Article December 18, 1902 Issue

Our Ideas of God

The Watchman

A CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST writing on this subject would phrase his thought somewhat differently, but the author of the following paragraphs refers to the authority of Jesus' words and their relation to Christianity in a way that will prove helpful.—EDS.

Within the lifetime of middle-aged men the question has shifted from what truth can be proved from the Scriptures, to what truth can be proved about the Scriptures, and now it is what can be proved about God. We are getting back to essential and fundamental things. No arguments perhaps can demonstrate the existence of God, but men are so made that like the writers of the Scriptures they spontaneously make the grand assumption of His existence. But the exigent question is what kind of a being is He? What are His relations to the universe? What are His moral qualities? What conception are we to form of His character?

The Christian answer to these questions has been obscured from failure to view the Old Testament in its proper perspective. Too many of our theological treatises assume that Jacob and Joshua and David had the same conception of God as the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians, and the author of the Fourth Gospel. They do not see that in the progress of revelation the minds of men took in larger and truer ideas of the most High. And this disclosure culminated in Christ, who gave the supreme revelation of the Father. No matter how much we think of the Old Testament, we must not exalt it to such a place that we contradict the opening verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews, or make it a work of supererogation that Christ came to reveal God to men.

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