Humankind – made in God’s image – is a social being, enjoying relationships and communicating.
Therefore, God is personal—he relates to us and communicates. In his image, we have been created constitutionally to both know him and be known by him. As with human relationships, not all communication uses words. God, likewise, communicates his love to us through direct apprehension—through his presence with us, the subjective influence of his Spirit upon our spirit. However, God is not only relational but also rational.
He is the personal God who speaks to us in rational propositional form. This divine self-disclosure comes to us through creation and our conscience, but especially through his enscripturated Word, the Bible. While the former is both clear and convincing as a revelation of God, rendering humankind morally culpable, the latter is a fuller propositional revelation of God’s nature and purpose for the cosmos. And because nothing is impossible with God, the Scriptures in their original autographs, inspired by the Holy Spirit, are inerrant (i.e. without mistake) and authoritative.
In the Bible the infinite personal God speaks to finite man anthropomorphically. He condescends to the human situation to communicate meaningfully; thus, Scripture speaks of God as possessing human attributes: God’s hand, voice, mind, will, emotions, and five senses.
God communicates with us in four ways:
- The Creation & Conscience (his Cosmos)
- The Bible (his Word)
- The Incarnation (his Son)
- The Charismata (his Spirit)
