared. The Yahweh-name of Ex. iii. 14 is further developed, in Rev. i. 4, 8, xxi. 6, xxii. 13, into "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, which is, and which was, and which is to come." The eternity of God is thus placed in its relation to the development of the world and to its ultimate conclusion in the completed revelation of God and of his kingdom. See Heathenism, § 4.
III. The Doctrine of God in Christian Theology:
The Christian revelation and its teachings about
God supplied a distinct moral and religious need;
but even after it had accomplished the foundation
of a community based upon these ideas, there was
still room for a clear definition of its
i. Depend- different elements and an investiga-
ence upon tion of their relations to other depart-
Pre-Chris- ments of the intellectual life — in a
tian word, for a Christian science of the-
Thought. ology. But Christian theology in its
earliest stages made use of the results
of pre-Christian, especially Greek, thought — the
methods and forms of philosophical reasoning,
general logical and metaphysical categories, and
philosophic views of the Godhead and its relation
to the world, which, although they had originated
on pagan soil and were in no way permeated by the
spirit of Scriptural revelation, were yet considered
as elevated far above the common polytheism of the
heathen world, and even as borrowed in part from
God