Too Small a God

by William Mundt

Misunderstandings about God’s nature and methods are common when personal perspectives outweigh biblical ones. Looking around, we consider ourselves better than most, and so conclude that God will appreciate our effort. We think, in other words, that if you believe that God exists and try your best, that’s good enough. Alternately, for those who do not think of God as an over-indulgent grandpa who shrugs off bad behaviour (and attitudes), there is another possibility: that we think of God as too remote, too disinterested to be bothered with. 

Work your way through all 1,146 pages of Stephen Charnock’s 1853 two-volume work, Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God, and you still won’t get a complete picture of who God is and what He does for us. The mystery of the Trinity remains just that: a mystery. The Bible declares but does not fully explain the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Faced with a doctrine too great for sinful minds to grasp, the fall-back position is often a distortion of the doctrine of God—an emphasis on one Person, with the others subordinated (a “unitarian” rather than trinitarian understanding, as the theologian Daniel L. Migliore has explained).

This unitarian misunderstanding of God can take different forms. Those who focus only on the Creator can end up with a God of “manifest destiny,” like those early North American settlers who wrote “In God We Trust” on their money. Such people can end up with little awareness of sin and the need for forgiveness, reconciliation, repentance, and transformation. Those who focus on Jesus only, meanwhile, can construct a personal Redeemer limited to the peace and love He founded. For them, faith can become sentimentality and individualism, with little concern for social justice and the rest of the world. Finally, those who focus only on the Spirit can over-emphasize the place of miracles, healings, tongues, and other signs or special gifts. And if such wonders are not present in your own life, then you may begin to doubt that you are saved or really know God at all. In short, when we downplay the trinitarian nature of God, we can end up worshipping and following a god that really is too small.

Similarly, the Old Testament Jews had to learn that their God was not a tribal deity but instead the God of gods and Lord of lords—the supreme one and only.

The English theologian, J. B. Phillips, once declared in a book title: Your God Is Too Small. He wanted to provoke discussion and contemplation on God’s nature. He felt that modern people viewed the Almighty as merely a local or personal God who was just there to serve them by answering prayers about mundane things like food, jobs, and romance. Similarly, the Old Testament Jews had to learn that their God was not a tribal deity but instead the God of gods and Lord of lords—the supreme one and only. Phillips sought to explain that too many in his day had also not found a God big enough for modern needs, big enough to command respect and admiration.

Believers ought not fall into the trap of emphasizing one or some attributes of God while neglecting or relegating to obsolescence others. In the old days one used to see this in silly questions like: “If God is so powerful, can He make a rock so heavy He cannot lift it?” The fallacy is in assuming one attribute of God is greater than another. The question is therefore illogical and impossible—even improper. 

Times may have changed but the temptation to emphasize one aspect of God over another has not. Today we hear less about God lifting rocks and more about an overestimated view of His love. Since God is love, people argue, surely He accepts and embraces everyone, regardless of lifestyle choices. Whatever society—or Scripture—might call sin, therefore, is irrelevant since all will be saved, even without coming to a knowledge of Christ. Jesus’ contribution is thus reduced to showing us that relating to everyone just the way they are—“after all, God made them that way”—is the loving thing to do. In this view, God’s love is magnified while we ignore His justice and holiness, the attributes which led Him to declare: “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20). Apparently, the Heavenly Father is simply supposed to ignore misbehaviour and bad judgment.

“TRIFACIAL TRINITY,” altered. Cusco School, c. 1750.

And it’s not just our view of the Father that can end up minimized. We should also ask: “Is your Jesus too small?” Travelling the highways of the American Midwest and listening to the radio, one hears some interesting preaching. The thrust of one message that struck me was this: “We know that Jesus is now confined to heaven and sits in a room—like a chapel or prayer cell—where He prays for us.” That’s it. Christ is made the eternal message boy to the Father, who expects us to come to Him first. 

We have all learned the importance of praying in Jesus’ name, but I doubt any of us heard that this is all the Son of God does. If Jesus is just there to serve us, then how do we serve Him? Is prayer just a means to get God to do what we want? Is His death and resurrection just an example for us to follow? Is He truly less than the Father—His deity in some way restricted by His humanity? Old Testament believers often limited God to the role of a national deity by being unable to imagine the fullness of His goodness; modern ones can fail to appreciate that in Christ the fullness of the deity dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9). Jesus is more than a moral model, more than an encouraging comforter. When our Jesus is too small, the Gospel gets a lot shorter; we end up omitting all the references to Jesus confronting sin, casting out demons, and so on.

Confining Jesus to heaven brings with it major problems. If He is stuck up there, then He cannot be present where two or three are gathered in His name (Matthew 18:20), nor can He be present in the Sacrament of the Altar, except as mere remembrance. David Scaer deals with such concerns in his dogmatics text on Christology, taking great care to describe clearly the Lutheran distinctions that allow us to maintain what Martin Luther so simply summarized: “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil” (Small Catechism). Scaer explains that we can never fully explain or understand the nature of the personal union (God and Man) in Jesus. But summarized briefly, this doctrine teaches us that first, because Jesus has two natures, human and divine, all attributes apply to the whole person. And second, Christ’s divine attributes are shared with His human side without restriction. This means that Jesus can be present among us in the Lord’s supper and where two are three are gathered since His human body is not limited to His place at the right of the Father; it can instead share in the attributes—like omnipresence—of His divine nature.

Instead of focusing on sin and forgiveness from God, we are told to prioritize relationships with our neighbours.

Others make Jesus too small by rejecting as old-fashioned the idea that He had to suffer and die for our sins to reconcile us to God. Culver Nelson, for example, argued that “the old notion that God must beat the living daylights out of His own kid in order to be able to forgive us of our sins merely portrays the Divine as an abusive parent, and that’s absolutely irrelevant to the thought of modern people, and it should be.” Instead, progressive Christianity argues that the real reason Jesus died is because He wanted to do away with the bloody sacrificial system—that, and He became the victim of powerful priests. At most, Jesus’ death symbolizes God’s victory over evil. For folks like these, traditional preaching is just—in the words of David M. Felten and Jeff Procter-Murphy—“a distraction from the very real need of seeking forgiveness from our fellow human beings.” Instead of focusing on sin and forgiveness from God, we are told to prioritize relationships with our neighbours. “After all,” the argument goes, “it is often easier to kneel at the altar over and over again than to knock on a neighbour’s door and seek practical resolution to a misunderstanding.”

The best response to such thinking is that penned under inspiration by the Apostle Paul: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19).

Of course, no discussion of the Trinity would be complete without also asking, “Is your Holy Spirit too small?” That is, do you see the Spirit merely as a force—like gravity, perhaps, but in a good sense—or the byproduct of the combined faith of all believers? The LCMS theologian, Lorenz Wunderlich, addressed prevailing ignorance about the Spirit in his book, The Half-Known God. The Bible identifies the Spirit as a Person, with traits and duties that distinguish Him from the Father and the Son. He energizes as “He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith” (Small Catechism). He is the Comforter, the enabling teacher and guide Jesus promised to send (John 14:26). Having called us to faith, the Spirit assures us that we are God’s children, “bearing witness with our spirit” (Romans 8:16), and He gives us gifts and talents by which we serve Christ and His Kingdom and work together with other believers.

We have one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and our God is not too small.

We have one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and our God is not too small. But while some theologians focus intently—perhaps too intently—on the sovereignty and majesty of God, the Lutheran tradition is careful to also emphasize the grace of God, the love of God, and the mercy of God. For these are the sources of justification by grace through faith, on account of Christ’s sacrificial suffering, death, and resurrection from the dead. Hence our constant message: Because He lives, we will live too (John 14:19).

Yes, the Trinity is tricky. But may the Apostle Paul’s prayer be ours for one another: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).

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Rev. Dr. William Mundt speaks at his retirement dinner.

Rev. Dr. William Mundt is professor emeritus of Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Cover photo: “Adoration of the Trinity,” detail. by Albrecht Dürer, 1509-1511.

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