God is Great, God is Good

How are we to think about God? Is it better to dwell on His goodness and personal presence with us? Or is it better to dwell on God's greatness, His sovereignty and power?

Roger Olson in The Mosaic of Christian Belief (pp. 111-132) talks about the ancient dialogue about God's greatness and goodness and says Christians generally have "acknowledged both aspects of God and sought to do justice to both equally. However, in many cases specific theologians and groups of Christians have overemphasized one side of God's revealed nature to the neglect if not outright denial of the other side. In fact, it is not overstatement to say theologians and Christian traditions have almost always tended to begin with one of these two poles and relativize the other one in its light."

Olson encourages a balanced, all-embracing view of God. "From Jesus' prayer opening, "our Father who art in heaven" to the child's prayer opening, "God is great; God is good," to the various hymns mature Christians sing, everything in divine revelation and Christian devotion points together to this duality: Our God is both glorious beyond our understanding (transcendent) and perfectly good beyond any creaturely goodness."

Attributes associated with God's transcendence include self-sufficiency, eternality, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience. Attributes associated with God's immanence or personal presence are love, faithfulness, mercy, justice and wisdom. We may share in the latter qualities, but God's transcendent qualities belong to Him alone.

Olson writes, "[P]roper Christian belief is faithful to divine revelation and the Great Tradition confesses that God is both perfectly good and unsurpassably great. However, some theologians and groups of Christians have developed views of God that they believe are true to revelation and the consensus of Christian thought through the patristic and the Reformation but that emphasize either God's transcendence or God's personal presence and goodness in a special way. Often this arises from a concern with some previous approach to God's being that is perceived as one-sided. The pendulum swings."

Spending regular times in the Psalms is an excellent antidote to polarized thinking about God, for the Psalms continually invite us to meditate on both God's kingly majesty and His goodness and love.

Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised,
and his greatness is unsearchable.
One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.
On the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds,
and I will declare your greatness.
They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The LORD is good to all,
and his mercy is over all that he has made.

Psalm 145:3-9