The God Who Speaks

Although we know that God is all-powerful, we also know that He is personal. But what does it mean to be a person? What predicates personality?

The best definition of personality I know is the one given to me by the tutor who taught me theology: “To be a person, we have to be able to think, to reason, to feel, to judge, to choose, and to communicate in words that constitute a language.” Richard Swinburne, a theologian, observes that people use language not only to communicate and for private thought, but to argue, to raise a consideration, to object to another. Unlike animals that show evidence only of wanting food and drink, people can want not to want something—like a fasting man, for example, wanting not to want food.

Now with that in mind—that one of the constituents of personality is the ability to think and speak—read the first chapter of Genesis. Notice how many times the words appear: “God said.” Count them. God is portrayed to us as a speaking God. And because speech is one of the constituent parts of personality, this proves to us that the Deity is a personal Being. We are not long into Genesis before we are brought face-to-face with the fact that there is more to God than mere power; the Almighty is a Person. This means, among other things, that the Almighty cannot be studied from a “safe” distance. Because He is a Person, He is someone who wants and waits to be known.

Further Study

Gn 1:1-31; Jb 33:13-14; 1Kings 19:12; Ezk 43:2

How many times does it say “God said”?

How did Ezekiel describe God’s voice?