Is God a Republican ?

Is God a Republican

Back up a sec and ask another, grammatically similar though semantically different, question.

Is God a Christian

I'm interested to see what happens here.

Let’s untangle this a bit.

Secular (atheist, agnostic) Democrats often talk like polytheists. They’ll use the term “Christian god” or something, as if there’s a bunch of gods.

I don’t talk like that because there’s only one God. (See Isaiah 44 for development).

So I don’t ask “Is the Christian God Christian?” That’s an even weirder question. How could one say no ?

Let’s stick with “Is God a Christian ?”

The term “Christian” is amtriguous — it has at least three distinct possible meanings depending on the context. You’ll hear people sometimes substitute this term for other terms in order to try to reduce ambiguity . Sometimes they’ll say “evangelical,” or something else besides the simple word Christian. I don’t use the term “evangelical,” I use the term Christian for the same reason I don’t say “biological man” , or “traditional marriage” as if there is another kind. There is no other kind if the context is reality.

But, depending on the context, it’s good to distinguish possible meanings.

1. “Christian” can mean “good person.” “That’s not a very Christian thing to do.” It means it was a shady thing to do. Not that the thing done didn’t accept Jesus as its personal savior.

2. “Christian” can mean “believes Christianity is true.”

3. “Christian” can mean puts faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, second person of the Holy Trinity, born of a virgin, God incarnate, lived a perfect life and died a substitutionary death on the cross 2,000 years ago to provide a way of salvation from sin and death to any who put their faith in him, and the person we’re talking about did just that, trusted Jesus to save him from sin and death.

Note carefully, as my Metaphysics professor (and TRP Podcast guest) JP Moreland used to say over and over, that 2., above, would apply to demons. James in the Bible says the demons “believe” truth about God and the world. But they’re in rebellion against it. We don’t normally call demons “Christian”, because they don’t fit either 1. or 3., above.

So is God a Christian ? In terms of 1., God is maximally great. That is, God is good. It’s a little odd to say God is Christian in this meaning of “good,” because usually that’s meant for actions that humans perform, like being polite. I’m not sure I’d say that God is polite in that trite way, like he holds the door open for you but then talks about you behind your back like they do in the South, but the meaning could overlap a bit with these qualifiers. I would not talk this way myself , so 1. is out as a description of God for me, because I think it would be confusing to people.

In terms of 2., God believes Christianity is true, if God has beliefs. And I think that the Lord does have beliefs. I have met people who don’t think that God has beliefs. Once at Loyola Marymount in the Theology/Philosophy Dept kitchen I mentioned God’s beliefs to a tenured Theology Professor, and she said, I don’t think God has beliefs. That’s what she said to me. I said, do you even believe God exists, and she said she wasn’t sure.

So there you have that.

Now, if God does have beliefs, how could he not believe true beliefs ? And if Christianity is true, and it is, then how could God not believe it. You might say, God knows it. Sure, but knowledge includes and even entails belief. So if God knows it, he believes it.

So on that sense, sure, 2. would be applicable to God, though it would be odd to say. Because 2. would be equally applicable to Satan, or to any demon. See James 2.19 .

What about 3. ?

No, I don’t think God accepted Jesus as his savior. God doesn’t need a savior. God’s plan of salvation isn’t for any person of the active, tri-personal being that brought the physical world into existence for a purpose a finite time ago. The Holy Spirit doesn’t need a savior. God the Father doesn’t need a savior. The savior was for sinful persons, humans.

So, no, God is not a Christian, is how I’m leaning, unless you mean the minimally informing sense of 2., which also applies to the demonic.

So, go back to the question: Is God a Republican ?

See if you can make sense of the question, including all that might be hidden within the question.

Are there any similarities between the two ? Are there multiple senses of the term Republican ? The term is in the US Constitution, as you recall.

I’ll let you mull that one over a while.

Luke, for Trp