God, Revelation and Authority : God Who Stands and Stays (Vol. 5)

God Who Stands and Stays: Part One

Carl F. H. Henry

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9781581340457
• eBook ISBN: 9781433571206
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Part 5 in a monumental six-volume set that presents an undeniable case for the revealed authority of God to a generation that has forgotten who he is and what he has done.

GOD, REVELATION AND AUTHORITY

VOLUME V

GOD WHO STANDS AND STAYS

Part One

CARL F. H. HENRY

Dedicated to my wife

HELGA

and to our children

PAUL and CAROL

who helped and heartened in many ways

God, Revelation and Authority Volume V: God Who Stands and Stays Part One

Copyright © originally copyrighted and published in 1982. This edition copyright © 1999 by Carl F. H. Henry.

This edition published by Crossway Books

A division of Good News Publishers

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

Published in association with the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. For more information concerning the Henry Institute, contact Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2825 Lexington Road, Louisville, KY 40280; or call toll free, 1-800-626-5525.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President, in helping to underwrite the publication of this new edition of God, Revelation and Authority.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law. Crossway^® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Hardcover design by: Cindy Kiple

Paperback cover design by: D² DesignWorks

First Crossway printing, 1999

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-58134-045-7
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7120-6
PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7118-3
Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7119-0

ISBN: 1-58134-056-7 (Set of 6 volumes : pbk)

Bible quotations from Revised Standard Version, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission.

Bible quotations marked KJV are from the Authorized or King James Version.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Henry, Carl Ferdinand Howard, 1913–

God, revelation, and authority / Carl F.H. Henry.

p. cm.

Originally published: Waco, Tex. : Word Books, c1976–c1983.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: v. 1. God who speaks and shows, preliminary considerations — v. 2-4.

God who speaks and shows, fifteen theses — v. 5-6. God who stands and stays.

ISBN 1-58134-081-8 (v. 1 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-041-9 (v. 1 : pbk)

ISBN 1-58134-082-6 (v. 2 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-042-7 (v. 2 : pbk)

ISBN 1-58134-083-4 (v. 3 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-043-5 (v. 3 : pbk)

ISBN 1-58134-084-2 (v. 4 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-044-3 (v. 4 : pbk)

ISBN 1-58134-085-0 (v. 5 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-045-1 (v. 5 : pbk)

ISBN 1-58134-086-9 (v. 6 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-046-X (v. 6 : pbk).

1. Evangelicalism. I. Title.

BR1640.A25H45 1999
230’.044—dc21	98-51637

Contents

1. Preface
2. Introduction: God Who Stands and Stays
3. 1.The Reality and Objectivity of God
4. 2.The Being and Coming and Becoming of God
5. 3.The Living God of the Bible
6. 4.Methods of Determining the Divine Attributes
7. 5.Relationship of Essence and Attributes
8. 6.God’s Divine Simplicity and Attributes
9. 7.Personality in the Godhead
10. Supplementary Note: The Feminist Challenge to God-Language
11. 8.Muddling the Trinitarian Dispute
12. 9.The Doctrine of the Trinity
13. 10.God the Ultimate Spirit
14. 11.God the Self-Revealed Infinite
15. 12.Divine Timelessness or Unlimited Duration?
16. 13.The Modern Attack on the Timeless God
17. 14.Divine Timelessness and Divine Omniscience
18. 15.The Unchanging, Immutable God
19. Supplementary Note: Anthropomorphism and Divine Repentance
20. 16.The Sovereignty of the Omnipotent God
21. Supplementary Note: Sovereignty and Personality
22. 17.God’s Intellectual Attributes
23. 18.Shadows of the Irrational
24. 19.The Knowability of God
25. 20.Man’s Mind and God’s Mind
26. 21.Reflections on the Revelation-and-Culture Debate
27. Bibliography
28. Person Index
29. Scripture Index
30. Subject Index
31. Back Cover

Preface

AS ORIGINALLY PLANNED THIS WORK was to comprise only three volumes. But exposition of the fifteen theses on divine revelation (epistemology) that followed Volume 1 in itself required three volumes, and expounding the doctrine of God (ontology) required two more. This expansion to six volumes has been harder on me than on my readers. Now fifteen years after it began in Cambridge, England, at the conclusion of my editorship of Christianity Today, this writing project finally comes to an end.

One or another chapter was presented during short teaching terms or special lecture series on campuses both in the United States and abroad. Many of the overseas engagements were made possible in my role as lecturer-at-large for World Vision International.

Besides those campuses mentioned in prefaces to earlier volumes some of the content of these concluding volumes was presented during teaching terms at Asian Center for Theological Studies and Mission in Korea, Asian Theological Seminary in the Philippines, China Evangelical Seminary in Taiwan and in a lecture series at Union Biblical Seminary in India. Short-term courses here at home were offered at Columbia Graduate School of Bible and Missions, South Carolina; Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, Colorado; Fuller Theological Seminary, California; Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Massachusetts; C. S. Lewis Institute, Maryland; New College/Berkeley, California; and Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. Other presentations included lecture series at Alma College, Michigan; Carolina Study Center, North Carolina; Cornell University, New York; Covenant College, Tennessee; George Fox College, Oregon; Milligan College, Tennessee; Newberry College, South Carolina; Northwest Nazarene College, Idaho; Pepperdine University, California; University of Hawaii, Honolulu; University of Virginia, Charlottesville; Virginia Baptist Pastors Conference at Bluefield College; Western Conservative Baptist Seminary and Western Evangelical Seminary, both in Oregon. Still other series were given in Kobe, Japan, attended by faculty and students of five cooperating evangelical institutions and in Vail, Colorado, at the Theological Vacation Conference for Lutherans, a lively program that included Professor Paul Holmer of Yale University and Dean Krister Stendahl of Harvard Divinity School. Special series were also given in my home community of Arlington, Virginia, at Cherrydale Baptist Church and at Little Falls (Presbyterian) Church; C. S. Lewis Institute sponsored the former.

The chapter on “Revelation and Culture” was given in preliminary form as the tenth anniversary address of the Japan Evangelical Theological Society and in final form as the retiring president’s address to the American Theological Society. The material on “Justice and the Kingdom of God” in the final volume was presented at the Conference on Recovery of the Sacred at Notre Dame University, as well as at an informal meeting of U.S. congressional aides in the Senate Office Building, and during a Christian education lecture series at Coral Gables Presbyterian Church, Florida.

It is gratifying indeed to see the serious theological interest that these volumes have stimulated in many circles and in many parts of the world. Earlier portions of the English edition have gone into a fourth printing. The first two volumes have appeared also in Mandarin and the first three in Korean; a German translation is in process.

January 1, 1982

CARL F. H. HENRY

Note: Full information on all sources cited in the text is given in the bibliography at the end of this volume.

Introduction: God Who Stands and Stays

VOLUMES I THROUGH IV in this series have concentrated on God Who Speaks and Shows; the fifth and sixth concluding volumes concern God Who Stands and Stays. The earlier writings focused mainly on religious epistemology, that is, on the problem of knowledge and the fact of divine revelation as the answer to the question of how we know God. These later volumes emphasize ontology or metaphysics; they probe the nature of the self-disclosing God whom man may know and worship and serve. Such examination is the very lifeline of theological inquiry. God’s existence is the foundational biblical doctrine; from it flow all other Christian principles and precepts.

Contemporary man seems to have lost God’s address. But that is not all. He is unsure how to pronounce God’s name, and, at times, unsure even of that name, or whether, in fact, God is nameable. But since most human beings still claim to “believe in God,” the question of whom or what they worship remains both important and contemporary. An ironic feature of the late twentieth century, of course, is that while literate Westerners laugh at primitive worship of sticks and stones, they themselves do obeisance to the brick and plastic of materialistic technology. Revealed religion has always known that when man denies supreme allegiance to the eternal living Lord he inevitably worships some contemporary counterfeit. Man’s character is ultimately defined by the character of his god.

We have already established that while man the spiritual vagabond may be confused about God’s identity and address, God in self-revelation confronts him continually in an amazing variety of ways. God stands eternal and majestic. But he is neither inactive nor speechless; he speaks and acts. Successive cultures have their half-day, and except for the perpetuity lent ...

Table of contents

• God, Revelation and Authority – Volume V