REFLECTIONS ON AMERICAS FOUR GODS BY FROESE AND BADER

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A PAPER
PRESENTED TO
DR. RUSSELL WOODBRIDGE
LIBERTY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

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IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THEO 626

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BY
JAMES W. FOGAL

AUGUST 2013

The Froese and Bader book was an excellent read. It was written by two sociologists and
examined the perspectives that most Americans have of God. Most people living in the United
States have heard of God and possess pre-conceived notions of who God is. Whether or not they
have studied the Bible or Christian theology, most Americans have an idea of how they envision
God. This book helps to understand those prevalent notions a little better.
The book categorizes the notions of God into four broad categories of His nature: the
authoritative God, the benevolent God, the critical God, the distant God. A fifth category was
identified that of the Atheist. This paper will assume the existence of God and will evaluate the
four broad categories that resulted from the survey.
Overall, all four together describe God in a more complete way than any one does by
itself. God possesses all four of these attributes and the Bible illustrates God in each of the four
categories. The problem is when people identify God with one category exclusively it results in
a wharped conception of God. It is easy to misinterpret Him by adopting a worldview of one
of the categories. Such a misguided approach leads to a distorted image and understanding of
God and can lead to atheism, agnosticism or theological liberalism. All these results are
unnecessary if a person takes an objective analysis and reading of Scripture. Instead of using
proof-texts to understand God, a broad reading of Scripture is needed to obtain a fully-balanced
understanding of God.
The authoritative God understands Him to be fully engaged in the world and very
controlling. Those embracing a fully-Calvinistic theological system will understand God
through this lense. God is viewed as a micro-manager and has established a deterministic
world in which we live. The sovereignty of God is over-emphasized so that this is the primary

divine characteristic of Him. It overshadows His benevolence and love for His creation. From
this perspective, concepts as monergism results from an authoritarian soteriology. When a
person views God primarily as authoritarian, then their theology becomes distorted from the
Biblical teaching of God. In reality, God is sovereign but that is not the primary characteristic
within which all other attributes are under. A balanced view of God will understand that this is
one of many attributes of God. A Christian should not ignore this view, but should balance it
with the others.
The next view of God is benevolence. The Bible repeatedly emphasizes that God is love.
God is often referred to as a parent exhibiting parental love towards His creation. This is a
necessary view of God to properly understand Him. The problem is when a person overemphasizes this attributes and diminishes the other ones. Such a misguided approach to God
leads to faulty theology like pluralism and universalism. These are not biblical theologies and
lead to wrong understandings of God.
When a person embraces a critical view of God as primary, then they fail to see God as a
loving God. The judgmental and critical aspect of God is taught in the Bible but there is more to
God that that. An example of the critical God is the story in Genesis of the destruction of
Sodom. God will judge sin and God will be critical of a life that is not acceptable to Him. So,
Christians must realize that God is critical of a sinful life. The problem arises when an
unbalanced view of God overemphasizes the critical view of God. It is important to balance this
with the other views of God.
Lastly, the distant view of God is taught in the Bible. In philosophical theology, this is
referred to as the hiddenness of God. The Bible, at times, refers to God as being distant. In
the Psalms and Job, there are passages that describe God as transcendent. But, like the others,

approaches to viewing God, a person should not view Him as primarily distant. When a persons
theology is overly transcendent or immanent, it provides an unbalanced way to view God. He is
both but not exclusively one.
This book illustrates that God has many attributes and it is important to view God as
having all the attributes. To emphasize one attribute over the others will illustrate an unbalanced
and inaccurate portrait and understanding of God. It is important to realize that God is infinite
and to employ a finite view of God leads to bad theology. When constructing a theology of God,
it is important to read the entire Bible and incorporate all attributes that are taught of God. When
doing this, a person will have a proper understanding of God leading to a proper theology.