It was A.W. Tozer who so famously said, “What comes into our minds when we
think about God is the most important thing about us.”[1] The reality is that a well-
formed doctrine of God will shape and inform nearly every other theological view
that a person might hold. Unfortunately, the converse is also true; a poorly-formed
doctrine of God will also (mis)shape and (mis)inform every other theological view
that a person might hold.
In the day and age in which we are living, there is no shortage of bad information
floating around on the internet about who God is. d This is part of the problem
with the internet, no one needs qualification anymore to have as large of a
platform as possible. The questions that I want to be prepared to answer are
those that stem from the promulgation of false information about God. My desire
is to know and understand this doctrine so thoroughly that I can effectively refute
bad teaching in this area.
Ultimately, however, my ambition is to study the person(s) of the triune God as a
means of truly knowing Him. Apart from knowing God, all of the study of Him is
an exercise in vanity. I heard, recently, of a legendary theologian whose precise
identity is escaping me (someone along the lines of a DA Carson or a John Piper)
who spoke at a seminary chapel service with would-be pastors filling the
auditorium and he challenged them that in the midst of all of their theological,
hermeneutical, exegetical, and homiletical work, they had better pursue all of that
with an eye toward worship, that their study might inflame their hearts with love
toward God and empower them to pursue depth of relationship with Him. d
In my view, matters explicitly pertaining to the doctrine of God are better served
in a congregational setting if the pastor is to pepper the truths into his teaching
all throughout the year rather than have a concerted emphasis on them for one
particular series. However, if I were to develop this content into a series, I would
take the approach referenced above and address the false teachings that are
pervading the culture through social media. Perhaps I would call it something
along the lines of “The Lies We Believe.”
For the Church, it is absolutely non-negotiable that she would be carefully formed
and shaped by a clear understanding of the person of God. Beginning without that
as a foundational premise would produce misreadings and misunderstandings of
the rest of the Bible. A misshaped view of God would call into question His
sovereignty, His omnipotence, His omniscience, His omnibenevolence, or His
divine authorship of scripture. With those doctrines undermined, suddenly, what
you are left with is no longer the God of the Bible but a God of your own making,
likely in the image of the person who is imagining this God.
[1] A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy. (San Francisco, California: Harperone,
1978), p. 1.
