In Which We Discover Why Is Is Is

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We believe in the God who reveals Himself to us, and not in a God who lies to us. He does not reveal Himself to us exhaustively, for that would crush us, but He reveals Himself to us in truth. But in order for God to reveal Himself to us in truth, we must have been created such that we can receive that truth.

This means that in some respects, in some way, there must be univocal meaning in the communication that occurs between us and God — some point of intersection. My earlier point about logic being an attribute of God is what makes this possible. We do not want to press creaturely “humility” to the point where all bets are off, and no such thing as heresy exists.

Now when I say that logic is an attribute of God, some are afraid that I am saying that before God does something, He gets out His copy of Aristotle to make sure He is not doing anything fallacious. That, of course, is absurd. But we can say that truth is an attribute of God without maintaining that He gets out His copy of the Shorter Catechism before saying something (well, most of us do at any rate). We say that love is an attribute of God without saying He obeys Sunday School maxims. We should simply understand the point about logic or “right reason” in the same way. God is not obeying rules; He is the rule.

So when I use the word “foundational,” I do not mean to speak as some kind of a foundationalist, as though God were made out of building blocks. I am talking about something that is foundational to revelation, or any faithful predication about God.

In other words, I agree with the doctrine of divine simplicity. But I want my confession of divine simplicity to stay put, and not be allowed mean that “divine simplicity is the same thing as not divine simplicity.” God is all of His attributes; He is not a composite of them with logic being part of the bedrock. But we must recognize that when we affirm the doctrine of divine simplicity, this cannot be the same thing as denying that doctrine. And the reason for this is the way God is. So the doctrine of divine simplicity is true, and “logic” participates in that make-up in the same way that love, holiness, and righteousness do.

 

So I don’t make the good confession by saying “A,” but rather I make it by saying that “Jesus is Lord.” But in order to do this faithfully, I have to know that this is always and everywhere inconsistent with “Jesus is not Lord.” And I want to ground the reality of this inconsistency in the way God eternally and everlastingly is, and not in the way human thought happens to function.

So I don’t start with A is A. I start with “the Father is the Father.” To confess that “God is love” I must also confess that God is God and love is love and is is is. The conclusion to that previous sentence just sort of happened, but that doesn’t keep me from being happy about it. I don’t get to affirm that the table is not the table, and this is because of how God is, just as I don’t get to lie about my neighbor because of how God is. We are to be imitators of God (Eph. 5:1), and this is why we have a moral duty not to be illogical. Careful thought is as morally obligatory as loving words.

The biblical argument for giving this kind of emphasis to logic is found in an appropriate answer to the serpent’s question, “Hath God said . . .?” This question came from a subtle creature, and we are emphatically warned about this kind of subtlety (2 Cor. 11:3). Unless I assume constancy, I am easy prey for the serpent. But unless I assume that every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is my life, and not “my life and not really my life,” I cannot have genuine faith in Him. But, Scripture tells me, the just shall live by faith.

So the affirmation of divine consistency and immutability (i.e. logic) is not an attempt to bind God with the puny rope-threads of human ratiocination. It is the other way around. It is God tying us down with the stout ropes of divine authority. And now, as in every generation, we don’t like it very much.

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