The Doctrine of the Word of God

Book excerpt: John Frame's A Theology of Lordship series has been greeted with acclaim, The Doctrine of God receiving an ECPA Gold Medallion Award. This fourth and final volume in the series discusses God's word in modern theology and how God's word comes to us as his controlling power, meaningful authority, and personal presence. Dr. Frame says that God's speech to man is real-like one person speaking to another "God speaks so that we can understand him and respond appropriately. Appropriate responses are of many kinds: belief, obedience, affection, repentance, laughter, pain, sadness, and so on. God's speech is often propositional: God's conveying information to us. But it is far more than that. It includes all the features, functions, beauty, and richness of language that we see in human communication, and more. So the concept I wish to defend is broader than the 'propositional revelation' that we argued so ardently forty years ago, though propositional revelation is part of it. My thesis is that God's word, in all its qualities and aspects, is a personal communication from him to us." Book jacket.