A.W. Tozer. The Attributes of God: Volume 2: Deeper Into the Father’s Heart. Chicago: WingSpread Publishers (an imprint of Moody Publishers), 2015. See here to purchase the book.
A.W. Tozer was a pastor and Christian author who lived from 1897 to 1963. The Attributes of God, Volume 2
contains edited sermons that Tozer delivered about certain attributes
of God. These attributes include God’s self-existence, transcendence,
eternalness, omnipotence, immutability, omniscience, wisdom,
sovereignty, faithfulness, and love. The book has an extensive study
guide in the back, written by David E. Fassenden. Fassenden offers his
own honest musings about each chapter, including what he wishes Tozer
had addressed but did not. At the end of his commentary, Fassenden
provides a format that small groups can follow in discussing the
chapter.
Tozer is charming as he discusses each attribute of God, using
stories, analogies, and anecdotes to make his points. Tozer’s imagery
is often compelling. Reading the book has the cozy feel of reading a
bedtime story, yet Tozer is clear that the God that he is discussing is
real, and that we should act as if he is real (i.e., be bold in our
prayers, for God can do anything). Tozer is also humorously
self-deprecating in this book. For example, he talks about how he feels
dumb whenever he goes to the library, and how he is a sucker for the
latest New Testament translations, even though he finds that they do not
enhance his walk with God! In addition, Tozer offers wry criticism of
the religious practices of his day. For instance, Tozer is mildly
critical of prayer meetings, for he wonders what the point is of
spending hours telling God what God already knows! Tozer comes across
as a lovable curmudgeon.
The chapters on God’s faithfulness and love were beautiful,
thoughtful, and pastoral. In other books that I have read by Tozer,
Tozer seems to have an attitude that Christians need to have all of
their ducks in a row, or they are not truly saved. That attitude
appears in this book, too. But this book also conveys the message that
God loves us, even though we are imperfect, and that we should
faithfully endure periods of spiritual barrenness in hope that God will
come through. This book, in short, was more encouraging, in areas.
The book also had thoughtful discussions about the relationship
between faith and reason, as well as God’s sovereignty and human free
will. In my review of Tozer’s God’s Pursuit of Man (Chicago: Moody, 2015), I expressed curiosity about whether Tozer was a Calvinist or an Arminian. Tozer in God’s Pursuit of Man
seemed to lean more in the Calvinist direction, emphasizing God’s role
in calling people to faith in Christ and enabling belief. In The Attributes of God, Volume 2,
Tozer explicitly engages Calvinism and Arminianism. Tozer and
Fassenden present Tozer as one who is in the middle of the extremes of
Calvinism and Arminianism, but Tozer in The Attributes of God, Part 2
strikes me as having more Arminian sentiments. Tozer believes that God
is sovereign but that God in God’s sovereignty has given people free
will. As far as I can recall, there is nothing in this book about God
causing or enabling people to believe; Tozer in this book appears to
treat free will as rather libertarian. (Of course, Arminians believe
that God makes belief possible through prevenient grace; my point is,
though, that Tozer leans more towards free-will than determinism of
compatibilism in this particular book.)
In terms of critiques, the book would have been better had Tozer
engaged aspects of the Bible that appear to run contrary to his picture
of God. For example, why did God say after Abraham almost sacrificed
his son that “Now I know that you fear God” (Genesis 22:12)? Did not
God, being omniscient, know before this event that Abraham feared God?
On page 125, Tozer does address a similar question: Why did God say that
he was going to Sodom to see if they are wicked (Genesis 18:21), when
God already knew that they were wicked? Tozer says that God, being
omniscient, was not seeking information, but rather made his statement
in Genesis 18:21 for another reason. Tozer’s explanation was unclear
and elliptical, however, and his wrestling with such difficult biblical
passages was only occasional.
Tozer wryly mocks the notion that God guilts people: that Jesus
guilts people about them not loving him by telling them all of the
things that he has done for them. For Tozer, God is happier and more
level-headed than that. Yet, on page 210, Tozer appears to embrace the
approach that he criticizes when he says: “The soul that can scorn such
infinite, emotional, eager love as this, the soul that can trample it
down, turn away from it and despise it, will never enter God’s
heaven—-never.” Tozer then goes on to provide a reasonable explanation
about why people go to heaven and hell: these places are a continuation
of their present outlooks and lifestyles. (That makes some sense, but I
would question the implication that non-believers would fail to
appreciate a world of love, which heaven will be, whereas believers
would automatically appreciate it.) But Tozer on page 210 does seem to
use the sort of guilt-tripping that he criticizes.
Tozer appears to embrace negative theology in parts of this book. He
thinks that God is so beyond our comprehension, that we can often only
say what God is not, rather than what God actually is. Tozer also talks
about different images of God, which seems to acknowledge some
subjectivity in theology. Yet, Tozer does believe that there are right
answers and that people can actually know God, and he even makes
positive claims about God’s psychology: God is a happy God, for
instance. Tozer perhaps would have done well to have attempted to iron
out these tensions. At the same time, this book is humbler than other
Tozer books that I have read. It is still dogmatic, yet Tozer
acknowledges his limitations and when he is offering his opinion about
what God is like. In that respect, the book is refreshing.
Tozer does well to treat God as a unitive personality, as opposed to a
being with different or contradictory attributes. A number of
evangelicals say that God is loving, but God is also just and holy, as
if these attributes are dramatically different from each other. Tozer,
by contrast, has an interesting discussion on pages 197-198 about God’s
attributes in the damnation of sinners. He states: “I believe that at
the end of time, when we know as we are known (see 1 Corinthians 13:12),
it will be found that even the damning of man is an expression of the
love of God as certainly as the redeeming of man.” Tozer should have
spent more time explaining this and offering a unitary, integrative
picture of God’s personality, one in which love and justice reinforce
one another. On some level, Tozer does make the argument that
unrepentant sinners would be unhappy in heaven, which may lean in the
direction of arguing that God is loving even towards the sinners God
damns; at the same time, though, Tozer also says that unrepentant
sinners will be unhappy in hell! (I should note that Tozer covers God’s
justice and holiness in the first volume, which I have not yet read.)
My questions notwithstanding, this book is an edifying and thoughtful read.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher (Moody Press). My review is honest.