Written Scripture (for example, its descriptions of God as having human body parts) does not reveal God as He is in Himself: an immaterial being without physical components. Rather, it comes to embodied human beings (who do have body parts) in an accommodated manner so they can understand by analogy what God is truly like toward them.

ABSTRACT

Divine accommodation describes how the infinite, transcendent, and holy God condescends to make himself known. It answers the fundamental religious question, “How can I know God?” by saying, “God reveals himself.” The doctrine, with roots deep in the Christian tradition, has been opposed by various theologians in both the distant and recent past. Yet considered in its far-reaching consequences, divine accommodation remains a crucial doctrine for preserving a biblical understanding of revelation and how people come to know God.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Gregg Allison (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), Professor of Christian Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, to explain the doctrine of divine accommodation.

The majority of people in the world believe in “God.”¹ Of these people, the majority believe that this “God” created everything that exists.² Of these “believers,” the majority hope that this “God” is knowable in some way.³ Our question becomes, then, “How can people know this ‘God?’”

Many people throughout the world focus on themselves as the answer to this question. They seek to know their “God” through engaging in religious ceremonies (for example, praying five times a day and going on a pilgrimage), following some law of freedom (for example, karma), focusing on self-denial through practices of abstinence or repudiation, seeking union with the cosmos or divine force, meditating to achieve self-emptying or an altered consciousness, and the like. That is, people initiate the way to know their “God.”

Christianity denies this is the way to know the one true living God, because there is no human starting point—nor can there be. On the contrary, God makes himself known to people. Christians answer the question, “How can people know God?” with one word: accommodation.

In this essay, I will define accommodation, give some analogies to help us better understand it, explore John Calvin’s contribution to this doctrine, call attention to attacks (one in particular) against it, highlight seven areas of the doctrine’s significance and implications, and offer a few questions for consideration and application.

Accommodation Defined

By way of definition, accommodation is “God’s act of condescending to human capacity in his revelation of himself.”⁴ In terms of the basic principle of accommodation, “for an infinite, perfect, and holy God to interact with finite, fallible, and fallen humanity, he must accommodate himself to our ability to understand him, coming down to our level so that we can grasp what he says and does.”⁵

The doctrine is closely associated with John Calvin, though it was certainly affirmed earlier in history. Calvin

underscored the appropriateness of God, who is infinitely exalted, accommodating himself to human weakness so that his adjusted revelation would be intelligible to its recipients. Indeed, God stoops like a mother when she communicates with her child. This accommodation is especially seen in Scripture: it is the Word of God written in limited human languages for sinful human beings with limited capacity to understand it, yet it does not participate in human error.⁶

Accommodation, then, acknowledges the need for God to “stoop” in order to reveal himself to us.

The above expression “God stoops like a mother when she communicates with her child” is just one of several metaphors/analogies theologians have used to portray divine accommodation. Others include a mother feeding her baby,⁷ a doctor prescribing medicine in accordance with his patient’s condition,⁸ an adult speaking with a child,⁹ a nurse “lisping” to an infant,¹⁰ or a schoolmaster teaching a young student.¹¹

These helpful analogies underscore the condescension with which God acts as he seeks to make himself known through his communication in Scripture to human beings. Certainly, a mother, doctor, adult, nurse, and schoolmaster are of the same (human) nature as a baby, patient, child, infant, and young student. Such commonality shrinks the distance between the former and the latter. Such is not so with God, a divine being, in relation to human beings. God is infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient; human beings are finite, located, weak, uninformed. Such discontinuity exaggerates the chasm between the former and the latter.

Unsurprisingly, then, it is impossible for human beings to take the initiative to know God through even the best of human efforts. With this way to God shuttered, the only way for people to know him is by God making himself known to them.

This is divine accommodation.¹²

John Calvin on Accommodation

The leading Reformed voice on this doctrine was that of John Calvin (1509–1564).¹³ Two highlights of his significant contributions to the doctrine of divine accommodation are presented here.¹⁴

First, he used one of the powerful metaphors already noted. In his treatment of the Trinity, Calvin critiqued people who imagine that God is physical based on “the fact that Scripture often ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet.” Calvin chided,

For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.¹⁵

Accordingly, written Scripture (for example, its descriptions of God as having human body parts) does not reveal God as he is in himself: an immaterial being without physical components. Rather, it comes to embodied human beings (who do have body parts) in an accommodated manner so they can understand by analogy what God is truly like toward them: He “speaks,” “hears,” “sees,” “acts,” and “moves” for their benefit. Breathtakingly, the God who is high and lifted up descends low, speaking to human beings with baby talk.

Similarly, Calvin discussed Scripture’s use of the word “repentance” in relation to God. He referenced several passages: God “repented of having created man [Genesis 6:6]; of having put Saul over the kingdom [1 Samuel 15:11]; and of his going to repent of the evil that he had determined to inflict upon his people, as soon as he sensed any change of heart in them [Jeremiah 18:8].” Calvin added the examples of God’s repentance when he relented of destroying the Ninevites (Jonah 3:4, 10) and when he deferred Hezekiah’s death sentence (Isaiah 38:1, 5).

Calvin was concerned to ward off charges by many “that God has not determined the affairs of men by an eternal decree.”¹⁶ Thus, he explained that this mode of speech describes

God for us in human terms. For because our weakness does not attain his exalted state, the description of him that is given to us must be accommodated to our capacity so that we may understand it. Now the mode of accommodation is for him to represent himself to us not as he is in himself, but as he seems to us.¹⁷

God in himself has eternally decreed all things and will certainly execute his decree. At the same time, because such a reality is infinitely above human comprehension—people struggle to make one simple plan and carry it out effectively—God accommodated the revelation of himself and his ways in human terms, as he appears to them, and in accordance with human limitations, so they could comprehend it.¹⁸

Second, Calvin explained another significant purpose for divine accommodation. Describing Scripture’s use of jarring expressions—for example, “God was men’s enemy.…They were under a curse.…They were estranged from God” until they were reconciled to him—Calvin argued,

Expressions of this sort have been accommodated to our capacity that we may better understand how miserable and ruinous our condition is apart from Christ. For if it had not been clearly stated that the wrath and vengeance of God and eternal death rested upon us, we would scarcely have recognized how miserable we would have been without God’s mercy, and we would have underestimated the benefit of liberation.¹⁹

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