Quasi-Jensonian musings

God is identified “by” and “with” temporal events, Jenson argues.  What can we make of that?

Perhaps this: Yahweh is compassionate, slow to anger, in the Hebrew idiom “long of nose.”  He is kind to the weak, generous to the needy.  These are all biblical descriptions of God that describe Him in relation to creation.  What can we say about these?

We might say that these are not descriptions of what God actually is.  Since he doesn’t need creation, these are not descriptions of the “essence” of God.  We don’t want to say that, since we don’t want to say that there’s some better way to describe God than the Bible offers.

We might say that these are descriptions of what God becomes after He creates the world.  For obvious reasons, we don’t want to say that either.

We might say that these are descriptions of the way God appears , but not the way He is .  No, not that either.

What can we say?

We must say that they describe God accurately (since they are biblical descriptions), and we must also say that they describe God in His being, not just in His appearance.  These descriptions are descriptions of attributes of God, even though they are only meaningful on the assumption of creation.

This might help with Jenson’s puzzling claim that God would be the same God if He had not created the world, but we cannot tell how He would be the same God.  He dismisses concern with God-of-a-possible-universe as speculative.  In our universe, the weak exist, and we know that God is compassionate toward them.  That is all we need to know, and it describes God as He truly is.

In that sense, God is identified with His actions in the world.