What is Theology Proper / Paterology?

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Theology Proper is the study of God Himself — His essential nature, His attributes, and His character as revealed in Scripture. Paterology (from the Latin pater, "father") is a subset of Theology Proper that deals specifically with the Person and character of God the Father, His relationship to the Son, and His Fatherhood toward believers. God's Essential Nature: Love and Light Scripture reveals two things about what God is in His own nature — not merely what He does or how He relates, but what He is absolutely and essentially. J. N. Darby draws a fundamental distinction between God's nature and His attributes: There are two words applied to God, which reveal His nature — Love and Light — and only these two. They affirm what He is in nature — not any attribute. Love is goodness, but in supremacy; for, in its abstract nature goodness is identified with supremacy, for it must be free. J. N. Darby He further explains that attributes such as righteousness and holiness are relative terms — they describe how God acts in relation to other things — whereas love and light describe what God is: These, as I have said, are not attributes. Attributes are ideas which we attach to God in connection with what is outside Himself, though belonging necessarily to Him as God. He is omnipotent, omniscient, supreme; even righteous, holy; these, though more connected with His nature, are relative terms. I must think of God's dealings and claims to call Him righteous. He judges of something when He is righteous, only it affirms He always judges right. To call Him holy, I must think of evil which He rejects. Hence He is not called righteousness and holiness, but righteous and holy. is Edward Dennett reinforces this: When the word of God speaks of what He is absolutely in His nature, one word describes it, and that word is LOVE. If we enter into this, we shall have no difficulty in understanding that "love is of God," for in truth it could not be found elsewhere in the universe.... Love, then, is of God, and consequently the love that fills our hearts tonight has come down into them, through the Lord Jesus Christ, from that blessed and sovereign source. We had therefore never known love otherwise. Edward Dennett God's Attributes Morrish's Bible Dictionary provides a systematic summary of the principal divine attributes: Scripture reveals what God is in Himself, 'God is love' (used absolutely), 1 John 4:8; and 'God is light' (used relatively, in opposition to darkness), 1 John 1:5; and Christ is the expression of both in a Man. The principal of God's attributes and characteristics as revealed in scripture are: 1. His Eternity. 2. Invisibility. 3. Immortality. 4. Omnipotence. 5. Omnipresence. 6. Omniscience. 7. Incorruptibility. 8. Immutability. 9. Wisdom. 10. Holiness. 11. Justice. 12. Grace and mercy. 13. Longsuffering. 14. Faithfulness. Morrish's Bible Dictionary Darby makes the striking point that omnipresence and eternity are not strictly attributes at all, because they involve time and space — categories that do not apply to God: I do not connect omnipresence and eternity as attributes with God... in our minds they are connected with time and space, which do not apply to God. There is no time when God is not; no place where His eye and hand... are not. "I AM" is the proper expression of His existence. While time rolls on "I am" remains unchanged, and when time has rolled away "I am" subsists the same. omnipresence God Known as Father (Paterology) The knowledge of God as Father is the distinctive revelation of the New Testament — the heart of Paterology. Morrish's Dictionary traces the transition: Except as creator and preserver of all, God is not revealed as Father in the O.T.... It was reserved for the N.T. times that God should be made known as Father; and this was done only by the Lord Jesus while upon earth, who constantly spoke to His disciples of God as their Father in heaven.... After the resurrection the Lord was able to send this message to His disciples, whom He now calls His 'brethren:' "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God." John 20:17. F. A. Hughes carefully distinguishes between the creatorship of God (which is universal) and the Fatherhood of God (which is not): Now we concede at once that all men are the offspring of God. This is made perfectly clear in Paul's address to the Athenians (Acts 17). It is also made abundantly clear in that chapter that Paul is referring to men as being part of God's creation, and as standing in the relation of creatures to God as Creator. It is also clear that the Athenians had no knowledge of God as their Father; He was "unknown" to them. F. A. Hughes The knowledge of the Father comes only through the Son: Matthew 11:27 reads — "Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him". Further in John 14:6 we find these conclusive words "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me". Hughes describes the richness of what it means to know God as Father: He is "the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort" (1 Cor. 1:3). No sorrow, no care, no anxiety, no pressure upon spirit or body — escapes His eye, and from Himself as Father comes the needed sense of mercy and comfort. He is the "Father of glory," and as in affectionate communion with Himself He would flood our hearts with the wisdom and intelligence of His glorious purpose in Christ... He is the "Father of spirits" and as such is engaged with the inward refining of our affections, having in view the blessed fact "that we might be made partakers of His holiness" (Hebrews 12:9-10). The Father's Eternal Purpose J. A. Trench draws out the deep connection between knowing the Father and finding rest. In Matthew 11, when the Lord faced rejection, He turned to His Father: In His rejection by these cities He owned nothing but His Father's ways of perfect wisdom and love. If in divine wisdom these things were hid from the wise and prudent, there were babes to whom they would be revealed by infinite grace. He knew the love of the Father, and in this He found His perfect resting-place. J. A. Trench And the purpose behind revealing the Father: He had come to reveal the Father, and this goes far beyond and above the glory in which He had been presented to Israel... If it now becomes an anxious question, to whom will He reveal the Father whom only the Son had seen and known, the answer comes at once in the precious words, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Trench insists this is not some advanced privilege — it is the birthright of every believer. Citing 1 John 2:13 ("I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father"), he identifies three things that characterise the full Christian position: 1. The forgiveness of sins through Christ; 2. The possession of the Holy Spirit; and 3. The relationship of children with a known Father. James McBroom lifts the veil on the Father's eternal purpose — the inner glory behind all outward display: Within the depths of the glory, in that home of love, the family of many sons will dwell, and in their praises the Father shall live for evermore. For He has chosen them that they should be before Himself in love for ever. (Eph. 1:3-4.) Instead of an inert and dim and distant God who could only be known in relations taken in time, when one of the Divine Persons came to bring Him within our range, we are led to contemplate Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the activities of eternity choosing sons, promising eternal life and ordaining wisdom for myriads not yet in being. James McBroom The Revelation of God — With Us, For Us, In Us J. A. Trench traces the progressive unfolding of God's self-revelation in three stages: 1. God with us — Emmanuel, the incarnation: God veiled in humanity, light and love manifested in a lowly Man. 2. God for us — The cross and resurrection: "He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." God proved to be for us in the very place where we deserved judgment. 3. God in us — The indwelling Spirit: "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us" (1 John 4:12). He sums this up: God Himself has become the refuge, and shelter, and hiding-place, and known home of our hearts. What unspeakable rest, what calm, undisturbed repose of heart, what unfathomable depths of joy are found in what is thus made known to us! Synthesis Theology Proper — the knowledge of God in His own being — rests on a foundation these writers lay out with remarkable clarity. God's essential nature is love and light. These are not attributes about Him but declarations of what He is. His attributes — omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, holiness, righteousness, faithfulness — flow from that nature but are always relative, describing how He acts toward creation. The deepest knowledge of God, however, is not found in cataloguing His attributes but in knowing Him as Father — a revelation hidden in the Old Testament and brought fully to light only through the Son. This knowledge of the Father is not an advanced stage of Christian experience but the birthright of every child of God: "I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father" (1 John 2:13). And the Father's eternal purpose, conceived before the world began, is to have a family of sons conformed to the image of His Son, sharing His love and dwelling in His presence forever.

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