God is True and Faithful

‘One of the primary utterances in the Old Testament about God is his faithfulness. Here is Walter Brueggemann in his Theology of the Old Testament:

Israel’s characteristic adjectival vocabulary about Yahweh is completely lacking in terms that have dominated classical theology, such as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. This sharp contrast suggested that classical theology, insofar as it is dominated by such interpretive categories and such concerns, is engaged in issues that are not crucial for Israel’s testimony about Yahweh and are in fact quite remote from Israel’s primary utterance…

…given the range of recital of adjectives concerning Yahweh in the stylized testimony of Israel, the primary propensity of Israel is to focus on Yahweh’s fidelity, expressed particularly in the terms of merciful, gracious, abounding in steadfast love, and faithfulness…

Israel praises God for being true and faithful. Just their praise for this is evidence that God is not forced to be so. You do not praise a robot for cleaning the floor, the robot had no choice in the matter. Because God is faithful and true, we should praise him for being so.

(…)’

source: Chris Fisher (realityisnotoptional).

Read also “The Trinity – Faithfulness or Unchangeableness” and “The Trinity – Truthfulness” by Gordon Olson.