I AM the LORD, There Is No Other

Dr. Sproul officially opened the main part of the national conference by addressing the conference theme, the holiness of God. He stated that he detects a strand running through the great theologians and preachers, who all seem intoxicated with the majesty and holiness of God. His text was Isaiah 45:1-8, which he acknowledged is a "strange" text because it is addressed to Cyrus, who was not yet alive at the time of the prophecy. Israel was in bondage in Babylon. Cyrus was the future king of the Medo-Persian empire that would later defeat Babylon and liberate Israel. In this passage God calls Cyrus his "anointed," which of course is also rendered messiah. God says he will go before Cyrus and empower his armies to lay waste the present powers. Why? That Cyrus may know it is God, the Lord of Israel. All this is done not for Cyrus' sake but for the sake of Israel. Per Calvin, when God closes his holy mouth we should desist from speculation, but Sproul does so anyway with respect to Cyrus' thought when he heard this passage. At first, perhaps he thinks God is proposing a summit meeting, one potentate to another, but God goes on to declare his absoluteness and uniqueness. "Holy" has two common references: God's otherness, the sense in which he is different from his creation; and his purity, which is the sense in which we can obey the command to be holy (the first is incommunicable, as we can't be other than creatures). In the first sense it refers to his transcendent divine nature which we cannot imitate. How to grasp this? Three tools--the way of negation, the way of eminentia, and the way of affirmation. Aseity--God's self-existence. He is the only one who has the power of being in himself. All else is contingent.

[Here Dr. Sproul made his oft-repeated remarks on nothing.]

Aquinas' arguments for God's existence. One is that God possesses necessary being, which is what makes him holy. God is the kind of being who cannot possibly not be. God's being is also logically necessary. We have to take leave of our senses to assume God does not exist, or else from where did everything come?

[Here he told his story about the famous cosmologist and "gradual" spontaneous generation.]

Returning to the Isaiah passage: What does this God do? He creates all that is and provides blessing and curse/judgment.