This post is intended to correct an error. That error is the interpretation of Exodus 34:6–7, a passage which a recent blog post used as evidence that the Bible “instructs us to worship [God] in the fullness of his attributes—not merely through the prism of one or two favorites.” What is extremely strange about this claim is that Exodus 34:6–7 says no such thing; in fact, it presents God in what could essentially be described as “the prism of one or two key perfections.”
Preliminaries
Now as Christians we are children of God, and because of our relationship with God as our adoptive father, Jesus as our savior and co-heir and Lord, and the Spirit as our comforter, we naturally want to understand God at a deep relational level. One could say Christians want to understand “God’s heart.” One could say Christians want to see past the different “presentations” of God that we see in different passages of Scripture to see who he really is (one might even describe this as wanting God to “open up to us his deepest heart”). As orthodox Christians, standing in the Great Tradition that goes back to the Apostles, through the ecumenical creeds of the great church councils, through the preservation of Christianity by monks scattered around Europe and the middle east through the dark ages, through the Catholic church after the schism of 1095, through the protestant reformers, and perhaps crystallized in the confessions and catechisms that post-reformation protestants codified, we know that there is something problematic about this concept. The instinct to know God more deeply is natural and human, an appropriate longing befitting the Christian who has experienced God’s grace. But we know that it does not really make sense to speak of God as having a deeper heart or innermost being, because God is simple.
That God is simple means that God is not composed of parts. Were God composed of parts, then either he would be truly static–neither changing nor active–or he would change in time. The reason for this latter is that in a nature composed of parts, different “parts” of God would be involved in different actions. The “punishing” part of God would be involved in judgment. The “loving” part of God would be involved in hearing prayers and forgiving sins. The “creative” part of God would be involved in creation and providence. But we know that God does not change. (Indeed, we need God not to change to be assured of a great many truths in Scripture.) This intuitive understanding Christians have of God about his immutability helps us understand why we need a doctrine of God’s simplicity. Nor can we have a static God; we know God to be dynamic insomuch as we see that God acts. These actions must be grounded in the nature of God. Simplicity is necessary in order to understand God as I AM.
Another way to think of God’s simplicity is that “All that is in God is God.” Or to put it more formulaically (and thus more constructively), God is identical with his perfections. When the Bible makes statements, for example, that God is holy, or God is love, or God is truth, or God is life, this means that all of God is holy, love, truth, life. God’s perfections are not pitted against each other. They do not balance each other out. In God’s holiness, God is love. In God’s truth, God is jealous. In God’s life, God is holy.
Incidentally this explains why we should use the terminology of God’s perfections instead of his attributes. Attributes makes it sound more like different parts of God that need balancing and arrangements, kind of like the word facets. Perfections is a reminder that these perfections refer to modalities true of everything in God. How is God life? In a holy way. In a true way. In a loving way. While both words are certainly orthodox and acceptable, there’s something positive to be gained in choosing the term perfections.
Now understanding God’s simplicity, we understand that talking about “God’s heart” does not make real sense; God does not have a part called a heart. However, the Bible does often use anthropomorphic language. The Old Testament frequently speaks of God’s hand, his strong arm, his wings like eagles, etc. in presenting poetic pictures that represent realities of God that are true as demonstrated in his divine actions. I would like to suggest that the Christian intuition that wants to know “God’s heart” is working in this way. The reason is simple; while it is true that God is identical with each of his perfections (e.g., God is God’s mercy; God is God’s holiness; etc.), as a human this is easy to say but difficult to understand. In speaking of “God’s heart” as some sort of deeper level, Christians are intuitively reaching for an understanding—an understanding of God’s motivations and the realities in God that give rise to those motivations. In believing simplicity, then, there is no need to deride or mock or correct the Christian who wants to understand God’s heart. Instead, there is a need for humble shepherding to drive this Christian to a deeper understanding of their simple God.
Exegesis of Exodus 34:6–7
Now exegesis properly understood can only be done in the original language a text is written in. So for the sake of completeness I’m going to give you a Hebrew diagram. Then I’ll show you an English diagram that reflects what I’m saying from the Hebrew diagram. Then I’ll explain how that relates to the interpretation of Exodus 34:6–7.
A couple quick notes about my text and translation: (1) חסד gets translated a lot of ways because it does not have a direct semantic equivalent in English, but the components of faithfulness/steadfastness and love are combined, so I denote it with faithful/steadfast love. (2) The thirds and the fourths refers to members of the third and fourth generation after the fathers. (3) Most translations would instead follow the pattern YHWH God is compassionate…. The discrepancy is due to the Hebrew having here a verbless clause. However, this makes no material difference to the interpretation I’m about to propose. Either YHWH God is the subject and the entirety of the rest through the participle phrase bearing iniquity and transgression and sin forms a compound predicate nominative, or YHWH is the subject, God is the predicate nominative, and the remainder is a compound appositive explaining the predicate nominative. Despite grammatical differences, both structures form the same communicative function in terms of meaning. Any differences are one of rhetorical emphasis. I believe in the context the emphasis of YHWH’s being God and God’s being the remainder of the description makes the most rhetorical sense.
Now the key from the diagrams is the following observation: there are two main components following the statement YHWH (is) God. The first component is a list of adjectives describing who God is: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, great in חסד and truth. The second component is a list of verbals describing what God does: keeping faithfulness to many (a participle), bearing sin (another participle), and punishing the iniquity of the wicked down through future generations (an actual verb, hence the new indentation in the diagram). The division occurs at the verse break; evidence that the ancient interprets saw this same division within the passage between who God is and what God does.
Or in other words, the passage describes God in terms of who he is and in terms of what he does. In Exodus 34:6-7, who is God? God is compassionate, gracious, slow to wrath, great in steadfast love, and truth. These adjectives would fit into God is X statements. God is compassionate. God is gracious. God is slow to wrath. God is great in faithful love. God is truth. These are statements about God’s perfections. So all that is in God is compassionate. All that is in God is gracious. All that is in God is slow to anger. All that is in God is faithful love. All that is in God is truth.
But verse 7 is about what God does. It’s about God’s actions. God is identical with his perfections, but he is not identical with his actions. God keeps faithful love. God bears iniquities—incidentally this is the same language for Christ bearing sins on the cross in Isaiah 53. God leaves no wickedness unpunished. God punishes sin down through multiple generations. This is what God does; it flows out of who he is, but it is not who he is. In the context of Exodus 34:6–7, God’s actions including his punishment of sin flow out of his compassion, grace, faithfulness, longsuffering, and truth.
Do not miss what I just said: In the context of Exodus 34:6–7, God’s actions including his punishment of sin flow out of his compassion, grace, faithfulness, longsuffering, and truth.
The Context in Exodus
In the context of the storyline of Exodus, it is particularly appropriate to see God’s love, grace, compassion, faithfulness, and truth as requiring that he punish sin to the third and fourth generation. That is exactly what happened in the story of Exodus.
Exodus 1 recounts how Israel came to be enslaved in Egypt. They were oppressed by the evil, slaveholding Egyptians. That oppression caused them to groan, to cry out, to sigh, so that God heard them and remembered his promises of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod 2:23–24). In response, God brought Moses as a leader and deliverer (Exod 3–4), and in the plagues punished guilty Egypt with catastrophic effects that brought death to the sons and would reverberate to the sons of the sons of the sons of the sons. In other words, Exodus 34:6–7 presents the perfections of the God that underlie his actions as seen in his delivering them from Egypt.
In the more proximate context of Exodus 34, as YHWH gave Israel a covenant with him, they broke that covenant as they worshipped a golden calf (Exod 32). In so doing, Israel became the guilty that God does not leave unpunished. But through Moses’ intercession, he remembered his covenant, so that YHWH would keep his faithful love in the covenant already established to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the thousands of Israel, bearing their transgression and iniquity (Exod 32:9–14). In the aftermath of such a crisis, Moses naturally desired to know better the God who called him, defeated Egypt, saved Israel, gave them a covenant, nearly punished them (note that he indeed relents from doing so in Exod 32:14), and yet bore their iniquity. Once might even say that Moses wanted to know “God’s heart.” And so he asked, “Please, show me your glory” (Exod 33:18).
This is exactly what God did. “I myself will pass all my goodness before you, and I will call the name YHWH before you, and I will have grace on whom I will have grace, and I will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” So indeed, Exodus 34:6–7 reports what God wanted Moses to hear as he passed his glory before him. Exodus 34:5 associates this revelation with “The name of YHWH.” And Exodus 34:8 records that Moses replied in worship–worshipping God for his perfections of compassion, grace, faithfulness, and truth that had been proclaimed. Indeed, Moses worshipped God for a few key perfections, if you will, and that these few key perfections proclaimed represent “God’s heart,” or the motivations and realities about him that explain Exodus.
Some Conclusions
All this to say, Exodus 34:6–7 is not about presenting the fullness of God’s attributes or some particular form of balance. While Christians should indeed know and study all of God’s perfections, that is not related to Exodus 34:6–7. In fact, Exodus 34:6–7 suggest that we can better come to worship God by focusing on a few of his perfections at a time. Perhaps this better fits our human limitations.
But does this contradict divine simplicity? Will we end up with an imbalanced view of our God if we do not always think about his holiness and his love and his truth and his mercy and his jealousy and his blessedness and his immutability and his infinity and his eternity? No. If by simplicity all that is in God is God, then any perfection of God can be used as a lens for understanding the other perfections of God.
God’s perfections cannot be summarized in any single perfection, whether love or holiness or some other. However, almost paradoxically, from any perfection, one can come to better understand—even derive!—the others. Exodus 34:6–7 teaches us that a few of God’s perfections help us understand the Exodus. Exodus is a study in God’s compassion, grace, faithfulness, and truth. This does not take away from his sovereignty, providence, holiness, or jealousy. It helps us understand them. Studies of God through the perspective of a small number of perfections are perfectly valid. The Bible does them.
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