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Post by Jesse Morrell on Oct 26, 2007 8:26:16 GMT -5
THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF GOD By Winkie Pratney This is a book which I highly recommend. It is the most comprehensive and thorough studies of the nature and the character of God that I know of. It's a book that they use as a text book in many of the YWAM Discipleship Training Schools. Winkie is absolutely brilliant and this book is by far his best. Find it at www.abe.com
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Post by Jesse Morrell on Jan 2, 2008 13:33:43 GMT -5
I'm more then half way through this book, (almost 500 pages) and I think it's fantastic.
He deals with:
The nature of God - What God is by natural necessity
The Character of God - What God is by voluntary liberty
He covers a great deal of topics like omniscience - omnipresence - omnipotence, time & eternity, moral law, moral agency, holiness, trinity, etc.
I have particularly enjoyed reading about the "time & eternity" issue, whether eternity is timelessness or if eternity is infinite duration of time. He also deals with the issue of open theism, does an open system somehow take away from God's perfection, omniscience, transcendence, and make somehow make God finite? Winkie has some brilliant insight into these issues.
What is great about this book is that the majority of it is quotes from a wide range of authors, from Augustine, Tozer, to Finney and some others that I never heard of. It's a really fantastic book to either read or to use simply for research.
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Post by alan4jc on Jan 4, 2008 10:58:29 GMT -5
DIVINE KNOWLEDGE, HOLINESS, AND JUSTICE IN SCRIPTURE
Far from divine freedom being the "power of contrary choice," God's freedom is precisely that He never will or even can do anything contrary to His holy and good nature. "Thou art good and doest good" (Ps. 119:68). That is why God "cannot lie" (Titus 1:2); why we know that His promise and His purpose are "unchangeable" and therefore that "it is impossible for God to lie" (Heb. 6:17-18); why God could rest His assurance to Israel on His own immutability when He said, "For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed" (Mal. 3:6); why we can be comforted to know that "if we are faithless, He remains faithful; for He cannot deny Himself" (2 Tim. 2:13; cf. Num. 23:19).
Like His moral nature, so also God's knowledge is perfect, admitting no increase or improvement. "God...knows all things" (1 John 3:20) -- not just some things; not all things except those that "have not been brought into existence as yet and thus are not fixities or objects of possible knowledge" (Olson's description of the future choices of free moral agents).[33] The God who "calls those things which do not exist as though they did" (Rom. 4:17) "knows all things." Nothing can be hid from God (Ps. 139:11-12; Heb. 4:13). "His understanding is infinite" (Ps. 147:5). Hence God's knowledge can never increase (Isa. 40:13-14), for it is already all-comprehensive: (1) in space (2 Chron. 16:9; Ps. 139:1-2, 6-10); (2) in time (Ps. 139:15-16; Isa. 41:21-26; John 13:19); (3) in scope, including all things from the greatest to the least (Ps. 139:2-4; 147:4; Job 31:4; Matt. 10:30); and (4) not only in things actual (what is or will be) but also in things contingent (what could be, under any circumstances, real or not) (1 Sam. 23:10-13; Ps. 81:13-16; Jer. 38:17-18, cf. 19-23; Matt. 11:20-24).
This God of infinite and unchangeable knowledge and holiness is also a God of perfect justice who, contrary to Olson, does demand vengeance on sin: "I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me..." (Exod. 20:5, cf. 20:7; Deut. 29:19-20; 32:35; Josh. 24:19-20; Nah. 1:2-3; Rom. 12:19).
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