Who is God?
Our doctrine of Scripture as the word of God depends on our view of who God is and what he does. Here the temptation to focus on a single mode of God’s nature must be resisted. God is both creator (implying his presence among his people and his fellowship with humans) and king (implying God’s authority over history and human dependence), both transcendent Lord (implying God’s omniscience and omnipotence and human finiteness) and ever active Father (implying God’s love for his children and his acceptance of humans in virtue of his own nature), both perfect (implying God’s total integrity and humanity’s call to holiness) and merciful (implying God’s forgiveness of wrongdoing and humanity’s confidence of being accepted). A biblical doctrine of Scripture needs to take all these elements into account. A fundamental description of the nature of God as related to the nature of Scripture includes the following: 1. God is a person, i.e. he communicates, he speaks, he wills. When he reveals h