Mark Stevenson is a faculty member at Emmaus Bible College and Book Review Editor of The Emmaus Journal.
A Meditation On Psalm 96
Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth! 2Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. 3Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! 4For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. 5For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens. 6Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. 7Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength! 8Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts! 9Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! 10Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.” 11Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; 12let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy 13before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness (Ps. 96, ESV).The Greatness Of God
Psalm 96 celebrates the greatness of God. It’s a psalm that calls on God’s people to sing and to worship and to proclaim the greatness of God in salvation and judgment. In fact, it calls all peoples, all nations, all creation to recognize God’s majesty and sovereignty and greatness, and thus to worship him as the only true God.
All of this celebratory activity of singing and praising and declaring flows out of a foundational truth stated in verse 4: “For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods.”
God is great. He is majestic. Verse 6 announces, “Splendor and majesty are before him.” There is no one like him. And because of the greatness and uniqueness of his person, because of the marvelous nature of his works, because of the comprehensive scope of his sovereignty, he deserves our highest worship and our full-hearted allegiance. “Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised!”
It would be profitable to simply expound a text like Psalm 96 or Isaiah 40 or Revelation 4, beholding the greatness of our God as he has revealed himself in Scripture. But part of my purpose here is to identify some of the ways sound doctrine is under fire today. I would suggest that at the heart of all the issues we have to deal with, at the root of the doctrinal confusion and distortion and denial in the church and in our culture, is a wrong view of God. Whether it is the question of the nature of truth, or the issue of authority, or substitutionary atonement—or a host of other issues—it all starts with an inadequate view of God.
The Greatness Of God Under Fire
I first want to look at three key areas where the greatness of God is under fire today.
The Denial Of God: The New Atheists
In one sense of course atheism is not new. The psalmist declared, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps. 14:1; 53:1). In more modern times, atheism became one of the products of the Enlightenment, where human reason replaced revelation. [2] Yet there is something different about contemporary atheists in comparison to their Enlightenment counterparts.
Albert Mohler, in his book Atheism Remix, indicates that one of the things that marks the new atheists is an unprecedented boldness. [3] They are aggressively “evangelistic.” They write popular level books that are selling by the millions. Some of their books have stayed on the best-seller list for months. Mohler says, “In the history of books about atheism nothing like this has ever happened.” [4]
Who are the new atheists? Mohler identifies “The Four Horsemen of the New Atheist Apocalypse” [5] as Richard Dawkins, [6] Daniel Dennett, [7] Sam Harris, [8] and Christopher Hitchens. [9] These authors argue that religion—and certainly biblical Christianity—is ignorance and foolishness. In fact, if these new atheists had their way, parents would not be allowed to instill biblical beliefs in their children. Teaching your children about God, they argue, is a form of child abuse. [10]
Not surprisingly the new atheists believe only scientific knowledge is true knowledge and of course, in their minds, science is completely on their side trumping all religious claims. [11]
It is not our purpose to focus on the new atheists. There are credible responses available—for example, Alister McGrath’s brief but devastating critique of Richard Dawkins entitled The Dawkins Delusion? [12] But frankly, the new atheists are not my greatest concern for the church. To be sure, they are a formidable cultural challenge, and they have a significant influence, especially on young people who are not grounded in the faith. We need to take them seriously. I am thankful for those who are taking the time to answer these writers because we need to be prepared to give an answer. But I suspect there aren’t too many atheists in our local churches. Church is not were they like to hang out.
I am more concerned about the second area in which the greatness of God is under fire because this category affects us very directly.
The Distortion Of God: God In Our Image
“You thought that I was one like yourself” (Ps. 50:21).There is in our evangelical churches, to say nothing of the culture at large, a belittling of God. In a number of different ways—some of them subtle, some of them not so subtle—the majestic, holy, awesome God of Scripture is being domesticated. In our conformity to the world, we think we need to tame the majestic God of Scripture in order to meet the approval of cultural sensitivities and make God acceptable.
In other words, we want a politically correct God. The God of the Bible is too threatening for our tastes, so we fashion a god in our likeness—a god who is more manageable and marketable and user-friendly. [13] The French writer Voltaire once said, “If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.”
Let me suggest three ways God is domesticated within evangelicalism.
Theological Level: Open Theism
Open theists tell us very clearly that they reject the way the church has traditionally understood God. They don’t like the idea that God is immutable. They challenge the doctrine of God’s omniscience, even denying much of God’s knowledge of the future. Open theists do not like the idea that God always accomplishes his will (Ps. 115:3; 135:6; Dan. 4:35; Eph. 1:11). In fact, they believe that humans and demons have the power to thwart the purposes of God. [14] When it comes down to it, they simply don’t like to think of God as an all-knowing, transcendent sovereign because they find it difficult to relate to that kind of God.
Instead, open theists prefer to think of God as a caring parent who is vulnerable and sensitive, who seeks our contributions and is willing to change his mind based on our input, who takes risks and learns along with us. [15] This God is far more appealing to open theists because it presents God as one who longs to be in dynamic relationship with us. [16] Clark Pinnock says this: “I believe that unless the portrait of God is compelling, the credibility of belief in God is bound to decline.” [17] In other words, our portrait of God must not be offensive in any way, or people will not believe in God at all. But of course the result is a god in our image, not the God of Holy Scripture.
Popular Level: The Shack
A second way God is being domesticated is at the popular level, as illustrated by the best-selling fictional book The Shack. [18] The novel presents God in very human terms. In fact, God the Father—”papa”—is presented as an African-American woman who enjoys cooking. Jesus is a Jewish man skilled at woodworking. The Holy Spirit is depicted as an Asian woman with a real talent for gardening.
The triune God is presented as insightful but playful, a therapeutic god who gives lots of hugs. What’s striking about this novel, beyond the basic distortion of the Godhead, is its presentation of man’s greatest need. From the perspective of The Shack, man’s greatest need is not to be reconciled to a holy God whom we have offended through our sin, before whom we stand condemned, whose wrath we justly deserve. Rather, in The Shack, God has offended us, and he (or she) has some explaining to do. Our greatest need is for therapeutic and emotional healing.
The book may make a valid point here or there along the way, but the overall impression it leaves is of a distorted god stripped of his majesty and glory, a man-centered god whose chief concern is our emotional healing.
What is disturbing is how The Shack is passionately endorsed and defended by some evangelicals. Countless readers claim the book has changed their lives. TV personality Kathie Lee Gifford wrote this endorsement of the book: “The Shack will change the way you think about God forever.” I’m afraid that’s true for many people. And it’s a sad commentary on our theological poverty. One more level:
Internal Level: Our Own Thoughts
Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” [19]
How do we really think of God? Do our attitudes and prayers reveal that we view God as some kind of cosmic Santa Claus who ought to be there to meet our needs and grant our wishes? Is he the kind old grandfather who never wants us to go through hard times but is there to bail us out and prop up our self-esteem? [20] Oh, we would never articulate that in our statement of faith, but is that how we sometimes think about God? Gauge your immediate response to God next time something goes wrong.
What is happening in all of these moves and tendencies is a loss of the transcendence of God. Theologians speak of the transcendence and immanence of God. Transcendence simply means that God is not limited to or by his creation. He is independent of it and superior to it. [21] In his glorious being, he transcends the universe he has made. According to John Frame, “Transcendence invokes the biblical language of God’s majesty and holiness.” [22] Immanence on the other hand is the wonderful truth that God is present and active and involved in the world he has made. Immanence speaks of God’s nearness.
The Bible presents God as both transcendent and immanent, and these are brought together in many passages. For example Isaiah 57:15 reads, “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
He is a God of majestic holiness, but also of amazing love and grace. And both of these dimensions come together most gloriously in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The cross demonstrates God’s righteousness, while at the same time and in the same act it is the highest expression of his love (Rom. 3:25; 5:8).
But in a distorted and domesticated view of God, we project our own limitations and finiteness on the infinite God. We sacrifice transcendence in favor of immanence. David Wells unpacks what happens in this move. He writes:
We put all our eggs, so to speak, in the basket of God’s nearness, his relatedness, and we lose everything related to his otherness and transcendence. This yields a God who is familiar, safe, accommodating, but also very small. This is the “god” who is accessed through the self, who showers us with therapeutic benefits…. But it loses the God of the Bible who, in addition to being near, is also elevated over all of life and who summons us to see him, not just as our psychological aid, but as he is in himself, in his glorious beauty and power, to be in awe before him, worship him as something other than ourselves, and to hear in his Word something other than what we naturally sense within ourselves. [23]One way this happens is when we elevate the love of God to the central and defining attribute of God. After all, our culture wants to hear of a loving God. So we are tempted to focus on the love of God in virtual isolation from his holiness, righteousness, justice, wrath, and transcendent majesty. But in so doing we domesticate the love of God; we sentimentalize it; we refashion it to conform to our understanding and to make God more marketable. In fact, we distort God. We allow him to love us and forgive us, but we forbid him to judge us. Our doctrine has him standing with us, but never over us. [24]
In the biblical portrait of God, his love is so amazing precisely because it is displayed in harmony with his unrivaled holiness, his towering righteousness, and his uncompromising justice. Without the holiness of God the cross is emptied of all meaning. We stand amazed before the cross of Christ because in it we see God’s love paying the price that his holiness demands. [25]
The Weightlessness Of God: Practical Atheism [26]
I take this phrase “the weightlessness of God” from David Wells’ book God in the Wasteland. Wells says this:
[God] rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his saliency for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God’s existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers’ sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness. [27]And we are not immune to it. We may reject the errors of open theism and The Shack. Our statement of faith, when it comes to the doctrine of God, may be impeccable. But perhaps along the way we have lost the fear of the Lord. We may defend an orthodox doctrine of God, but we live too often as practical atheists. In fact Charnock could say, “All sin is founded in a secret atheism. Atheism is the spirit of every sin.” [28] The weightlessness of God means he rests very lightly on our minds and hearts and consciences and thus makes very little difference in the way we live our lives from day to day.
Before the modern era and the advances of modern medicine, people lived with the awareness that they were a breath away from eternity. [29] But in our entertainment culture and with a user-friendly God, our concern is not to live coram deo (before God). After all, God exists for us. Our concerns are self-centered, not God-centered. [30]
But when we see God in his glory, the effect on our lives will not be weightlessness, but a joyful gravity. A vision of the majesty of God shapes all of life. When his greatness grips us, we want to live and work and worship and serve and use the internet and eat and drink to the glory of God.
And so we need a vision of the greatness and majesty of God. I would argue that the greatest issue facing mankind today is not the economy; it’s not the threat of terrorism. It’s God! Do we know him as he truly is, and not some domesticated version of our own making?
So let’s come back to Psalm 96 and reaffirm the greatness of God.
(Re)Affirming The Greatness Of God
This is not the place for a full exposition of the psalm, but I would like to highlight a few essentials.
The Universal Lordship Of God
Notice in verse 1 “all the earth” is to sing to the Lord. In fact, according to verse 3, God’s people are to declare God’s glory “among the nations,” his “marvelous works among all the peoples.” And that universal theme continues right through the psalm. We read of families of the peoples (v. 9), all the earth (vv. 1, 9), the nations (vv. 3, 10), the peoples (vv. 3, 7), the heavens (vv. 5, 11), the earth (vv. 1, 9, 11, 13), the sea—and all that fills it (v. 11), the field—and everything in it (v. 12), the trees (v. 12), and the world (vv. 10, 13).
The psalm is celebrating the universal Lordship of Yahweh. He is not merely a regional deity. He’s the supreme Lord of heaven and earth; he rules over the nations. And what is the proof of that? “All the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens” (v. 5). There are huge implications for missions here that I wish I had more time to explore, but I need to press on. [31]
The Joyful Worship Of God In His Majesty And Holiness
When we see God as he is presented in this psalm as great and majestic and holy and Creator and Lord and Judge, we are not to remain indifferent! We’re to be moved to worship. Thus the psalmist exhorts: “Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength! Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts! Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!” (vv. 7-9).
Notice the manner of worship. Yes, there is trembling before the splendor of his holiness. But there’s also something about the greatness of God that makes us want to sing! And so the psalm begins: “Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth!” (v. 1). If you look closely at the first three verses, you will see that we are called to sing and proclaim and declare his glory and rejoice in his salvation. Why? Again verse 4: “For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised.” Spurgeon said, “Praise should be proportionate to its object, therefore let it be infinite when rendered unto the Lord.” [32]
We domesticate God because we want a manageable deity. We think we can relate more to a god like us. But a god in our image is not worth following or worshipping. We were not created for a domesticated idol. We were created for the glory of God (Isa. 43:7; Col. 1:16). We were created and redeemed by Jesus Christ, with the central purpose of our lives to declare and delight in the excellencies of the true God in the fullness of his greatness and glory (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14). Our hearts cry out for a great and majestic and holy God; and when we see his glory in creation, when we him in Holy Scripture, and when he shines in our hearts and gives us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we rejoice and sing with joy inexpressible and full of glory.
The Superiority Of God To Idols
We were made to worship. The problem is that in our fallen condition we go after substitutes. The Bible calls them idols. They take all kinds of different forms, whether it is a graven image, or money, or career, or family, or the internet. We may be more sophisticated in our idolatry than the ancients, but we are no less idolatrous. Our fallen hearts are veritable idol factories. [33]
Yet there is problem, and the psalmist brings it out in verse 5: “All the gods of the peoples are worthless idols.” The word here for idol literally means “nothing” [34] or “worthless.” [35] In contrast, the Lord is great. And how do we know he’s great? What is the proof? How do we know he is to be feared above all gods? Verse 5: “But the LORD made the heavens.”
Have you seen the vastness of the heavens? Scientists tell us that the galaxy of which our solar system is a part is about 100,000 light years in diameter. And yet it is only one of about a million such galaxies in the optical range of our most powerful telescopes. [36] The Lord made the heavens—can your idol claim that? Then why give it your allegiance?
Every time we follow some other god and give our allegiance to something else, anytime we want to bring God down and lessen his glory, we have to deal with the testimony of the heavens. Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge” (Ps. 19:1-2). What are the heavens saying? They declare day after day, year after year, that God is great and majestic and powerful and there is no one like him.
The truth is that idols shrivel our souls, rob our joy, and end up destroying us. Why chase pathetic little idols when there is a great God who made the heavens, who has condescended to save us and awaken us from the folly and bondage of idols, in order that we might serve the living and true God?
God’s Greatness Is Manifested In His Sovereignty And Judgment
Two of the least popular concepts about God in our culture and even in the church are God’s sovereignty and God’s judgment. But notice verse 10: “Say among the nations, ‘The LORD reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.’”
The politically correct God is not sovereign because humans do not want to bow to God’s authority. The politically correct God never judges anyone. He’s just there to affirm us and love us, regardless of our wickedness and rebellion.
But in this psalm—as in all the Bible—God’s sovereignty and justice are part of what makes him a great God. Make no mistake, this world is ruled by a sovereign King who is wise and good. The world is not spinning out of control.
God has his sovereign purposes that he will accomplish. And, Jesus Christ is coming to judge the world according to his perfect righteousness. Evil will not prevail. God will not turn a blind eye to sin and wickedness and injustice. Verse 13 says, “He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.” That’s a praiseworthy thing.
Atheists can pretend God does not exist. And we can imagine, like so many people are doing today, that God is just a big, warm teddy bear. But it does not change what God has revealed in his Word, namely that he is great, that he reigns, and that he’s coming to judge the world. Don’t be deceived by low thoughts of God! Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised!
Practical Suggestions For Recovering The Majesty Of God
Again it was Tozer who said: “The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of him—and of her. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place.” [37]
Where do we begin? Let me offer a few practical suggestions.
See And Know God In Scripture
God has revealed himself in Scripture. We see him and know him through his Word. As New Testament believers there is a Christological focus in knowing God. 2 Corinthians 4:6 says, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” How do we see Jesus today? Do we pray for some mystical vision? No, we learn to meditate upon Holy Scripture. Ultimately it is through Scripture that our knowledge of God is corrected and purified and elevated—and transforms us. Labor to see God in his Word.
Read And Promote God-Centered, God-Glorifying Books
Read and re-read J. I. Packer’s Knowing God [38] or Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy. Encourage others in your church to do the same. In fact, start a reading group and come together Saturday mornings to talk about what you have read and to pray together in response to what you have read. You may just discover the worship in your local church is transformed.
Cast A Vision Of The Greatness Of God For Your Children And Youth.
Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith published a book in 2005 entitled Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. In this study hundreds of interviews were conducted to discern the religious beliefs of American teenagers. The results were disturbing. Here is one brief sample from an interview with a “14-year-old white conservative Protestant girl from Idaho”:
Interviewer: When you think of God, what image do you have of God?
Girl: [yawning]
Interviewer: What is God like?
Girl: Um, good. Powerful.
Interviewer: Okay, anything else?
Girl: Tall.
Interviewer: Tall?
Girl: Big.
Interviewer: Do you think God is active in people’s lives or not?
Girl: Ah, I don’t know.
Interviewer: You’re not sure?
Girl: Different people have different views of him.
Interviewer: What about your view?
Girl: What do you mean?
Interviewer: Do you think God is active in your life?
Girl: In my life? Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah, hmm. Would you say you feel close to God or not really?
Girl: Yeah, I feel close. [yawns]
Interviewer: Where do you get your ideas about God?
Girl: The Bible, my mom, church. Experience.
Interviewer: What kind of experience?
Girl: He’s just done a lot of good in my life.
Interviewer: Like, what are examples of that?
Girl: I don’t know.
Interviewer: Well, I’d love to hear. What good has God done in your life?
Girl: I, well, I have a house, parents, I have the Internet, I have a phone, I have cable. [39]
Smith concluded that the dominant form of religion or spirituality of American young people today is what he terms “moralistic, therapeutic deism.” He summarizes as follows:
The creed of this religion, as codified from what emerged from our interviews, sounds something like this:
- A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
- God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven when they die. [40]
Let me recommend for you a resource designed to do that especially for young people: The Blazing Center (DVD) by John Piper. The subtitle is: The Soul-Satisfying Supremacy of God in All Things. [41] I would submit to you that is the kind of message our young people need to awaken them from moralistic, therapeutic deism.
Preach And Teach A Great God
Don’t simply assume people know and appreciate the greatness of God. It’s not just the youth in our churches who are moralistic, therapeutic deists.
I want to recommend a book that anyone who ever does any preaching should read. In fact, I would suggest the elders of your local church should read this book to get a vision for God-centered preaching in the life of your fellowship, and then require your preachers to read it. It is called The Supremacy of God in Preaching, again by John Piper.
In the book Piper tells the story of a sermon he preached on Isaiah 6— Isaiah’s vision of God in his holiness. This is what he says:
I preached on the holiness of God and did my best to display the majesty and glory of such a great and holy God. I gave not one word of application to the lives of the people. Application is essential in the normal course of preaching, but I felt led that day to make a test: Would the passionate portrayal of the greatness of God in and of itself meet the needs of the people?
I didn’t realize that not long before this Sunday one of the young families of our church discovered that their child was being sexually abused by a close relative. It was incredibly traumatic. They were there that Sunday morning and sat under that message. I wonder how many advisers to us pastors today would have said: “Pastor Piper, can’t you see your people are hurting? Can’t you come down out of the heavens and get practical? Don’t you realize what kind of people sit in front of you on Sunday?” Some weeks later I learned the story. The husband took me aside one Sunday after a service. “John,” he said, “these have been the hardest months of our lives. Do you know what has gotten me through? The vision of the greatness of God’s holiness that you gave me the first week of January. It has been the rock we could stand on.” [42]The greatness and the glory of God are relevant. And we need to preach it.
Cultivate A 1 Corinthians 10:31 Attitude In Your Life And Church
“Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”One of the great themes that came out of the Protestant Reformation was Soli Deo Gloria—to the glory of God alone. For example, justification by faith is important, Calvin argued, because, “Wherever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished.” [43] Indeed, the heart of Calvin’s quarrel with Rome “was that Rome had destroyed the glory of Christ in many ways—by calling upon the saints to intercede, when Jesus Christ is the one Mediator between God and man; by adoring the Blessed Virgin, when Christ alone shall be adored; by offering a continual sacrifice in the Mass, when the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross is complete and sufficient.” [44]
The Puritans lived out Soli Deo Gloria by rejecting the division we often make between the sacred and the secular. [45] They viewed all of life as sacred because all of life is the arena in which to glorify God.
Is Soli Deo Gloria the ethos of your church? It has to be cultivated, because our natural tendency is to be man-centered. So talk about the glory of God in your church and what it means to do all to the glory of God.
Pray
Paul prayed that the Colossians might increase in the knowledge of God (Col. 1:10). That is a good prayer. Revival often comes through gaining a more profound and biblical sense of the greatness of God in the wonder of his holiness, majesty, and mercy.
In your prayers, don’t just go through the wish list. Use prayer as a means of centering your heart and mind in God. [46] Focus on his excellencies. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength! Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. And as you meditate on Scripture, pray that the Lord would impress you with himself and with his Son.
Pray for yourself and for one another that we would have a radically biblical and exalted view of God that shapes us to the very core of our being; a view that revives our churches, enlivens our worship and rescues our young people.
Behold your God! May he grant us the grace to rediscover his majesty.
Notes
- This article was originally delivered as a plenary address at the Iron Sharpens Iron conference hosted on the campus of Emmaus Bible College, May 2009. I have intentionally retained the style of an oral address rather than turn this piece into a formal essay.
- See Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World (New York: Doubleday, 2004).
- R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Atheism Remix: A Christian Confronts the New Atheism (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 54.
- Ibid., 16.
- Ibid., 39.
- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
- Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Penguin, 2006).
- Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004).
- Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007).
- E.g. Dawkins, The God Delusion, 349-387.
- For a formidable scientific argument in favor of intelligent design see Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).
- Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2007).
- See chapter 3 “God as Daddy, Sufferer, Lover, and Judge,” in Marsha G. Witten, All Is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 31-54.
- See for example, Richard Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective,” in Clark Pinnock, et al., The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 37-38; Gregory A. Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997).
- See John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998).
- Clark H. Pinnock, “Systematic Theology,” The Openness of God, 103.
- Ibid., 101.
- William P. Young, The Shack (Newbury Park, CA: Windblown Media, 2007).
- A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins, 1961), 1.
- See Steven J. Lawson, Made in Our Image: The Fallacy of the User-Friendly God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2006), 31-42.
- Millard J. Erickson, God the Father Almighty: A Contemporary Exploration of the Divine Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 256.
- John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2002), 104.
- David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 120.
- A very helpful book along these lines is D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton: Crossway, 2000).
- Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant, 129.
- In his discourse “On Practical Atheism,” Stephen Charnock wrote: “That the title of ἄθεοι [atheists] doth not only belong to those who deny the existence of God…but it belongs also to those who give not that worship to God which is due to him, who worship many gods, or who worship one God in a false and superstitious manner, when they have not right conceptions of God, nor intend an adoration of him according to the excellency of his nature.” Stephen Charnock, Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God (1681-82; reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 1:89-90.
- David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 88.
- Charnock, Existence and Attributes, 93.
- See Mohler, Atheism Remix, 15-16.
- “When we adopt a human-centered approach that assimilates God to our own experience and happiness, the world is no longer God’s creation; it too, like God, exists for our own personal wellbeing.” Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 56.
- See John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!(2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003).
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Treasury of the Bible (reprint; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 2:182.
- Calvin said, “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.” Institutes, 1.11.7.
- Judith M. Hadley, “אַלִיל, (a$l'l),” in Willem A. VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 1:411.
- B. Scott, “אַלִיל, (a$l'l),”in R. Laird Harris, ed., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 1:46.
- Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!, 19.
- Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, 4.
- J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1973).
- Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 135.
- Ibid., 162-163.
- John Piper, The Blazing Center, 3 DVD set (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Multnomah Pub., 2006), $29.99. Available from Desiring God Ministries at desiringgod.com, $19.99.
- John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1990), 10.
- John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto, A Reformation Debate: Sadoleto’s Letter to the Genevans and Calvin’s Reply, ed. John C. Olin (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 66.
- T. H. L. Parker, Portrait of Calvin (London: SCM Press, n.d.), 109.
- Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 15.
- See D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992).
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