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We looked last time at five views of what makes an entity a person. These ideas are complicated to talk about but that's why we're talking about them because it merits our attention. Not only does it matter now as we're studying the concept of personhood for its own sake but the answers you give to these questions are going to be important in your entire Christian life. 

Let’s take a moment now and consider this idea from a Christian perspective. When we look at these ideas of what makes us a person from a Christian perspective, we begin by first by not thinking about the idea of what it means to be person or even a human but rather we begin by saying something about the Christian idea of exactly who God is. 

So, what is the first thing we can say about God? Well, I almost embarrassed to say, because it is so blatantly simple. Blatantly simple but hugely important, so I will say it anyway. 

1             God is a Person 

God is not a force or an influence or just a power. God is a person. Having said that idea was simple, we still need to talk about this further. The Bible absolutely represents God as a person.  

In Genesis 1:1, God creates. 

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

God creates and to do that creation involved a mind and a will. A few verses later it says.

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

(Gen 1: 28)

The verse opens by saying, “God said to them” …… He communicates, which takes a mind with a purpose, and a will and He communicates it. Bible experts state that the characteristics of personhood in the Bible are evidenced by evidence of mind, emotion and will. So, we see here that God has a creative mind, and he had will because he desired to create and see both humans and animals populate the earth. But, what about emotion? To see all the basic elements of God’s personhood together we need to look just a few paragraphs later.

God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night. God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart. God said, “I’ll get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean sweep: people, animals, snakes and bugs, birds—the works. I’m sorry I made them.”

. (Genesis. 6:5-7 The Message).

This passage reveals that God has a mind and a will, but this also shows he feels emotion. The Lord saw wickedness. What He saw was not just animals killing each other. What upset him was a recognition of a greater fall from grace, when he saw the extent of human wickedness. The text tells us that his heart was broken. Many people have a very non-emotional view of God, but the view of God we see in the bible is a person who feels things, he can be offended, and he can be upset. God feels things and because he feels things it means he can express anger, but he can also exercise mercy, and he can exercise compassion, and he can exercise love. So, God has a mind, he has emotions, and he has a will. Therefore, we know that God is a person. 

Throughout the Bible God is also always referred to as a person by repeated use of pronouns like “I,” “You,” and “Him,” God is never referred to as an “it”, anywhere in the bible. I know that sound incredibly simple, but it is incredibly important for Christians to know that God is a person. Important when you understand that over half the people on this planet don’t believe that God is a person. Over half of all religious people worldwide who say they believe in God would not necessarily agree with the statement - that God is a person. You may say this is not important because we are unlikely today in the west to come face to face with idol worship or an object that people claim to be God unless it is in a museum. However, we are very likely to meet this view among followers of Buddhism and the New Age Movement, and some of the environmental movement who says that God is in everything and everything is God; Most “New Ages” and Buddhists say God is not independent or separate from nature, he exists in and is part of nature.  In their eyes he is not the God of creation, he is just a part of it. The Bible, on the other hand, teaches that God is a Person, and that God is not just in the world; He is the one who made the world. The fact that God is a person, means that he has personality. 

So, what are the Implications of believing that God is not a person? Also, what are the implications if we do recognise him as a person. Well, we will look at that next time.