The Lord Is Good: Seeking the God of the Psalter is a work of contemplative theology. Author Christopher R. J. Holmes unfolds the “preeminent claim” of the Psalter that God is good while in conversation with Augustine and especially Thomas Aquinas. Contemplating divine goodness from a Thomistic perspective, Holmes parts ways with Karl Barth’s christocentric approach to understanding the divine attributes. Once an advocate of Barth’s christocentrism, Holmes now adopts a theocentric approach, seeing value in reflecting on God as he is ordered to himself.
The book’s emphases may be summarized under eight major themes.
Theme 1: Goodness and the Triune God
Holmes begins by reflecting on the character of God’s goodness. God is a simple good. God’s attributes, including his goodness, are one with his essence. Furthermore, “all of the attributes are one in God” (29). Although we distinguish the attributes, they are one in God; they are God himself.
God’s goodness is intrinsic not derivative. God is good because God is goodness itself. Just being himself, God is good.
God’s goodness is not only intrinsic, it is pure. it has no potential. It cannot diminish or be improved. This means God does not need anyone or anything other than himself to be good. In contrast, we rely entirely on God for all good. As the psalmist confesses, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you” (16:2). Holmes explains, God’s “pure goodness is a goodness to which nothing can be added, a goodness that is well without us but without which we are not well. God makes himself our good; we do not make him the good he is” (36). A little later Holmes adds, “God does not desire us because God has need of us. God’s love of us is good because God seeks and desires us for his own sake, because God knows that there is nothing better for us than himself. Without a rich account of the pure act of being that is God, it is all too easy to conclude that God’s love is not actually true, that God’s love for us is the means by which God secures something for himself” (43).
God’s goodness is intrinsic, pure, and lovable. Because God is goodness itself, God is most desirable. The good God is our desirable end. And in the goodness of his mercy, God perfects us to the enjoyment of that end which is himself.
God is also said to be “pure act,” meaning that there is no becoming in God. Furthermore, pure act language is at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity. This means the processions “by which the three are distinguished and constituted” are eternal (the generation of the Son from the Father and the procession of the Spirit from the Father and Son). The divine persons subsist in the one divine being, and goodness is identical with the divine being; therefore goodness is common to the three. That being said, goodness may be uniquely appropriated to the Holy Spirit as the divine cause of creaturely life and perfection. The Holy Spirit accomplishes the plan of the Father through the Son, bringing creatures to their purposed end — communion with God.
In chapter three, divine goodness is related to the doctrine of the Trinity. Holmes argues that the proper order in the doctrine of God is to first treat what is common to the three before consideration of God at the relational level: “The proper order of and instruction in the doctrine of God involves us first with the essence” (58). This is because God’s attributes provide resources for thinking about the Trinity, about who the three are in relation to one another. For example, simplicity determines how we think rightly about the processions by which the Son and Spirit are distinguished and constituted. The Son and Spirit are not other than the Father though they are distinguished by the relation. The Son the Father begets and the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son are not something other than what the Father is. The Trinity is a “supremely simple unity” (21).
The author shows that Scripture distinguishes between two perspectives on God without separation or confusion; we must consider God “under the aspect of the essence and under the aspect of the distinction” (57).
How do we participate in what is common to the divine persons? We participate in the divine essence by likeness. Participation is understood in terms of conformity to God’s attributes (which are identical with his essence), but we do not participate in the divine processions (which distinguish the divine persons). Holmes explains, “Begetting, being begotten, spirating, and proceeding are not that in which we by grace, through faith, participate” (61). Holmes summarizes this point by saying, “We do not share in the divine relations, subsistent as they are; nonetheless, we do share by grace in the essence in which they subsist — sharing in that which God is without being absorbed into God” (62). More simply, by grace we participate in the one divine essence, not the eternal relations which distinguish the persons.
How then do we come to participate in divine goodness? By the economic activity of the Trinity; namely, the missions of the Son and Spirit. Through the redeeming work of the Son and the application of it to us by the Spirit, we are made to participate in the divine nature.
Theme 2: Goodness and Creation
This theme explains how goodness is ascribed to Creator and creature. Both Creator and creature are good but in different ways. God’s goodness is original to himself while created goods derive from God’s goodness communicated. God is goodness itself and we share in his goodness by the communication of his goodness to us (69). This means goodness is not an attribute above and beyond God. His goodness is underived; he is good apart from any created good. In conrast, creaturely goodness is wholly derivative; we are good only in so far as we share in God’s own goodness.
Relating divine goodness and creation, we also must conclude that divine goodness is the ground and end of creation. God’s goodness is the ground of creation because it is by its very nature communicative, and it is the end of creation because God wills created things to share in the goodness he is (1). This provides the theological answer to a question generally assumed today only answerable by science: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Thomas answers, “Because God is good, we exist…God produced creatures not because he needed them, nor because of any other extrinsic reason, but because of the love of his own goodness” (6).
Theme 3: Goodness and Experience
There is an inextricable link between experience and knowledge: “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8). Tasting, or experiencing God’s goodness, precedes seeing, or knowing, that the Lord is good. As a result, to do theology, to speak rightly about God, Holmes argues, one must be a certain kind of person, an individual who is spiritually fit. God’s goodness is a “spiritual and moral” good that must be experienced before the theology is properly understood.
Along these lines, Holmes adds this helpful insight, “To teach well, then, the doctrines of the Christian faith, theology must respect the rules of the spiritual world, wherein tasting anticipates sight, wherein living and experiencing God’s goodness precede presentation of the same” (179). Furthermore, “Our doctrine of God’s attributes begins with taste [experience] and ends in sight [knowledge]” (179). Accordingly, “The home for theology is the Scriptures as received in faith in the company of the faithful” (179).
Theme 4: Goodness and God’s Works
This theme explores the relationship between the good God is and the good God does. “You are good and do good,” confesses the psalmist (119:68). God does good because he is good, and everything God does is good because God cannot will or act contrary to what he is. “What God does in an economic sense, is…an outward expression of what and who God eternally is” (73). God’s economic activity has its foundation in God himself; he “acts by his essence” (64). Relying on the recent work of Katherine Sonderegger, Holmes adds that God is his own relation to the world. God relates to the world by being himself in relation to the world (79). It appears the author is responding to critics of the classical doctrine of God who have argued that it renders God static, impersonal, and aloof from creation. To the contrary, Holmes responds, God is actively present to the creation by being who he is in relation to the world. God acts by his essence; moreover, we may learn about the eternal divine processions by the temporal divine missions.
Theme 5: Goodness and Evil
This theme attempts a theological account of evil. Following Aquinas, Holmes suggests evil is in reality nothing. It has no real existence, no real essence, because in order for it to have existence God would have to will evil (because anything with being that is not God is willed to exist by God), but God does not will evil, indeed, he cannot; he only wills what is commensurate with himself — the good.
To explain human evil, again relying on Thomas, Holmes locates evil in the will, not in human nature itself. God wills human nature, and human nature is a good. But the faculty of the human will may will evil. Thus, God wills the nature that wills the evil, but God does not will the evil itself. Holmes illustrates, “In that sense, God cooperates with adulterers insofar as the nature that commits that evil act does not exist apart from God, even though it wills and acts apart from God. What that nature wills is evil, not the nature itself. If this is true, then, evil does not come from good but can only ‘exist’ in light of the good.” As a result, evil is parasitic in nature; it is “privative in character” (110). Holmes goes as far as to say, “God does not cause evil, and so its status must be accidental” (110). By accidental, Holmes means that sin is “not caused, lacking any reality of its own” (127).
For this reviewer, a Thomistic account of evil needs some qualification. As Henri Blocher suggests, “[evil] is ‘something’ which occurs, it is not merely ‘nothing’, as we know only too well.” Nevertheless, the Thomist description of evil as privation is illuminating. Again Blocher is helpful: “Privation is not just any kind of absence. There is evil in the lack, only if good was its proper due.” Aquinas makes this very point with the important distinction between privation (lacking something due) and negation (lacking something undue). For example, it is not evil for man to lack wings to fly, but it is a form of evil for man to lack sight.
Theme 6: Goodness and Law
This theme expounds the moral character of God’s goodness. God’s goodness is revealed in the giving of the law to fallen creatures who have turned away from the good. God has given the law to conserve that which is good. Thus, the provision of law for fallen man is the result of God’s goodness recalling us to himself (129).
God’s goodness is further expressed in the cry, “Teach me your statutes” (Psalm 119:68). Fallen man is unable to issue such a cry because his will is set against what is good — God and the moral law as an expression of the perfection of God’s moral character. Therefore, the cry of the psalmist presupposes God’s goodness manifested in saving grace which incites the cry of the believer to learn the law, the way of goodness, the life of love to God and neighbor.
Thomas taught that the law reveals the good but cannot make us good; it is only through the work of Christ that corrupted sinners can be renewed and turned back once again to God. Once that renewal and turning has occurred, the law is the delight of the faithful, directing them to God in the way of true goodness.
Theme 7: Goodness and Jesus
Holmes sets out to understand Christology by prioritizing the doctrine of God. The incarnation and atoning work of the Son are grounded in theology proper.
The person of the Son assumed human nature to bring us to the “enjoyment of the same goodness common to him and the Father and the Spirit” (159). The two natures subsist in the one divine person of the Son. The incarnation, followed by the life, death and resurrection of Christ communicate divine goodness and are the grounds for making us good again so that we may commune with Goodness himself.
Theme 8: Goodness and Perfection
This theme explores the perfective character of God’s goodness. Creation’s telos is determined by the goodness of God. The world to come will be a perfectly happy place because happiness is “simply the goodness of God.” Creatures will be cured of all the effects of sin. What is true of God will be true of redeemed humanity in the mode of likeness (analogically, not univocally), except for the incommunicable attributes. The Creator/creature relationship will be perfected, and redeemed humanity will experience unending happiness in the perfect goodness God is.
Conclusion
Holmes’s book is a mind-stretching and heart-engaging read. Several reviewers noted having to read the book more than once to take it in, but they all agreed they were the better for it. The work is exemplary in its blending of scholarship, doctrine, and devotion. It also charts a way to engage Scripture and theology while guided by the great theologians of the past. Finally, it demonstrates that in order to speak well of God, one must first experience the goodness that God is.