John S. Feinberg - No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God

John Feinberg reads theology with a philosophers eye and writes it with a philosophers sensitivity to illogic and incoherence. The special excellence of this long, learned, clear, and thorough exposition of historic Christian belief about God is its harvesting of the past half-centurys brilliant philosophical work banishing muddles from the theological scene. This is the new landmark account of God that Bavinck might have produced had he been able to write his masterful Reformed Dogmatics a century later than he did. Feinberg makes the philosophical analyses as palatable as possible, and students who can handle them and lap up extended textual surveys as well will find this book a permanently fruitful and authoritative resource.

J. I. PACKER

Professor of Theology

Regent College

This is a prodigious study biblically and philosophically of the doctrine of God set in the context of a probing analysis of the concept of God in contemporary thought. Feinberg judicially reconstructs aspects of the classical view of God in a way that proves more faithful than process and openness of God theisms. Arguably, this is the best study of theology proper in print.

BRUCE DEMAREST

Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation

Denver Seminary

This book contains some rare combinations: first, an author who is as concerned with conceptual clarification as he is with the absolute truthfulness of the biblical text; second, an argument that avoids the common either-ors and contends for the importance of both divine sovereignty and divine solicitude in equal measure; third, an approach that espouses divine determinism and divine temporality. No One Like Him takes on the most intractable intellectual challenges of contemporary evangelical theology.

KEVIN VANHOOZER

Research Professor of Systematic Theology

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Few issues in contemporary theology are as complex and challenging as the concept of God. In this major work, Professor John Feinberg skillfully integrates biblical exegesis, historical theology, and philosophy in a carefully argued discussion, resulting in a very impressive reformulation of Christian theism which cannot be ignored by any serious student of theology.

HAROLD NETLAND

Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Missions

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

The foundational doctrine of God has come in for a great deal of discussion of late. In this comprehensive treatment, John Feinberg skillfully draws upon both biblical and philosophical resources to deal with the important issues being discussed. His volume will be of great help to the church.

MILLARD J. ERICKSON

Distinguished Professor of Theology

Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University

A comprehensive, detailed, and fine study on the nature of God that leaves no stone unturned and will leave no reader unaffected.

DAVID F. WELLS

Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology

Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary

Other books in the
Foundations of Evangelical Theology Series

Published:

The Cross and Salvation
BRUCE DEMAREST

To Know and Love God
DAVID K. CLARK

Forthcoming topics:

Scripture
Man and Angels
Christ
The Holy Spirit
Sin
The Church
Eschatology

FOUNDATIONS OF

EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY

NO ONE
LIKE HIM

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

JOHN S.
FEINBERG

JOHN S. FEINBERG, GENERAL EDITOR

CROSSWAY BOOKS

A PUBLISHING MINISTRY OF
GOOD NEWS PUBLISHERS
WHEATON, ILLINOIS

No One Like Him

Copyright 2001 by John S. Feinberg

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

First trade paperback printing 2001

First hardcover printing 2006

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise marked, Scripture references are from the New American Standard Bible Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked NIV are from the Holy Bible: New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

The Scripture reference marked RSV is from the Revised Standard Version. Copyright 1946, 1953, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

The Scripture reference marked NRSV is from the New Revised Standard Version. Copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Published by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by
permission of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

Scripture references marked KJV are from the King James Version.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58134-811-8
ISBN-10: 1-581-34811-8
PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-1523-1
Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-0746-5
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-1956-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Feinberg, John S., 1946

No one like Him : the doctrine of God / John S. Feinberg.

p. cm.(The foundations of evangelical theology)

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 1-58134-275-6 (alk. paper)

1. God. I. Title. II. Series.

BT103.F45 2001

231dc21 2001001912

SB 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06

15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

In Memory of
My Wonderful Mother
Anne Priscilla Fraiman Feinberg
One of the First
To Teach Me about God

J ohn Feinbergs No One Like Him is a magisterial work, one that truly deserves to be called a magnum opus. Formidable in size, it reveals its author as one of the onlyperhaps the onlymodern scholar whose work, like that of Carl F. H. Henry, can compare in size, detail, comprehensiveness, and intellectual acuity with the accomplishments of the late Karl Barth, who in turn is perhaps the only contemporary theologian whose work rivals that of the old mastersof Luther and Calvinin scope. However, there is a serious difference between Henry and Feinberg on the one hand and Karl Barth on the other hand: Henry and Feinberg are firmly and deliberately in the tradition of what the late Francis A. Schaeffer called historic Protestantism; Barth, despite his genuine conservatism and his orthodoxy on many points, really is not. Karl Barth generated his theology in an atmosphere dominated by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century liberalism. Henry and Feinberg work in an age when Protestant liberalism has been deemed pass, superseded by all manner of inventive theologies, and when evangelical theology itself sometimes stands on shaky legs on a slippery slope, willing to compromise with modernity and even with postmodernism as much as possible without falling into the abyss of what Georges Florovsky called pious atheism, which is increasingly characteristic of modern and postmodern Protestantism.