GOD is and he may be known. These two affirmations form the foundation and inspiration of all true religion. The first is an affirmation of faith, the second of experience. Since the existence of God is not subject to scientific proof, it must be a postulate of faith; and since God transcends all his creation, he can be known only in his self-revelation.

The Christian religion is distinctive in that it claims that God can be known as a personal God only in his self-revelation in the Scriptures. The Bible is written not to prove that God is, but to reveal him in his activities. For that reason, the biblical revelation of God is, in its nature, progressive, reaching its fullness in Jesus Christ his Son.
In the light of his self-revelation in the Scriptures, there are several fundamental affirmations that can be made about God.


I. His Being

In his being God is self-existing. While his creation is dependent on him, he is utterly independent of the creation. He not only has life, but he is life to his universe, and has the source of that life within himself. God is utterly independent of every environment in which he wills to make himself known. This quality of God’s being probably finds expression in his personal name, Yahweh, and in his self-affirmation: ‘I am who I am’, i.e. ‘I am the one that has being within himself ‘(Ex. 3:14).
This perception was implied in Isaiah’s vision of God: ‘The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary … He gives strength to the weary, and increases the power of the weak’ (Is. 40:28–29). He is the Giver, and all his creatures are receivers. Christ gave this mystery its clearest expression when he said ‘For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself’ (Jn. 5:26). This makes independence of life a distinctive quality of deity. Throughout the whole of Scripture God is revealed as the Fountainhead of all there is, animate and inanimate, the Creator and life-giver, who alone has life within himself.


II. His nature

In his nature God is pure spirit, which means intelligent energy. Christ made this disclosure about the God who is the object of our worship to the woman of Samaria: ‘God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth’ (Jn. 4:24;. In this respect we must distinguish between God and those of his creatures that are spiritual. When we say that God is pure spirit, it is to emphasize that he is not part spirit and part body as man is. He is simple spirit without form or parts, and for that reason he has no physical presence. When the Bible writers speak of God as having eyes, ears, hands and feet, they are ascribing to God powers that correspond to what these physical parts enable us humans to do. If we did not speak of God in physical terms in this way we could hardly speak of him at all. This, of course, does not imply any imperfection in God, since his life as Spirit is not a limited or restricted form of existence.
When we say that God is infinite spirit, we pass completely out of the reach of our experience. We are limited as to time and place, as to knowledge and power. God is essentially unlimited, and every element of his nature is infinite. His infinity in relation to time we call his eternity, in relation to space his omnipresence, in relation to knowledge his omniscience, and in relation to power his omnipotence. God is eternal, all-present, all-knowing and all-powerful.
His infinity likewise means that God is transcendent over his universe. It emphasizes his distinctness as self-existing spirit, from all his creatures. He is not shut in by what we call nature, but infinitely exalted above it. Even those passages of Scripture which stress his local and temporal manifestation, lay emphasis also on his exaltation and omnipotence as a being external to the world, its sovereign Creator and Judge (cf. Is. 40:12–17).
At the same time God’s infinity implies his immanence. By this we mean his all-pervading presence and power within his creation (cf. Ps. 139). He does not stand apart from the world, a mere spectator of the work of his hands. He pervades everything, organic and inorganic, acting from within outwards, from the centre of every atom, and from the innermost springs of thought and life and feeling, in a continuous sequence of energizing effect.
In such passages as Is. 57 and Acts 17 we have an expression of both God’s transcendence and his immanence. In the first of these passages his transcendence finds expression as ‘the high and lofty One who lives for ever, whose name is holy’, and his immanence as the one who dwells ‘with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit’ (Is. 57:15, NIV). In the second passage, Paul, in addressing the men of Athens, affirmed of the transcendent God that ‘the God who made the world and everything in it, is the Lord of heaven and earth, and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else’, and then affirms his immanence as the one who ‘is not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being” ’ (Acts 17:24, 28).


III. His character

God is personal. When we say this we assert that God is rational, self-conscious and self-determining, an intelligent moral agent. As supreme mind he is the source of all rationality in the universe. Since God’s rational creatures possess independent characters, God must be in possession of a character that is divine in both its transcendence and immanence.
The OT reveals a God who is personal, both in terms of his own self-disclosure and of his people’s relations with him, and the NT clearly shows that Christ spoke to God in terms that were meaningful only in a person-to-person relationship. For that reason we can predicate specific mental and moral qualities of God, such as we do of human character. Attempts have been made to classify the divine attributes, i.e. character qualities, under such headings as ‘Mental and Moral’, ‘Communicable and Incommunicable’ or ‘Related and Unrelated’. Scripture would seem to give no support to any of these classifications. *GOD’s names are to us the designation of his attributes, and it is significant that, historically, God’s names were given in the context of his people’s needs.
It would seem, therefore, more true to the biblical revelation to treat each attribute as a manifestation of God in the human situation that called it forth, compassion in the presence of misery, long-suffering in the presence of ill-desert, grace in the presence of guilt, mercy in the presence of penitence, and so forth, suggesting that the attributes of God designate a relation which he establishes with those who feel their need of him. That bears with it the undoubted truth that God, in the full plenitude of his nature, is in each of his attributes, so that there is never more of one attribute than of another, never more love than justice, or more mercy than righteousness, but that God is unchanging, undiminished and wholly involved in all that he does. If there is one attribute of God that can be recognized as all-comprehensive and all-pervading, it is his holiness, which must be predicated of all his attributes, holy love, holy compassion, holy wisdom, etc.


IV. His will

God is sovereign. That means that he makes his own plans and carries them out in his own time and way. His sovereignty in willing and working is simply an expression of his supreme intelligence, power and wisdom. God’s will is not arbitrary, but acts in complete harmony with his character. It is the forth-putting of his power and goodness, and is thus the final determinant of all existence for the divine glory.
There is, however, a distinction between God’s will which prescribes what we shall do, and his will which determines what he will do. So theologians distinguish between the decretive will of God by which he ordains whatsoever comes to pass, and his preceptive will by which he enjoins upon his creatures the duties that belong to them. The decretive will of God is thus always accomplished, while his preceptive will is often disobeyed.
When we conceive of the sovereign sway of the divine will as the ultimate ground of all that happens, either actively bringing it to pass (cf. Ps. 135:5–12), or passively permitting it to come to pass (cf. Acts 14:16), we need to recognize the distinction between the active will of God and his permissive will. The entrance of sin into the world, and its continued prevalence, must be attributed to the permissive will of God, since sin is a contradiction of his holiness and goodness. There is, therefore, a realm in which God’s will to act is dominant, and a realm in which man’s liberty appears in exercise against God. The Bible presents both in operation. The note which rings through the OT is that struck by Nebuchadrezzar: ‘He does what he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?” ’ (Dn. 4:35). In the NT we come across an impressive example of the divine will resisted by human unbelief, when Christ uttered his agonizing cry over Jerusalem: ‘How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!’ (Mt. 23:37). Nevertheless, the sovereignty of God ensures that all will be overruled to serve his eternal purpose, and that ultimately Christ’s petition, which his followers echo, ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Mt. 6:10; 26:39–42) shall be answered.
It is true that we are not able to reconcile God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility within a single logical frame. That is because we do not understand the full range of divine knowledge and comprehension of all the laws that govern human conduct. The Bible teaches us that all life is lived in the sustaining will of God ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’, and that as a bird is free in the air, and a fish in the sea, so we humans have our own real freedom in the will of God who created us for himself. God sustains us all in the responsible freedom of being accountable to him for what we choose to do, and without this the deeper freedom of living for him in faith and love, and enjoying him as our supreme good, could not be.


V. His essential life

In his essential life God is a fellowship. The supreme revelation of God given in the Scriptures is that God’s life is eternally within himself a loving fellowship of three equal and distinct persons, Father, Son and Spirit, and that in his relationship to his moral creatures God is extending to them the fellowship that is essentially his own. This truth might perhaps be read into the dictum that expressed God’s deliberate will to create man: ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ That form of words stands as an expression of the will of God, not only to reveal himself as a fellowship, but to open the divine life of fellowship to moral creatures made in his image and so fitted to enjoy it. While it is true that through sinning man lost his fitness for that holy fellowship, it is also true that God willed to restore it to him. This was the grand end of redemption: here we see God in Three Persons acting for our restoration, in electing love that claimed us, in redeeming love that emancipated us, and in regenerating love that recreated us for his fellowship (*TRINITY). It is the fitting climax of the biblical revelation that John affirms on the basis of Christ’s redeeming work, linked with the divine plurality and fellowship of which he had spoken earlier (1 Jn. 1:3–2:2; 3:24–4:6), ‘God is love’ (1 Jn. 4:8–10, 16).


VI. His Fatherhood

The personal God can enter into personal relationships, and the closest and tenderest that the Bible knows is that of Father. This was Christ’s most common designation for the One to whom he prayed and of whom he taught, and in theology the name of Father is reserved specially for the first Person of the Trinity. There are four types of relationship in which the word ‘Father’ is applied to God in Scripture.
1. There is his Creational Fatherhood. The fundamental relationship of God to man, whom he made in his own image, finds its most full and fitting illustration in the natural relationship which involves the gift of life. It is, more particularly, for man’s spiritual nature that this relationship is claimed. In Heb. God is called ‘the Father of our spirits’ (12:9), and in Nu. ‘the God of the spirits of all mankind’ (16:22). Paul, when he preached in the Areopagus, used this consideration to drive home the irrationality of rational man worshipping idols of wood and stone, quoting the poet Aratus (‘For we are his offspring’) to indicate that man is a creature of God. The creaturehood of man is thus the counterpart of the general Fatherhood of God. Without the Creator-Father there would be no human race, no family of mankind at all.
2. There is the Theocratic Fatherhood. This is God’s relationship to his covenant-people, Israel. In this, since it is a collective relationship that is indicated rather than a personal one, Israel, as covenant-people, was the child of God (Ex. 4:22–23), and she was challenged to recognize and respond to this filial relationship: ‘If I am a father, where is the honour due me?’ (Mal. 1:6, cf. 2:10; Is. 64:8). But since the covenant relationship was redemptive in its spiritual significance, this may be regarded as a foreshadowing of the NT revelation of the divine Fatherhood.
3. There is Generative Fatherhood. This belongs exclusively to the second Person of the Trinity, designated the Son of God, and the only begotten Son. It is, therefore, unique, and not to be applied to any mere creature. Christ, while on earth, spoke most frequently of this relationship which was peculiarly his. God was his Father by eternal generation, expressive of an essential and timeless relationship that transcends our comprehension. It is significant that Jesus, in his teaching of the Twelve, never used the term ‘Our Father’ as embracing himself and them. In the resurrection message through Mary he indicated two distinct relationships: ‘My Father, and your Father’ (Jn. 20:17), but the two are so linked together that the one becomes the ground of the other. His Sonship, though on a level altogether unique, was the basis of their sonship, by virtue of the faith-communion and Holy Spirit-union that bound them to him.
4. There is also the Adoptive Fatherhood. This is the redeeming relationship that belongs to all believers, and in the context of redemption it is viewed from two aspects: that of their standing in Christ, and that of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in them. This relationship to God is basic for all believers, as Paul reminds the Galatians: ‘For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith’ (Gal. 3:26). In this living union with Christ they are adopted into the family of God, and they become subjects of the regenerative work of the Spirit that bestows upon them the nature of children: one is the objective aspect, the other the subjective. Because of their new standing (justification) and their relationship (adoption) to God the Father in Christ, they become partakers of the divine nature and are born into the family of God. John made this clear in the opening chapter of his gospel: ‘To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right (authority) to become children of God - children born, not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God’ (Jn. 1:12, 13). And so they are granted all the privileges that belong to that filial relationship: ‘if children, then heirs’ is the sequence (Rom. 8:17).
It is clear that Christ’s teaching on the Fatherhood of God restricts the relationship to his believing people. Nowhere is he reported as assuming this relationship to exist between God and unbelievers. Not only does he not give any hint of a redeeming Fatherhood of God towards all men, but he said pointedly to his cavilling opponents: ‘You belong to your father, the devil’ (Jn. 8:44).
While it is under this relationship of Father that the NT brings out the tenderest aspects of God’s character, his love, his faithfulness and his watchful care, it also brings out the responsibility of our having to show God the reverence, the trust and the loving obedience that children owe to a father. Christ has taught us to pray not simply ‘Our Father’, but ‘Our Father who art in heaven’, thus inculcating reverence and humility. However intimate, rich and warm-hearted his love, God remains God, majestic, amazing and awesome.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. J. Orr, The Christian View of God and the World, 1908; G. Vos, Biblical Theology, 1948; H. Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, 1951; J. I. Packer, Knowing God, 1973; G. Bray, The Doctrine of God, 1993; P. Helm, The Providence of God, 1993; J. Schneider, C. Brown, J. Stafford Wright, in NIDNTT 2, pp. 66–90; H. Kleinknecht et al., in TDNT 3, pp. 65–123. R.A.F.


r.a.f. (1996). VI. His Fatherhood. In D. R. W. Wood, I. H. Marshall, A. R. Millard, J. I. Packer & D. J. Wiseman (Eds.), New Bible dictionary (D. R. W. Wood, I. H. Marshall, A. R. Millard, J. I. Packer & D. J. Wiseman, Ed.) (3rd ed.) (418–420). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.