A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance
by Steve West
Table of Contents
Introduction: Truth as a Perspective
Part 1: The Doctrine of God
1 The Existence of God
2 Attributes of God
3 The Trinity
4 The Plan of God
5 Creation
6 Providence and Miracle
7 Revelation
Part 2: The Doctrine of Man
8 The Origin and Nature of Mankind
9 The Original Covenant
10 The Fall
11 Free Agency
Part 3: Redemption
12 The Person of Christ
13 Christ as Prophet, King, and Priest
14 Christ’s Atoning Work
15 Already and Not Yet
Part 4: Application of Redemption
16 God’s Initiative in Saving People
17 Justification and Sanctification
18 The Church
19 The Consummation
Summary
Part One: The Doctrine of God
Scripture and creation testify that God exists, but unbelievers know God and suppress their knowledge of him. One of the ways that we can confirm the existence of God is by starting with the theme of truth. “Truth is what God knows,” and truth cannot be separated from God. To say that truth does not exist is a truth-claim, so it is impossible for truth not to exist. Truth is everywhere present, always true, and unchanging—these features of truth are attributes of God. Tensed truths that occur in time are eternally and infallibly known by God, so their truth value never changes. Like God, truth is also invisible, immaterial, and infinite. It is transcendent (i.e., can apply in multiple cases, like 2 +2 = 4), and immanent (it applies in particular cases). Truth is also morally absolute: believing falsehoods has dangerous consequences. Truth is rational, and rationality belongs to persons (truth is not a property of impersonal reality). Truth has the attributes of God; in fact, Truth is another name for God. It is not greater than God or other than God, it is a way that God is. God is a simple being who cannot be divided up into a collection of attributes. Every truth reveals God; every truth derives from him.
God’s attributes describe who he is, and they are displayed in his truthfulness. None of God’s attributes can be isolated from the others; they define and describe each other. Truth belongs to all of God’s attributes, and all of his attributes belong to truth. As a simple being, all of God’s attributes belong together. For example, his truth is unchanging, eternal, and everywhere (omnipresent). As omniscient, God knows everything, and his knowledge includes himself. All truths are in him; truth has its origin in God rather than outside of him or in the world. Truth exists before the created world, so the world is held together by truth rather than truth being dependent on it. Some of our knowledge depends on discovering things about the world, but God’s knowledge always precedes the world. Since God is good, truth is good, and God wills what is good. It is merciful that God gives us truth after our rebellion against him. God loves truth and we ought to love it, too (and thus love God himself). Truth is pure (holy) and righteous (it has moral fitness).
The doctrine of the Trinity is mysterious, and there is nothing fully like the Trinity in the created world. God is simple and one, but there is a diversity in divine persons. God the Son is referred to as the Word and the truth. He is from the Father, and the Spirit conveys his truth to us. Personal beings communicate, and God is a communicator. In the Trinity, the Father is the communicator, the Son is the communication, and the Spirit the breath that takes the Word to the recipients of God’s communication. Truth evokes love, love is interpersonal, and the Father loves the Son, with the Spirit being associated with the love between them. Truth reflects something accurately, and the Son is the exact representation of the Father. The persons of the Godhead coinhere, indwelling each other and acting together. In truth, the three persons know each other perfectly.
Since God preplans every event in history, the truth about the event preexists the event itself. As agents, we can respond to truth and we can initiate truths when we act to create a new situation. For example, we can recognize that there is an oak sapling, and then initiate the action of planting it which creates a new situation (and thus a new reality of which things are true). God is sovereign over both human responses and initiatives. There are also necessary truths and contingent truths. The former is concerned with who God is, and the latter with what God freely does. God is necessarily good, but it was not necessary for him to create the world. There are also many possible truths that would have been true if God had decreed different contingent realities. God’s plan is eternal and creative; it is stable yet continually generates new things. The original archetype of stability and creativity is found in the Father who generates the Son. . . .
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