PERSONALITY OF GOD - 1

THE PERSONALITY OF GOD CENTERING IN SPIRIT

 

Personality is the central feature in the Biblical doctrine of God. Out­side the Bible there are many doctrines concerning God. They range from the point of limited personality to the entirely impersonal. And yet, personality is perhaps the most important fact in the world. No fact like that of personality is better attested. Still, in spite of its certainty and effects, no fact is more elu­sive as to its definition. It would appear that the definition of personality is the task of psychology. But psychology has undergone so many changes, and there are so many varieties, that psychology has not yet produced a definition that is generally acceptable.

According to an older psychology, personality consists of three things: intellect, sensibility, and will. But more recent psychological theories have arisen to dispute even the existence of personality as a possession of man, uni­que and different from any so-called lower animal. Even the brute, they argue, has intelligence, emotion, and will of a kind. There are some schools of psy­chology which have reduced the operations of men to the level of a machine, which when the mechanism ceases to function the person ceases to exist.

Such theories have compelled conservative theologians to make a closer analysis of the fact of personality, especially as revealed in the Bible. The following may be offered as a tentative and rather abstract definition. Person­ality is a name given to the nucleus of a definite group of functions or character­istics. This is not a mere collection of characteristics, but this group of characteristics does constitute a center for the functioning of personality. These characteristics are eight in number: spirit, life, intelligence, purpose, activity, freedom, self-consciousness, emotion.

Some of these are not peculiar to personality. Even the brute beast has life and intelligence of a sort. But the combination of these characteristics in a common center is peculiar to personality, and there can be no personality with­out their presence. As men examine themselves they recognize that personality is spirit, living, intelligent, purposive, active, free, self-conscious, and emo­tional. Inasmuch as man is in the image of God, it is a logical inference that there is reflected in him what is true of God in infinite and perfect proportion, and the Scripture confirms this with its clear declarations. The eight aspects or attributes of what constitutes personality will now be examined.

I. The fundamental affirmation of the Bible concerning personality was uttered by the Lord Jesus Christ. To the Samaritan woman in John 4:24 Christ said, "God is spirit" (RSV, NASB). It is true that the KJV and the ASV translate the Greek text at this point, "God is a spirit." But increased knowledge of Greek grammar now available indicates that the proper translation should eliminate the indefinite article.

It is true that God is a spirit. He is an infinite spirit and all other spirits are finite. It is also true that He is the spirit. The absence of the definite article in the Greek construction does not in any sense leave the noun, "spirit," indefinite. As the Spirit, God is the Father of all other spirits (Heb. 12:9). But in this text, even though the preceding meanings are true, it was Christ's purpose to state something about God that makes Him accessible for worship anywhere. That characteristic is the fact that in substance He is spirit, and is therefore not limited to place.

The second verse of the Bible introduces this attribute of God. The Trinity has not yet come clearly into view. The one God creates the heaven and the earth (Gen. 1:1). Then the second verse declares that, "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Though this doubtless has reference to the second person of the Godhead, yet in this passage it must refer back to the God of creation in verse one, and implies, if it does not clearly state, that the God who created is in essence spirit. He is uncreated and existed before material creation, so that He actually partakes of the nature of spirit.