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I owe you an apology – no, I ask your forgiveness – for saying you come from an “alien” place and fly “alien colors” with perhaps a “skull and crossbones” hid somewhere. I have wronged you in this, and I am sorry. These things I have said of you are not true!
I have spent the afternoon with Stephen Charnock, and I now see that my remarks about the images of God on His throne in Daniel 7 and Revelation 4 & 5 are not sound or true. I confess to speaking ignorantly. If God – the invisible, infinite Spirit – has chosen to make Himself apparent to humans, this does not mean that He has a body or form of any kind (including a spiritual body or form), save in His condescending to reveal Himself to us. The Westminster Confession you quoted is true, and I false.
You are no pirate, k.seymore, and I have been tilting at windmills! You have shown yourself much more gracious and in accord with the Spirit of our Lord than I, and I appreciate your graciousness in your response to me!
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You are far too kind, I realize I may still be wrong. But no need to apologize, I realize your cannons were aimed at true unbelief, I just happened to be standing in the line of fire. My post was just me jumping out of the way to avoid being hit.
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In my “zeal” I have taken your doubts about the literalness of the account of Job (with its poetry and figures) for the historicity of his person.
And I have overstepped myself in another area as well: regarding anthropomorphisms. You quote Calvin (in Hosea) as saying, “For it must ever be remembered, that God is exempt from every passion.” It almost sounds as if it is being said He is without feelings, and this cannot be. Packer in Knowing God says this, “God has no passions – this does not mean He is unfeeling (impassive), or that there is nothing in Him that corresponds to emotions and affections in us…”, but that whereas human passions are often involuntary and unstable, “the corresponding attitudes in God have the nature of deliberate, voluntary choices, and therefore are not of the same order as human passions at all.” Of course the omniscient One does not change His mind, but He changes His modes of dealing with us, and, as you say, says it in ways we can comprehend.
If we say that His wrath or His love or His compassion are but likened unto passions we humans feel, but that in truth He does not have these feelings, I do not accept that. And yet….
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I have a hard time using a word so bound to sensory perception to
literally discribe it ("feelings"). But that said, I do believe that feelings in humans are analogous to the very things in God that scripture uses this language to explain. So we truly are, by scriptural example, free to discribe God as God describes himself. I was careful to use a quote of Calvin where he mentioned this. When he spoke of God's "wrath" and said, "if no anger is to be supposed by us to be in God, what does he mean by the fury of his wrath?
Even the relation between his nature and our innate or natural sins." So although I might word it a little differently, I think I agree with what you are getting at.
God Bless
