Doctrine of God. A Theology of Lordship, The

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2004 by Taylor, Justin

Immutability. Frame understands God to be unchanging in his atemporal or supratemporal existence. His essential attributes, decretive will, covenant faithfulness, and the truth of his revelation are unchanging. God is not unchanging, however, in all respects. He is not only the author of time, but he is an actor within time. As history involves continual change, so God, as an agent within that history, changes as well. These are not contradictory, for God's transcendence is never at odds with his immanence, just as his control and authority never compromise his presence.

Impasnability. Scripture ascribes attitudes to God-compassion, tender mercy, patience, rejoicing, delight, pleasure, pity, love, wrath, jealousy-that are generally considered emotions. The notion of segregating one aspect of God's mental content (emotions) into the category of anthropocentrism while regarding other mental faculties (intellect, will) as non-anthropomorphic derives more from Greek metaphysical thought than the Bible. There is no compelling reason to deny the existence of divine emotions. Much of what we call "emotion" in God is his evaluation of and response to the historical series of events that he has ordained. Without emotion, God would lack intellectual capacity, and he would be unable to speak the full truth about himself and the world.

Simplicity. In scholastic terms, divine simplicity means there is no composition in the being of God. Frame seeks to vindicate the truth of divine simplicity, not through Scholasticism's natural theology but by approaching it from a biblical standpoint. Contra Aquinas, Frame argues that this does not preclude complexity or multiplicity in God. All of God's attributes are not synonymous-rather, they are perspectives on a single reality: God's essence. Praising God's wisdom, for example, is not to praise something other than God himself, but a way of referring to everything that God is. Surprisingly, therefore, we see a proper, practical motive to the doctrine of divine simplicity: a biblical reminder that God's relationship with us is fully personal.

Omnipotence. To put it most simply, God's omnipotence means he can do anything he pleases, and nothing is too hard for him. Of course, God cannot do everything: he cannot perform actions that are logically contradictory, immoral, appropriate only to finite creatures, or that deny his own nature as God. He cannot change his eternal plan or make a stone so large that he cannot lift it. Like Thomas Morris, Ronald Nash, Millard Erickson, and John Feinberg before him, Frame adopts Anthony Kenny's definition that God can do anything that is compatible with his attributes.

Omniscience. Divine omniscience may be defined as God's knowledge of all actual and possible states of affairs, and/or the truth value of all propositions. The extent of God's knowledge is as broad as his lordship. God plans and ordains all things; therefore, a fortiori, he also knows all things. Since Frame denies libertarian free will, he abandons middle knowledge. While he affirms God's knowledge of the possible actions of possible and actual creatures, he sees no reason to distinguish God's knowledge of contingencies from his necessary knowledge of himself, since on the Reformed view, the former is a subset of the latter.