An imperfect “God” doesn’t offer much assurance or hope at all, but the one true triune God is perfect. He is so much greater than my misconceptions of him, and I’m thankful that he uses sermons and books correct my understanding. And the only reason I could know God in the first place is that he made himself known to me through the gospel.

Yesterday I posted a list (not exhaustive) of my wrong concepts of God that were the result of a weak and probably nonexistent doctrine of God. I picked up these erroneous ideas from different sources and at different times in my Christian life, but they all have a common denominator. Each one takes away from God’s perfection.

In None Greater, Matthew Barrett introduces the reader to Anselm (1033-1109) who asked the questions – Is God the most perfect being? “Perfect” meaning “that than which it is impossible to think anything greater.” If he is, then what must he be like? Notice where Anselm begins. He begins with God, not his experience of God. 

Given the Fall, our thinking and perspectives are warped. Rather than God being the starting point, we take that on ourselves. “Man is the measure of all things.” Umm, no. But this faulty baseline is the reason why the Greek gods were just super-sized versions of people with super-sized sins. This is why we say things like, “I don’t think God would…” or “My God wouldn’t….” But this can lead to “the possibility of creating a God in our own image, always defining God’s attributes according to our limitations.” (pg. 9)

So for God to be perfect, what would that mean? We think of perfection in terms of moral perfection as in not sinning, but his perfection goes deeper than that.

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