As Moses converses with God, who has revealed himself by means of a bush that is burning yet is not consumed, the implied idea that God has mastery over and transcends this created world is made explicit. Specifically, Moses asks a genuine, even if somewhat skeptical, question: “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?” (Exod 3:13 ESV). With this question, Moses plays out what he thinks will happen when he shows his face again in Egypt. Likely the people of Israel will want some proof from Moses that he is, in fact, an ambassador of the real God of their fathers. And what better way to identify yourself than by your name?
Then, in v14, God gives an astounding answer. His name is “I am who I am,” or “I will be who I will be.” This name emphasizes God’s self-sufficiency, or aseity. Note that this “name” is self-referential. God does not appeal to something in creation to make himself known; he appeals to himself! “I am who I am” teaches us that every name that is given by God for himself, and even the sum total of all the names ascribed to God, cannot exhaust the revelation of who he is. “I am who I am” sets God in an entirely different class than the created order, for he is only named and known “by himself.”
There are some important implications of this naming. If God is self-sufficient, then he does not need you, nor does he need me or anything else in creation. In fact, to say that God is self-sufficient is to say that God has life in himself and even is life itself. The theologian Matthew Barrett explains it this way:
To affirm God's aseity is to say, first and foremost, that he is life in and of himself, and on that basis he must be self-existent and self-sufficient. It is because God is life in and of himself that there can be no sense in which he is caused by another. … There is, most fundamentally, a difference in nature between the Creator and the creature, the former having life in and of himself, the latter deriving life from the one who is life. We are born into this world totally dependent, finite in every way. Our existence is derived from our mother and father. If we are to continue living, the God of the universe must sustain us. We are dependent on not only our earthly father but our heavenly father too. Our nature, our very existence, is contingent in every way.[1]
While we are inextricably bound to a web of connections for our existence, God exists in and of himself. He is perfect because he lacks nothing in himself. We cannot charge him with any fault, for whatever fault we might believe that there is lies on our side of the ledger.
Besides giving ground for the perfection of God, God’s self-sufficiency grounds the existence of objective reality. Applying this truth to the concept of time, J.H. Bavinck observes that no watch is useful for keeping time if both the hands and the face move. The motion of the hands on a clock or watch must be keyed to something that is at rest, something that is fixed and stable, if the clock or watch is going to be useful for keeping time. Now, the same is true for the movement of consciousness from one moment to the next. For time to be a useful concept for us, we must be conscious of movement, but movement against something that is fixed and stable. God’s self-sufficiency provides the fixed and stable point of reference for our movement of consciousness. When God’s self-sufficiency is related to time, we approach the idea of eternity, for God would not be self-sufficient if he passed through time along with his creation. Then, the watch face would also be moving, as it were. Thus, J.H. Bavinck concludes, “The consciousness of time presupposes eternity.”[2] Thus, it is just a small step back to the fact that God’s self-sufficiency grounds the existence of objective reality because time is a key component of that reality.
In sum, God’s self-sufficiency is an important and eminently practical idea for our consideration.
[1] Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), 56–57.
[2] J. H. Bavinck, Inleiding in de Zielkunde, ed. A Kuypers, 2nd ed. (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1935), 99.
Comentarios