exceptionnoted

In the past month or so there has been a little bit of discussion of the question of ‘classical theism’: the belief that God is simple, eternal, unchanging, impassible and so on. I had never really examined these kind of ideas until about five years ago when I began to read Augustine’s Confessions as part of the UCCF staff study programme. Since then I have become convinced that the God of ‘classical theism’ is the God of the Scriptures, revealed in and by Jesus Christ.

This is, to most modern ears, including my own, a counter-intuitive notion. How can the God of redemption be unchanging? How can the God of the cross be impassible? How can the God who displays love, justice, mercy, grace, wrath, holiness, power, wisdom and knowledge be simple? To believe in classical theism and to read the Bible through that lens requires a kind of mental…