The Boxing of God
Monday, August 11, 2008 at 3:21PM No, you are not experiencing deja vu. This is a reposting of an oldish piece that I heavily re-edited because there were (and here I begin whispering) serious argument flow issues. Which, of course, you were all too kind to point out to me the first time round.
I have a confession to make: I am a former theology discussion board junkie. You
don’t have to be on these discussion boards long before you realize that
there are a few standard oft-repeated-but-mostly-meaningless all-purpose rebuttal phrases. The point of these particular counterarguments is to wipe out the opposition with one knock-out punch by making an accusation about the opposing position that is so shocking that those holding it slink away in embarrassment. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of these scandalous assertions actually work in this way, but lack of success has not kept them from being used again and again.
One of these all-purpose rebuttals is the God in a box argument. This accusation is usually is tossed into a discussion when someone makes a propositional statement about God
that doesn’t sit well with another participant in the discussion. But instead of giving reasons this statement about God is wrong, which might require some honest-to-goodness brain work, the person disagreeing simply trots
out the customary propositional-statement-about-God objection, “You
can’t put God in a box like that.”
Of course, part of the God in a box rebuttal is always right. We can’t put God in a box. God is infinite, so our statements and ideas about him will never contain the whole of who he is. He is other. That means he’s in a category entirely separate from us and not like anything we know or experience. He is Creator—the one who created us and created the box we exist in. We are the ones who are the boxees, and never the God who stands over us, hemming us in, “behind and before,” determining our “times and the boundaries of our dwelling places.” No, the problem with this objection is not so much with the “You
can’t put God in a box” part, but with the “like that” part.
Sometimes
this rebuttal is used in response to any definite statement about God.
Assertions about
God make some people really, really, nervous. (Except, I suppose, the
assertion that “God is love.” What’s not to like in that one?) This
objection to declarations about God
comes from the notion that God is so beyond us, so mysterious, so
incomprehensible, that we
can have no certain knowledge of him. Since much of who God is lies
beyond the grasp of our finite minds, the reasoning is, any
assertion about him is bound to be false because it reduces the
infinite, incomprehensible God to a
statement—or set of statements—about him.
And it is indeed correct to say that the whole of
God is incomprehensible to us. However, there are things about him that
we can
understand, and there are some understandable things about himself that
he’s chosen to communicate to us. It is not right, then, to think
that we
can know nothing truly true about our incomprensible God. No, we can’t
box him up, but he’s
given us some big hooks to hang our hats on. If a definitive
statement about God comes from one of these hooks he has given, God is
not boxed by it; rather, he is revealed in it.
Frequently, the God in a box counterargument is wielded when someone says that God can’t do something or must
do something. Statements about God that use the can’t and must words are perceived as automatic God-limiters. And God, you know, is completely free! There are no rules or
standards to which God must conform his actions and there are no limitations on
his abilities, so, the thought goes, is is never right to say that God can’t or
must do something.
There is truth in this argument, too. It is quite right that God is completely free. Unlike every other existing being, he is
entirely free to express himself—to be what he is and and do what he desires. Absolutely nothing stands in the way of
his self-expression.
But—and here’s where the can’ts and musts come in—it’s himself he’s expressing and his own desires that he carries out. And he isn’t anyone-or-anything-at-all. He’s someone; he has a distinctive character. When he expresses himself, he expresses himself according to his own nature.
Now we’re back round—aren’t we?—to our hat hooks. We’re back to the statements about himself that God has given us. One of the most important hooks is that of his own immutability, for this is the characteristic that ensures the constancy of all his other characteristics. “I change not,” he tells us, so we know God’s character remains constant. He is who he is and who he was and who he will be, and he won’t be morphing into something or someone else tomorrow or the next day or ever.
It’s because
of God’s unchanging character that we are not necessarily limiting God when we make must or can’t statement of him. We are not limiting God, for instance, when we say he can’t lie. We are
not saying that there is a set of rules, including the prohibition of lying, which are placed over and above and
outside of God—a set of rules that he must always abide by even though he feels
like lying. What we are affirming when we say that God can’t lie is that God is truthful and he won’t change. Some can’ts and musts, then, are simply declarations of God’s perfect ability to be who he is—forever, freely and unchangeably—and to speak and act in accordance with who he is and
what he wants—forever, freely and unchangeably.
Sometimes this type of the God in the box
objection comes in slightly different form, but it all boils down to
the same thing. For example, in the first comment on this post at Jollyblogger,
an objection is made to the idea of penal substitutionary atonement.
The idea of a penal substitutionary atonement, says the commentor,
suggests that once the Father has made a law, that He is unable to subsequently be merciful until that law if fulfilled. That makes God’s law more powerful than God.
If I understand the commenter
correctly, her objection is to the idea that sin must always be given
its just deserts, as if the just deserts for sin comes from a rule God
set up outside of himself, and God is forced to comply with his own rule without exception. The implication is that if God must give sin what it deserves, God is limited.
This is really just another form of the objection that any must or can’t
statements pertaining to God are “putting God in a box.” In this
particular case, it isn’t that God made a rule that he must always make
sure sin receives what it deserves, but rather, that God exists as a
God who is characteristically just. Expressing himself fully and freely
means that he always gives justice to sin, and if he didn’t he wouldn’t
be who he is. He cannot, then, simply pass over sin out of mercy
for sinners, but his mercy, when he chooses to be merciful, must be given in a way that accords with his constantly just character.
There are, of course, circumstances in which the accusation that someone is boxing God may rightly be made. If whatever limits we speak of in regards to what
God can do are not limits that arise directly from the
specific characteristics he’s revealed and explained to us in his word, then those limits may indeed be “putting God in a box.” If I were to
tell you that God was confined to one place at one time, when God has said he is everywhere at once and always, I’d be making him out to be less than he has revealed himself to be and
boxing him in that way. But even in that case, “You can’t put God in
a box like that,” while true, is not an adequate reply. What’s needed is a response that gives evidence that
God has revealed himself to be transcendent and immanent and eternal. And I had my own way, there’d be a well-enforced penalty-of-death law against using this overworked objection, no matter how well it applies.
Reader Comments (5)
weird thing: in my rss reader, the article cuts off (as if its reached its concluding end) right at the read more.
Well that would be an argument that didn't flow. :)
Yeah, I thought, "If it was bad before, it can't be much better now." I only clicked through to make a smart-alecky remark about it, but alas, you've robbed me of that pleasure.
Well, I don't need all this seminary talk. I'm just gonna get into the Word and love Jesus. Besides, it's just your interpretation, anyway.
Oh -- and you're a pharisee.
;-)
Ha! You know them all, I see, and you aren't afraid to use them.
I am cowering in the corner. :)