Lecture

Welcome to Foundations of Systematic Theology. We’re glad that you’ve chosen to study with us. I am John Frame, professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. I’ll present lectures to you here, and as you listen you should follow along using the outlines applied in your notebooks. In my taped lectures, I will not necessarily refer to everything in the outline. For example, the outline contains a number of Scripture texts not all of which will be mentioned in the lecture. The additional Scripture texts will be for you to look over during your own study time. If you need additional confirmation or explanation on what I am saying, you can get it there. So the outline will supplement the lectures, and, of course, the lectures will supplement the outline.

In this course, we offer you an introduction to the important discipline of systematic theology. I’ll talk to you about systematic theology itself in more depth in lesson six. I think we need to do some systematic theology together though before we try to define it. But for now let me say that theology is the human attempt to apply the Bible to people’s questions and indeed to all of human needs. Systematic theology is topical theology. It studies the Bible not by going from Genesis to Revelation but by exploring topics treated in various parts of Scripture like the topic of God, man, revelation, Christ, the last days. Theologians have sometimes called these topics loci, the Latin plural of the word “locust,” which means “place.”

Systematic theology asks whole Bible questions. What does the whole Bible teach about God, what does the whole Bible teach about sin, about justification by faith? These are some of the topics we’ll be looking at in the course. This course is an introductive survey of systematic theology, and therefore it will not cover each topic in great detail. In many seminaries, a whole course will be devoted to, say, God and man or the person and work of Christ or the events of the last days. In this course, however, we will be covering briefly in 24 lectures the whole content of systematic theology. In this survey course, I’ll try to give you the main gist of each doctrinal area so that you will have a good foundation. I hope that it will motivate some of you to study some of these specific areas more intensively.

Now I know that survey courses have the reputation of being easy or superficial, but I hope you won’t say that about this course. It’s definitely a seminary level course, and I intend to challenge you to think hard about these matters, to learn some technical terms, to ask some tough questions, to dig deeply into the Word of God. Now since this is a survey, we’re going to be focusing on the big picture rather than the details. But understanding the big picture takes some intellectual and spiritual discipline, at least as much as it takes to understand the details. And sometimes, by focusing on the big picture, you can learn some important things you might pass over in a more detailed study. I intend to emphasize some things about the general shape of the biblical teaching to give you some basic categories—some hooks that you can use to hang the various things you learn.

One of these hooks is a system of threes that will run through the whole course. This system is mainly a pedagogical device, but I hope it will show you some important ways in which everything in the Bible is tied together. The Bible is not just a miscellaneous collection of ideas. Rather it’s a coherent, consistent system of truth in which the major doctrines depend on one another.

This first lecture, not surprisingly, is about God. In fact, we’ll spend the first three lectures on the doctrine of God what some theologians call theology proper, because even in a survey course, this is a foundation for everything else. How important it is to know God—Jesus prayed to His Father, “This is eternal life: that they may know You . . . and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3).

Who is God anyway? The Westminster Shorter Catechism in one of its most famous definitions says in question four: “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” That’s an excellent statement. I think that everything in that statement is biblical. But it’s interesting to note that the Bible doesn’t contain this kind of a definition of God. How then does the Bible introduce us to God? Well it begins with an act of God. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

I believe Moses wrote the book of Genesis, and he wrote it for the benefit of the people of Israel, whom God had delivered miraculously from slavery in Egypt. These people didn’t need a definition of God. They already knew who God was. He was the one who had led them out of Egypt. So the book of Genesis does not include a definition. It begins by telling the people that the God they knew already, the God who led them out of Egypt was also the one who created the heavens and the earth. How did the Israelites of Moses’ generation come to know God? Well, through the stories of their forefathers. When God spoke to Moses, He identified Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But to the Israelites, these three patriarchs were ancient history—God had helped them centuries ago. But when Moses was born, Israel had been in Egypt for 400 years.

Originally the Egyptians had seemed friendly to them, but later Pharaohs arose who hated them and subjected them to slavery. Israel cried out for God to help, but for those 400 years, God was silent. Many of them had to wonder why God was not answering their cries for help. Perhaps some of them doubted whether some of the old stories were true. But God did answer their prayers. He began by appearing to Moses. We learn about this meeting between Moses and God in Exodus 3, and I think that passage is the real beginning of the biblical doctrine of God. We read about God in Genesis, but the author of Genesis met God in Exodus 3.

In this passage, Moses sees a bush that burns but doesn’t burn up. The flames do not consume it. It turns out that the burning bush is a place where God is—a place where God wants to talk with Moses. God is everywhere, of course, but sometimes He makes His presence known in a very intense way. So God calls Moses, tells him to remove his shoes from the area of the bush, and that area of the bush is holy ground. God identifies Himself as the God of Moses’ father, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He says that He has seen the affliction of Israel and has heard their cry. He now intends to bring them out of Egypt to the land of Canaan, which He promised to his forefathers. Moses is to be His prophet, his spokesman.

Obviously Moses is overwhelmed by this responsibility, but God reassures him that he will be successful. God will deliver Israel, and they will worship God on this very mountain—the mountain with the burning bush. But Moses has another question: “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘what is his name,’ what shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13). Now that seems like an odd question to us: What is God’s name? Why would Moses ask something like that? Well in the Ancient Near East, you needed to know the name of your god in order to pray to him, in order to talk about him, and so on.

Furthermore, the name always had a meaning. Today we name our kids Billy or Suzy without much thought of the meaning of those names. You might call your daughter Suzy because you think the name sounds good, or because it was your grandmother’s name. But in the Ancient Near East, names had meaning. Abram meant “high father” and Abram’s new name, Abraham—given him by God—“father of a multitude.” Usually when a father gave a name to his son, he didn’t just give a name that sounded good but that conveyed something of his hopes for the child or his feeling about the child or the circumstances of the child’s birth. So to ask for God’s name is to seek information about Him. To seek God’s name is to ask what kind of God He is.

So we should be interested in God’s answer to Moses’ question. How does God identify Himself? How does He say who He is in the first books of the Bible? We wait with bated breath on the edge of our seats to hear God’s name. But God’s name is at first rather bewildering. Here’s verse 14. “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am,’” and He said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God here gives His name in a long form—“I am who I am”—and a short form—simply, “I am.” The long form is difficult Hebrew. It can be translated in present or future tenses, and the relative pronoun—translated who in the English Standard Version—can be translated in a variety of other ways too. I can’t take the time to explore all these translations with you, but the main point is that God’s answer to Moses is mysterious to say the least, and even the short form of the name—I am—is difficult.

It is a familiar phrase as when I say, “I am John” or, “I am a teacher.” But what could be meant by “I am” just by itself. It will help us, however, to go onto verse 15: “God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, “The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.” This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.’” Here we see the mysterious name in still a third form. We’ve seen it in a long form, a short form, and now a very short form—a one word form translated “Lord.” The word “Lord” in the ESV represents the word Yahweh in Hebrew. Yahweh is derived, evidently, from a form of the verb “to be,” so it is connected with the “I am’s” of verse 14. Some older English Bibles render this word as Jehovah. But most of them now follow the example of the King James and translate it “Lord.”

Verse 15 says that this is the way God wants to be known; the word by which He is to be remembered for all generations. So the English word “Lord,” representing the Hebrew “Yahweh,” another Hebrew word adon and the Greek word kurios occurs over 7,000 times in our Bibles, mostly referring to God the Father or (and this is important) also to Jesus Christ. Our Jewish friends today often use Deuteronomy 6:4-5 as a kind of confession of faith: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” This is a confession of lordship. There is only one God, and He is Yahweh, the Lord. The Christians of the New Testament also confessed lordship—Jesus is Lord (see the references in Romans 10, I Corinthians 12, and Philippians 2).

We should notice too that over and over again in Scripture, God says that He is going to do this or that in order that they “may know that I am the Lord” (Exodus 14:4). We certainly may say that “God is Lord” is the fundamental confession of the people of God in the New Testament. The fundamental confession of the New Testament people of God is “Jesus is Lord.” That is a way of summarizing the main content of the Bible: “God is Lord” is the message of the Old Testament; “Jesus is Lord” is the message of the New. So if we want to know the God of Scripture, we must come to know His lordship. There are, of course, many other concepts that are helpful in understanding God—concepts such as eternal, infinite, unchangeable of the Westminster Shorter Catechisms—but we need to start somewhere. And it would be hard to find any starting point more appropriate than that of lordship.

So we ask, “What does it mean for God to be Lord?” To begin with, I should emphasize that “Lord” is a personal name. So our God is a person. That is a tremendously important fact. We know that in our world in the universe there are personal beings like Joey, Cindy, Yo Yo Ma, Sammy Sosa, and [former] President George Bush. The world also contains impersonal beings like rocks, trees, law of gravity, tornados, brussel sprouts, matter, motion, space, time, and chance. Secularists usually try to argue that the personal reduces to the impersonal; that in the end, Joey, Cindy, and Yo Yo Ma are just ultimately matter, space, time, and chance. But the Bible teaches the opposite. It says that the impersonal reduces to just the personal. Matter, space, motion, time, and chance are ultimately tools; tools used by a great person to organize and run the universe that He has made.

Another point that we can get from Exodus 3 is that the Lord is a supremely holy person. That is, He is separate from us and transcendent over us. We may not approach Him without supreme respect. Holiness also means that God is supremely righteous and good and that He must cross a great barrier to have fellowship with sinners like you and me, but more of that later.

The main meaning of “Lord” is that He is the head of a covenant. In a covenant, God takes the people to be His. The heart of that covenant, often recorded in Scripture, is His saying, “I will be your God and you will be My people.” He rules them by His Law, as we shall see in a written document, and He delivers them from destruction and death. So the covenant includes both Law and grace.

But the name “Lord” also tells us about His nature, about what kind of God He is. Scripture typically associates three ideas of lordship, to which I have given the names: control, authority, and presence. I warned you that this course would include a lot of threefold distinctions. This is the first one, and there will be a lot of others that coordinate with these. I will call these “the three lordship attributes.” Let’s look at these in turn.

First, the Lordship attribute control. When God came to Moses and identified Himself as Lord, He came in power. He had heard the cry of the Israelites and had come to deliver them from the oppressions of the Egyptians with a mighty hand and a strong arm. Pharaoh was the most powerful totalitarian ruler of his day, and the might of Egypt was thought to be invulnerable. But God works powerful miracles, and gains a decisive victory over Egypt’s land, its ruler, its armies, and its gods (Exodus 12:12, 15:11, 18:11). He is gracious to whom He will be gracious, and He shows mercy to whom He will show mercy (Exodus 33:19). So He judges Egypt, but saves Israel. What He intends to do, He accomplishes. “Nothing is too hard for Him” (Jeremiah 32:7; Genesis 18:14). His Word is never void of power (Isaiah 55:11). His prophecies have always come to pass.

This is often called the “sovereignty of God.” Everything that happens in the world comes from Him. He is the one who sends rain and thunder and lightning (look at the passages in your outline to verify this). He makes things freeze, and then He melts the ice. The smallest details of nature are under His control. The falling of a sparrow, the number of hairs on your head, and the events that we call “random” that we describe to chance are really God at work. Look at Proverbs 16:33: “The lot is cast into the lap, but it’s every decision that is from the Lord.” Just roll dice. Whether you get a six or an eight or a twelve, the number comes from God. It’s God’s decision.

God not only rules the little things but the big things too. How could it be otherwise since the big things are combinations of little things? He determines what nations will dwell and what territory in Acts 17:26. “He decides what king is to rule, when and where” (Isaiah 44:28). He decides whether the purpose of a nation will stand or fall (Psalm 33:10-11. And He decided once that wicked people would take the life of His own dear son so that we, we sinners might live (Acts 2:23-24). God rules not only the important events of human history but also the lives of individual people like you and me. He knits us together in our mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139:13). He just decides whether we will travel or stay home (James 4). Does this mean that God even controls our free decisions? Certainly He does. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in order to harm him. That was their free decision, and they are responsible for it. But ultimately it was God who used their evil deed to accomplish His good purpose (Genesis 45:5-8).

Indeed Scripture often ascribes to God even the sinful behavior of human beings. He made Israel’s enemies to hate her (Psalm 105:24-25). He hardened Pharaoh’s heart against His people (Exodus 4:21 and also Romans 9:18). He moved Judas and Herod and Pontius Pilot to bring about the death of Jesus (Acts 2:23, 4:28).

God’s power [and] God’s control also brings about our faith and repentance so that we can have eternal life in Christ. In Ephesians 2:8-10, Paul says this: “For by grace you’ve been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” You see, faith is not something that we work up in ourselves. God gives it to us as His gift. He opens our hearts to believe (Acts 16:14-15). We believe because He appoints us to eternal life (Acts 13:48). He draws us to Himself (John 6:44). He gives us faith (John 6:65, Philippians 1:29).

Yes, it’s true we also choose Him, but He chooses us first (Ephesians 1:4 and John 1:12). So God’s control means that He is sovereign over everything that happens in the whole universe. Hear these passages: first, Lamentations 3:37-38, “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?” [Second], Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who were called according to His purpose.” [Third], Ephesians 1:11, “In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the council of His will.” And [fourth], Romans 11:33-36:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord, for who has [been His] counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.

So here in the very first lesson of the course, I am teaching you the doctrine of predestination. I know predestination is difficult. We ask, for example, “If God predestines everything, what happens to human freedom?” Good question. We’ll deal with it in this course in lesson seven. Another important question: “How can God bring evil things to pass if He is holy, just, and good?” That’s a real difficult one that has brought a lot of grief to people. We’ll have to look at it carefully, but we can’t do it now. I hope you can wait until lesson 8 for our discussion of the problem of evil. For now, I will say only that God brings about human sinful actions for His own good purposes. We may not always know what those good purposes are, but God assures us that they are good. He assures us of His goodness and justice by sending His own Son to die for our sins.

Now the second of the three lordship attributes is His authority. God’s authority is His right to tell preachers what they must do. Control is about might; authority is about right. Control means that God makes everything happen. Authority means that God has the right to be obeyed, and that therefore we have the obligation to obey Him. God’s authority is part of His lordship. When God meets with Moses in Exodus 3, He gives Him an authoritative message which has authority even over Pharaoh: “Let my people go that they may serve Me.”

When God meets with Israel at Mount Sinai, He identifies Himself as Lord, and then tells them to have no other gods before Him. God’s lordship means that we must obey the Ten Commandments and any other commandments he chooses to give to us. So Deuteronomy 6:4-6 [says to] confess the lordship of God and then go on to obey His commandments. Jesus, too, says in various ways, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” “How,” He asks, “can you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ when you don’t do the things that I say?” (Luke 6:46, and compare Matthew 7:21-22).

God’s authority is absolute. That means, first, that we shouldn’t doubt or question it. Paul said that Abraham wavered not in His belief in God’s promise (Romans 4:16-22). Abraham was certainly tempted to waver. God had promised Him the land of Canaan, but although he lived there, he owned even not one square-inch. And God had promised him a son who in turn would have more descendants than the sand of the sea. But Abraham’s wife Sarah was beyond the age of child-bearing, and Abraham himself was over 100-years-old before the promise was fulfilled. But Abraham clung to God’s authoritative word. So should we.

Second, the absoluteness of God’s authority means that His lordship transcends all other loyalties. We are right to be loyal to our parents, our nation, our friends, our spouses, but God calls us to love Him with all our heart. That is, without any rival. Jesus told His disciples to honor their parents (Matthew 15:3-6), but He told them to honor Him. This is a remarkable thing, to honor Jesus even more (Matthew 10:34-38).

Third, to say that God’s authority is absolute means that it covers all means of human life. Paul says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (I Corinthians 10:31). Everything we do is either to God’s glory or it is not. God has the right to order every aspect of human life.

Now the third of the Lordship attributes—God’s covenant presence. God’s lordship, as we have seen, means that He controls everything and that He speaks with absolute authority. But there’s also a third element to God’s lordship, and in some ways this is the deepest and most precious. This element is His commitment to us and therefore His presence with us. The essence of the covenant is that “I will be your God and you will be My people” (Genesis 17:7). God said that to Abraham, but He also said it to Moses and to the New Testament people of God. He said this many times throughout Scripture. This means that the covenant Lord is one who takes people to be His. When God takes us to be His people He fights our battles, blesses us, loves us, and sometimes gives us special judgments because of our sins. But most important, He is with us. He places his name upon us (Numbers 6:27) so that He dwells with us and we with Him.

In the Old Testament, God literally dwelled with Israel as He placed His theophany—that is, the fiery appearance of God—placed His theophany in the temple and the tabernacle. In the New Testament, Jesus is Emanuel—“God with us.” He is tabernacling among us (John 1:14), and after His resurrection, He sends the Spirit to dwell in us as in a temple. Control, authority, presence; these are the main biblical concepts that explain the meaning of God’s lordship.

Now I’d like to talk to you a little bit about God’s transcendence and eminence. The Lordship attributes—the three Lordship attributes, as I will call them—will help us to get a clear idea on the concepts of transcendence and eminence the theologians often use to describe the biblical God. These are not biblical terms, but the Bible does speak of God being on high (transcendence) as well as with us (eminence). He is both up here and down there. He is exalted and He is near. When Scripture uses the “up there” language, theologians talk about transcendence. When Scripture speaks of God down here with us, theologians speak of eminence.

There are dangers, however, with the concepts of transcended and eminence. I think, for example, some theologians have misunderstood God’s transcendence. They think it means that God is so far away from us that we can’t really know Him. So far the human language can’t describe Him accurately. So far that He’s just a great heavenly blur without any definite characteristics. I think this concept of transcendence is unbiblical. If God is transcendent in that way, how can He also be near to us? Further in the Bible, we can know definite things about God. And despite the limitations of human language, God is able to use human language to tell us clearly and accurately who He is and what He has done. So I urge you to reject that theological concept of transcendence.

If you are going to use the Word at all, use it to describe God’s enthronement. When Scripture speaks of God as high, exalted, lifted up, it’s not saying that He lives far away from us so that we can’t know Him. Rather it’s saying that God is King, that He is Lord. In other words, biblical transcendence is God’s lordship attributed of control and authority. Similarly, you should use the word eminence (if you use it at all) to describe God’s covenant presence. Some theologians speak as though when God becomes eminent he becomes immersed in the world—hidden in the world—so that He can’t be established from creaturely reality. But that’s not biblical. God is always distinct from the world, for He is the creator and we are the creatures. But God does come to be with creatures, and that’s something wonderful and precious.

I am using with you a particular model—a model is a kind of hook that theologians use to put the teachings of scripture out on to make available to those whom they’re teaching. You have to start somewhere, as I said, in theology, and so I’m using the concept of God’s lordship as a kind of model, and we’re going to be using it throughout this course.

Some people might make objections to this and think that there are other better ways of organizing the material of theology, and I’d like to mention three of the objections to lordship as a theological model. First, some might say that lordship plays down God’s love and mercy. That is, it emphasizes God’s control and power rather than His love and mercy. Well, love and mercy are certainly aspects of God’s covenant presence with His people, so that is part of lordship. And lordship helps us to understand love and mercy far better it seems to me. Lordship magnifies God’s mercy furthermore by empowering them. God loves us as a sovereign Lord, so His love accomplishes His purpose. His love is a powerful love; His mercy is a powerful mercy.

The second objection to using lordship as a model is that it suggests medieval feudalism. Now it is important that we understand lordship in a biblical way and not assimilate it to some historical model like Medieval feudalism. We shouldn’t try to understand biblical lordship in the light of Medieval culture or in the light of some other culture. Lordship is a product of Hebrew culture. Lordship is a product of the culture that was set up by God’s Word as His covenant people. The biblical view of God’s lordship is very different from feudalism, though there are some things in common. The main difference is that a Medieval lord does not have absolute control over the world. God does. The Medieval lord did not speak with absolute authority. God does. And even more significantly, the Medieval lord did not come down to the village to fellowship with his serfs to love his serfs and, indeed, even to give his life for his serfs. And God certainly does that for His people.

The third objection to the lordship model is that it obscures other possible biblical emphases. Now any model will emphasize some biblical truth somewhat at the expense at other truths. The reason is that theology is not the Bible. In theology, we don’t go through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and present everything in exactly the same balance that it’s found in Scripture. When we try to explain Scripture, of course, we’re going to take some things and make them more fundamental than they are in the Bible itself. So lordship may properly be balanced with other kinds of models: God as Father (that is very important, and we’re going to be talking about that later); God as our husband (remember the Old Testament passages about Israel as God’s unfaithful wife, and the New Testament passages about the church as the bride of Christ); the concept of redeemer is very important in the Scripture. So there are other models that are important, and we’re going to be using those as we go through the course and we’re going to be using them to balance the emphasis on God’s lordship.

But of all these different models, I believe that lordship is the most comprehensive. For one thing, as I told you earlier, God and Jesus are referred to as Lord over 7,000 times in the Bible. That’s far more than He’s referred to as Father or Husband or Redeemer. So there’s a pervasiveness to the doctrine of lordship that’s tremendously important. Lordship is also important because of its ability to include and explain other models. It doesn’t exclude God as a Father, but it helps us to see how God is the Father.

What does it mean for God to be Father? Well He takes us to be His sons and daughters. He “adopts” us as He says, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” So, as the Lord, He shows us how He takes us to be His covenant people so that we will be His family. So I think the covenant model—I think the model of God as the Lord—is able to include a lot of other biblical teaching.

So I say in conclusion to this lecture, the first thing to remember about God is that He is Lord—Yahweh, the “I am.” As the Lord, He is the personal holy head of the covenant. And He is in full control of the world He has made. He speaks to us with absolute authority, and He commits Himself to us as Emanuel—“God with us.”