In two previous posts, we laid out the via negativa and via positiva, noting points of departure in modern thought. We have already touched on things that will be covered in this article, but here we would like to consider three concepts—all starting with “A”—that help us continue to understand what God has taught us about himself. Whereas the via negativa teaches us what God is not—changing (immutable), limited (infinite), temporal (eternal), etc.—the via positiva provides us with ways of talking about God by attribution using analogous language. Thus, we see that creaturely love is an analog of God’s love, creaturely wisdom an analog of God’s wisdom, etc., and we see that sometimes it is even the case that something that is proper only to the creature is attributed to God, such as calling him a rock or speaking of his wings.
First, we must affirm the doctrine of accommodation. Consider the fact that a professor of theology must restrain himself in what he includes of his knowledge in his lectures to master of divinity students, men who have already attained a considerable amount of education. Consider, then, what happens when that professor goes to church that evening and teaches the youth of his congregation and how he must be all the more selective in how he phrases things and what concepts he introduces. Then, the professor arrives at home and leads his toddlers in family worship, teaching them to answer the question, “Who made you” with “God,” and the follow on question, “What else did God make,” with “All things.” In each instance, that professor has accommodated his own knowledge to the capacities of his hearers out of a love for them and a desire to make known to them the beautiful truths of the faith. But that professor is a creature with a finite and growing mind, a mind which knows things imperfectly, incompletely, and by instruction. How much greater the difference between that professor’s knowledge of God and God’s knowledge of himself. We are but finite creatures of the infinite Creator who knows himself perfectly. We are needy, and our neediness is met by the one who stoops to speak to us in words we can understand. Famously, Calvin illustrated the doctrine of accommodation as when an adult speaks to an infant. “For who even of slight intelligence,” says Calvin, “does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to ‘lisp’ in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking” (which we will look at below) “do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness” (Institutes 1.13.1).
The second ‘A’ in our list is anthropomorphism. We can understand this rather large word in two ways, one by breaking it down and the other by offering some examples. Anthropomorphism comes from the two words ‘anthropos,’ meaning ‘man’—sometimes in the generic sense of ‘human’ sometimes in the particular sense of ‘adult male’—and ‘morphos’ meaning ‘form.’ Thus, to speak of something by way of anthropomorphism is to speak of a non-human as though they were in the form of a human. We commonly experience anthropomorphisms today in the context of fictional storytelling, such as books and movies. We watch lions talking to each other as though human and read about talking horses. Unfortunately, sometimes we univocate the anthropomorphisms (go back to the previous article on analogous language) and end up talking about Siri and Alexa as though they are really humans, or our pets in like manner. When reading Scripture, we regularly encounter anthropomorphisms about God. We read that his eyes are everywhere. We read about his ears. We read about his mouth and his hands and his arms and his feet. However, God is spirit, and so such descriptions must be used to convey something true about him in ways that we can recognize from our experience of humans. Perhaps in order to broaden the category to include the images of eagles and lions, we could use the larger category of ktisimorphisms, creature-form-isms.
The final ‘A’ in our list is one that, for a variety of reasons, evokes a visceral reaction to inhabitants of our current age: anthropopathism. We know what the first part is—anthropos, or ‘man’—but the latter part may not be as easy to recognize as ‘morphos.’ ‘Pathism’ can be seen in such words as pathetic and sociopath. We sometimes talk about the three components of good rhetoric as logos (logic/reason), ethos (character), and pathos (moving the affections). Here, we see the primary aspect considered in the discussion of anthropopathism. In the absolute sense, or in the controlling apophatic doctrine, Christians have long confessed that God is “without passions” (e.g. Second London Baptist Confession/Westminster Confession 2.1; Thirty-Nine Articles 1). Though it immediately catches contemporary Christians off guard to read that God is without passions, we must recognize that biblical logic requires that we affirm God is both impassible and we are justified in saying God “delights” and “regrets” and expresses “anger.” For God to be impassible is simply for us to affirm his immutability and eternity. Since God cannot change (immutability), and since he is not measured by change (eternity), the creature’s changing status before the holiness of God can not in the absolute sense mean man has changed God’s mind, whether for good or ill. One analogy—though we obviously caution that all analogies fail at some point due to the nature of analogous speech—is the analogy of the and the earth’s rotation. As the earth rotates and North America aligns with the Sun, the inhabitants on our part of the planet talk about how the Sun “came up” and confess with the psalmist that it then “runs its course with joy.” However, if we wanted to get technical, the Sun has not moved. By analogy, when I sin against the holiness of God, God moves to wrath and when I repent, he is moved to mercy. Has God moved or changed? Of course not. Of course, the analogy fails inasmuch as the Earth’s rotation and the Sun’s beaming both occur without will. But the analogy helps us to begin to grasp at the fringes of the relationship between the ever-changing creature and the immutable Creator.
As we conclude, let us think of Calvin’s interaction with the concept of accommodation and God’s repentance in Scripture. In the following quote we see that what is the common external change that comes from a man when an internal change occurs (repentance) is sometimes said of God due to the outward change he has caused. It looks like things are all going one way (mankind is eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage, and God is sustaining it while it occurs) suddenly goes in a far different direction (God destroys the earth) due to the judgment of the Creator that it is evil. Thus, we say that God repented because the outward effects appear to our eyes what it looks like when a man repents. We close, then, with this quote from Calvin:
What, therefore, does the word ‘repentance’ mean? Surely its meaning is like that of all other modes of speaking that describe God for us in human terms. For because our weakness does not attain to his exalted state, the description of him that is given to us must be accommodated to our capacity so that we may understand it. Now the mod of accommodation is for him to represent himself to us not as he is in himself, but as he seems to us. Although he is beyond all disturbance of mind, yet he testifies that he is angry toward sinners. Therefore whenever we hear that God is angered, we ought not to imagine any emotion in him, but rather consider that this expression has been taken from our own human experience; because God, whenever he is exercising judgment, exhibits the appearance of one kindled and angered. So we ought not to understand anything else under the word ‘repentance’ than change of action, because men are wont by changing their action to testify that they are displeased with themselves. Therefore, since every change among men is a correction of what displeases them, but that correction arises out of repentance, then by the word ‘repentance’ is meant the fact that God changes with respect to his actions. Meanwhile neither God’s plan nor his will is reversed, nor his volition altered; but what he had from eternity foreseen, approved, and decreed, he pursues in uninterrupted tenor, however sudden the variation may appear in men’s eyes. (Institutes 1.17.13; cf. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2.99–103)
Calvin quotes come from Battles translation