The God Who Trusts

A Relational Theology of Divine Faith, Hope, and Love

Wm. Curtis Holtzen

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780830866670
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología sistemática y ética

The Bible resounds with affirmations of the faithfulness and trustworthiness of God. But might God also exhibit faith and trust?Standing in the tradition of theologians such as John Sanders, who argued that God is one who risks, Wm. Curtis Holtzen contends that God is not merely trustworthy or faithful, but that God is also one who trusts and has faith. According to Holtzen, because God is a being of relational love and exists in relationship with humans, who can freely choose to follow God, then God is a God who trusts.Such an argument might challenge our notion of who God is, yet Holtzen argues that understanding the relationship between divine trust and human faith can give us a fuller, truer picture of who God is and who we are.

1

CONSIDERING A GOD WHO TRUSTS

Your faith in God means much, even more than words can say; but God’s faith in you means more than does your faith in God. And why do I say that? Because, when your faith fails, and it is always failing, God’s faith, working by love, faileth never, but continues to call: “O, My Child, how can I give thee up?”

FREDERICK F. SHANNON, GOD’S FAITH IN MAN

WHAT DOES IT MEAN to say that God is perfect? Or that God is a being of maximal greatness? These are questions theologians enjoy pondering. To suggest that God is a perfect being is to say, at the very least, that God possesses qualities that are better for God to have than to lack. That is, if God were missing these qualities God could certainly be great, but not the greatest possible being. Each theologian may affirm slightly different qualities, but all, I believe, would assert that any list would be incomplete if it did not include that God is maximally powerful, knowledgeable, and good. Further complicating matters, even when theologians agree on these great-making qualities, they disagree on just what each means or entails. I would like to suggest that just as holiness, love, and relationality are great-making qualities, so too is faith. Not merely that God is faithful, but that God has faith. God trusts, hopes, believes.

This book argues that if God is authentically relational and humans significantly free, then God is a being of faith. More precisely, if God is genuinely loving, relational, and morally good, while humans are free to accept or reject God’s invitation to be partners in the creation of a beautiful world and divine kingdom, then faith, both human and divine, is necessary. Faith not only makes partnership possible but it perfects love itself, for love without faith is distant, one-sided, giving, but not necessarily receiving. It is because God has faith in us that God has not given up on this world. God believes that we are redeemable, trusts us as covenant partners, and hopes that all will accept the invitation of salvation. The love of God entails that God desires and works for the good of all persons, and what greater good is there than maturity in Christ? What greater good is there than that we become virtuous and trustworthy servants? God’s love for us means that God desires to make us mature, that is, trustworthy beings. Just as God is faithful—worthy of our faith—God seeks to bring us all to Christlikeness: worthy of God’s faith.

Theologians have begun to speak more and more of God being vulnerable and taking risks. William Placher asks us to suppose that God is not a deity who triumphs through raw power but that “more than anything else, freely loves, and in that love is willing to be vulnerable and willing to risk suffering.”1 Notably, John Sanders in The God Who Risks, seeks to offer a coherent “model of divine risk-taking . . . conceptualizing divine providence as taking certain kinds of risks.”2 Sanders argues that not only is God vulnerable, but God is even “more vulnerable than we are because God cannot count on our faithfulness in the way we may count on his steadfast love.”3 However, Sanders and Placher, like many others who affirm God’s risk-taking and vulnerability, stop short of saying that God is a being of faith.4 Over the past few decades open and relational theologians have made the case that God faces a significantly open future, invites free beings to love and be loved, and to partner with God in the creation of a good and beautiful world.5 However, to my knowledge, none of these theologians have said that if this is true then God necessarily has faith in these free beings.

This book seeks to correct this oversight and connect the dots that so many theologians have left unconnected. I hope to demonstrate that if certain beliefs about God are true, then it is necessary we affirm that God is a being, even the greatest possible being, of faith. In the remainder of this chapter I will make my initial case for God’s faith, arguing that if certain antecedents are true, then the conclusion of divine faith reasonably follows. From there I will briefly address a few prima facie objections to this argument. Finally, I will preview the remainder of the book.

CONDITIONS OF DIVINE FAITH

Why is it that humans need faith? Because we are utterly dependent upon God to reach out and invite us into the divine’s presence and purposes. We do not have the power to save or heal ourselves. We do not have the knowledge to navigate the pitfalls and difficulties life brings. If we had the knowledge and power necessary to succeed at life all on our own, we would need no faith. But that is not our situation. God has created us for loving partnerships. God has created us to grow and mature in the virtues. In short, faith is necessary because we need God and others to meet the challenges of this life, to achieve our God-ordained purposes, and to become the persons we were created to be.

Why does God need faith? Why should we even contemplate the claim that God has faith? Analogous to our own situation, it seems God is reliant on others in order to achieve the goals God has established for this world. God desires to enter into loving relationships with others. God desires that we grow in maturity and become virtuous persons. God desires that we willingly partner with the divine, and others, to bring about goods that would otherwise not be possible without such unions.

Let’s unpack the reasons for even considering a claim such as God is a being of faith. There are several theological issues that serve as conditions that make this study necessary. However, I will limit this discussion to just four: (1) purpose for creation, (2) human free will, (3) open future, and (4) divine passibility. Each one of these conditions has its own set of presuppositions, and a full exploration for each would require its own lengthy study.6 The point here is to show that all of these theological suppositions require consideration that God is an agent of faith and that if any one of these suppositions is true then the others are also likely true. And if each supposition is true, then I see no reason not to explore the real possibility of divine faith. This opening chapter, then, is not making a case for God’s faith per se but is making a case for this study.

Purpose for creation. Scripture does not reveal God’s purposes for creating this world. We can appeal to our senses to show us the nature of creation, to the Scriptures to reveal who the creator is, and to the sciences for reasonable theories regarding how God creates, but we are left to our own imagination to conceive of reasons why God created. The mind of God may ultimately be a mystery on this point, but this does not mean we cannot offer rational theological suppositions. In attempting to conceive of God’s reason(s) for creating it is commonly understood that all acts of creation are born out of God’s nature. To discuss why God created is to discuss who God is.

The Reformed theologians from Calvin to today have typically conceived of the creation as the “theater of God’s glory”—all that happens in creation is for God’s pleasure in glorifying God’s self.7 Twentieth-century Reformed theologian Louis Berkhof affirms this when suggesting that creation’s final end is “not anything outside of God, but in God himself,” meaning that God’s purpose for creation is God’s self-satisfaction.8 Berkhof proposes that human happiness or fulfillment cannot be the intended end for “the theory does not fit the facts.” If this were God’s intent for creation it would mean that God has taken a risk, but Berkhof declares, “we cannot imagine that a wise and omnipotent God would choose an end destined to fail wholly or in part.”9 For many theologians of this persuasion, the purpose of creation is closed, predetermined, and unilaterally accomplished. God creates for God’s own glory without deviation or possible failings. This is true for animate as well as inanimate creation, for each follows the will of God in its own way.10

Thinkers such as Emil Brunner, Jürgen Moltmann, and Clark Pinnock propose what I believe is a more suitable approach to God’s purposes in and for the creation.11 For them, creation is the expression of divine love, not absolute sovereign will. Brunner writes, “God creates the world because He wills to communicate himself, because he wishes to have something ‘over against’ Himself. Hence the revelation of this love of His is at the same time the revelation of the purpose of His Creation, and this purpose of creation is the reason why He posits a creation.”12 Brunner does not dismiss God’s self-glorification as a purpose for the creation but argues that glory is love freely received so it can be rendered back to God. God creates out of love for the purpose of love. Moltmann, likewise, maintains that love is the motive and end all in one. “If God creates the world out of freedom, then he creates it out of love. Creation is not a demonstration of his boundless power; it is the communication of his love, which neither knows premises nor conditions: creation ex amore Dei.”13 Divine freedom or sovereignty for Moltmann is inseparable from divine love. Creation is not an act of power alone or love alone. Rather, God creates in a most powerful love.

Pinnock employs the image of God as artist who creates out of delight for the creative process and loves what is made. More importantly, creation is born out of God’s loving and relational nature. “Creation arises,” according to Pinnock, “from loving relationships in the divine nature. God creates out of his own abundant interpersonal love—it is the expression of his generosity.”14 Creation is an overflowing of the triune love found within the Godhead—community is the motivation and the intended telos for creation.15 It is in community where love is given, love is received, and love is returned. Without community there can be exercises of power but no real love.

I am persuaded that God has authored creation out of God’s own loving nature for the purpose of loving relationships. This means that God has created the world to form community and fellowship in ways that reflect and generate unfathomable love. Brunner, Moltmann, and Pinnock highlight the impetus for God’s creative acts, but it must also be clear that the world is not created simply out of God’s love. It was and is being created to give love back, to generate love in community. To claim that God created for the purposes of love says more than that God acted on the motive of love—it means God awaits love in return. God created out of love with the intent that creation would love God in return as well as love itself. Love is the reason and the telos of creation. Too often talk of creation as being the product of God’s overflowing love can suggest that the creation is simply a result of divine emanation: that the creation has a cause but no purpose. The purpose for creation, as I see it, is to bring about goods that otherwise would not be possible. Some goods that God desires are only possible with a free creation.

Keith Ward argues that God’s purposes for creation might include increasing the sum total of value—values that may only be possible in a world of finite, yet free, beings.16 “The basic reason for creation is that it brings about forms of goodness and value which otherwise would not exist . . . it makes it possible for God to be a God of love, possessing the properties of creativity, appreciative knowledge and sharing communion, which are the highest perfections of personal being.”17 God may know every potential good that could possibly obtain in the lifespan of the creation, but knowing a good as potential pales in comparison with knowing it as actual. When I was a soon-to-be father I had real joy imagining and anticipating holding my daughter for the first time, but when I was able to actually hold her, that experience brought far more value, far more joy, than I experienced in the potentially of holding her. Likewise, for God, knowing potential goods, even if they are known in the fullest sense possible, is quite different than knowing them as actual goods. And it seems that at least some of the goods God desires are those God cannot actualize alone. In short, actualized values will increase the amount of good even if God knows and enjoys all the potential values.

God as a good and perfect being of love seeks to increase the good and love present in reality. God as immeasurable love and perfect goodness is not constrained by this nature but liberated by it. It would be a sign of limitation if God were not able to increase goodness or able to proliferate love. This is what it means to say God is unlimited love. Only a being of perfect goodness and unbounded love could increase the amount of love and goodness in reality, and God does this by the creation of other persons. Only by there being other agents who appreciate and value beauty, who share in love, can there be an increase in the amount of good in reality. When persons love one another and value and appreciate beauty, good propagates. It is certainly good and valuable that an infinite God appreciates God’s own goodness and beauty, but a notable addition to the total good takes place when others appreciate God’s beauty as well. In this sense it is not narcissism or some shallow need for affirmation that leads God to call on us to worship, but the divine’s desire that good and value be increased by the creation of those who can see, respect, desire, and appreciate true beauty. And there is no greater or more perfect love, beauty, or goodness than God.

It seems then that some goods can only be obtained by the creation of other subjects, beings who have some amount of autonomy. It is not simply that more value-appreciating beings exist, but that goods come only from the existence of other centers of consciousness.18 The joy that comes from se...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Foreword by John Sanders
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Considering a God Who Trusts
• 2 The Mosaic of Faith
• 3 God Loves
• 4 God Believes
• 5 God Trusts
• 6 God Hopes
• 7 Divine Faith and the Advent of Christ
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes
• Praise for The God Who Trusts
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright