《聖言論》（THE DOCTRINE OF THE
WORD OF GOD）
A
Theology of Lordship A series volume 4主權神學系列卷四
by
John M. Frame
Chapter
2
Lordship and the Word
If we
are to understand the nature of the word of God, we must certainly understand
something about the God who speaks. In my other writings (see especially the
first seven chapters of DG), I have listed some important ways in which the God
of Scripture differs from all the gods of other religions and the principles of
philosophers. I will summarize these here.
God
Is an Absolute Personality
The
biblical God is the supreme being of the universe—eternal, unchangeable,
infinite. He is self-existent, self-authenticating, and selfjustifying. He
depends on no other reality for his existence, or to meet his needs. In these
senses he is absolute. But he is not only absolute. He is also personal, an
absolute personality.
Further,
the biblical God is not only personal, but tripersonal. His selflove, for
example, in Scripture is not based on the model of a narcissist, an individual
admiring himself (though God would not be wrong to love himself in that way).
Rather, his self-love is fully interpersonal: the Father loving the Son, the
Son loving the Father, and the love of both embracing the Holy Spirit and his
own love for them. God is for us the supreme model not only of personal
virtues, but of interpersonal ones as well.
Other
religions and philosophies honor absolute beings, such as the Hindu Brahman,
the Greek Fate, Aristotle’s Prime Mover, Hegel’s Absolute. But none of these
beings are personal. They do not know or love us, make decisions, make plans
for history. Significantly in our present context, they do not speak to us.
Other
religions and philosophies do honor personal gods, as with the polytheisms of
Canaan, Greece, Egypt, Babylon, India, and modern paganism. Yet none of these
personal gods are absolute. Only in biblical religion is the supreme being an
absolute personality. Only in biblical religion does the supreme being speak.
And only in biblical religion is the speaking God absolute, a being who,
significantly, needs nobody or nothing outside himself to validate his speech.
Consider
the immense significance of the fact that the Creator of heaven and earth, who
sovereignly governs all the affairs of the universe, actually knows, befriends,
even loves human beings—and that he speaks to us.
There
are, of course, other religions that approach the biblical idea of an absolute
personal God. These include Islam, Judaism, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and
Mormonism. These present themselves as believing that the supreme being is an
absolute person. I believe this claim is inconsistent with other things in
these religions. Certainly, none of these religions embraces the absolute
tripersonality of biblical theism. But my present point is that even in these
religions the claim to believe in an absolute personal God arises from the
Bible. For all these religions are deeply influenced by the Bible, though they
have departed from it in many ways.
God
Is the Creator
God,
the absolute tripersonality, is related to the world in terms of the
Creator-creature distinction. He is absolute, and we are not. Cornelius Van Til
expressed this distinction in a diagram with a large circle (God) and a small
one under it (the creation). God and the world are distinct from each other.
The
world may never become God, nor can God become a creature. Even in the person
of Christ, in which there is the most intimate possible union between God and
human nature, there is (according to the formulation of the Council of
Chalcedon, a.d. 451) no mixing or confusion of the two natures. In the
incarnation, God does not abandon or compromise his deity, but takes on
humanity. In salvation, we do not become God; rather, we learn to serve him as
faithful creatures.
At
the same time, the Creator and creature are not distant from each other. This,
too, is evident from the person of Christ, in which deity and humanity are
inseparable, though distinct. Indeed, the Creator is always present to his
creatures. The most important thing about any creature is its relation to the
Creator. The creature’s life, in every respect, at every moment, is possible
and meaningful only because of that relationship. In him we live and move and
have our being (Acts 17:28).
God
Is the Covenant Lord
The Creator is related to the creature as its
covenant Lord. Lord represents the Hebrew Yahweh (Ex. 3:15), the name by which
he wants his people forever to remember him. So the chief confessions of faith
in the Bible are confessions of God’s lordship (Deut. 6:4–5; Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor.
12:3; Phil. 2:11). God performs all his mighty works so that people will “know
that I am the Lord” (Ex. 6:7; 7:5, 17; 8:22; 10:2; 14:4; etc.). The chief
message of the OT is “God is the Lord.” The chief message of the NT is “Jesus
Christ is Lord.”
To
say that God is Lord is to say that everything else is his servant. The
relationship between Lord and servant is called covenant. As in the section on
God as Creator above, there is to be no confusion between Lord and servant.
In
Scripture, God’s covenant lordship has three major connotations: (1) God, by
his almighty power, is fully in control of the creation. (2) What God says is
ultimately authoritative, in the sense we have discussed previously. (3) As
covenant Lord, he takes the creation (and parts of the creation, such as
Israel, or the church) into special relationships with him, relationships that
lead to blessing or cursing. So he is always present with them. He was
literally present with Israel in the tabernacle and the temple. He became
definitively present to us in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. And his Spirit
indwells NT believers, making them his temple. Truly God is “God with us,”
Immanuel
I
describe God’s control, authority, and presence as the three lordship
attributes. I think there is some relationship between these and the three
persons of the Trinity: in general, the Father formulates the eternal divine
plan of nature and history (authority), the Son carries out that plan
(control), and the Spirit applies it to every person and thing (presence). This
triad is echoed in many areas of the teaching of Scripture, and as we will see,
it is reflected throughout the biblical doctrine of the word of God.
As in
previous Lordship books, I will also distinguish three perspectives by which we
can look at all of reality, corresponding to the three lordship attributes: in
the situational perspective, we will examine nature and history as they take
place under the controlling power of God. In the normative perspective, we will
look at the world as God’s authoritative revelation to us. And in the
existential perspective, we will focus on our own inwardness, our personal
experience, in which God has chosen to be near to us. These are perspectives,
for we cannot fully understand reality under one perspective without
considering the other two.
If God
is to communicate with his creatures, clearly he must communicate as the Lord,
for that is what he is. He cannot abandon his lordship while speaking to us. So
his word must come to us with absolute power (able to accomplish its purposes,
Isa. 55:11), authority (beyond criticism, Rom. 4:20, as we earlier described
the authority of language to create obligation), and presence (the Word as
God’s personal dwelling place, John 1:1; Heb. 4:12–13). The word of God is the
word of the Lord. So it can be nothing other than the personal word we
discussed earlier.
