Theopedia

Glory of God

— Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory! Isaiah 6:3

Definition

The glory of God is both who God is and what he shows himself to be. Grounded in his own perfection, glory is God’s intrinsic weight and worth, which he possesses fully in himself and needs nothing from any creature to complete.1 Manifested, it is that same perfection made visible: the splendor inseparable from all God’s attributes together, in which he appears to his creatures in creation and, above all, in Christ.2 Scripture calls both senses “glory,” and neither stands without the other.

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Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession opens its chapter on God by naming him one “who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will for his own glory.”3 Its second paragraph draws the distinction Bavinck later states in dogmatic terms: God’s glory is first his own, intrinsic and self-sufficient, before it is ever shown to anyone.

God, having all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself, is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creature which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them.1

The confession returns to God’s glory when it takes up his decree, tying the doctrine directly to predestination rather than treating it as a free-standing chapter of its own: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated, or foreordained to eternal life through Jesus Christ, to the praise of his glorious grace; others being left to act in their sin to their just condemnation, to the praise of his glorious justice.”4 No chapter of the 1689 is devoted to God’s glory as its own topic; the confession treats it as the end toward which God’s own being and his eternal counsel already point, in chapters 2 and 3 rather than a chapter of its own.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism, written by the same broader Puritan movement a generation earlier, opens with the same end in view: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.”5 The 1689 does not state this as a separate catechism question, but its own insistence that God works “all things… for his own glory” is the same conviction stated from God’s side rather than man’s.

Biblical Basis

God’s glory fills the earth (Isa. 6:3) and is declared by the heavens themselves (Ps. 19:1). When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God answered by proclaiming his own name and character to him: “the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exod. 34:6). His glory filled the tabernacle and later the temple (Exod. 40:34; 1 Kings 8:11), and John writes of the incarnate Word, “we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Believers who behold “the glory of the Lord” are themselves “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18). Paul states the whole of it as a single sentence: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever” (Rom. 11:36), and draws the practical entailment from it directly: “whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

Doctrinal Significance

Bavinck states plainly that this is not one attribute standing alongside holiness, love, or omnipotence, but the outward splendor that belongs to all of them together: “The ‘glory of the Lord’ is the splendor and brilliance that is inseparably associated with all of God’s attributes and his self-revelation in nature and grace, the glorious form in which he everywhere appears to his creatures.”2 God’s own perfection is what grounds his blessedness inwardly; that same perfection “outwardly as it were carries his glory with it.”2 Scripture’s glory, on this reading, is what happens when God’s own perfection becomes visible: to creatures in the created order generally (Ps. 8; Rom. 1:19), and especially in the realm of grace, culminating in Christ and, through him, the church.2

Bavinck traces the same theme in creation’s own purpose: “creation reveals God’s attributes and proclaims his praise… humanity is made after God’s image and for his glory… of him, through him, and to him are all things.”6 He finds this conviction growing through the church’s history rather than appearing all at once: Tertullian already says God created the world “for the embellishment of his majesty,” the theme develops further in the medieval theology of Anselm, and it becomes, in Bavinck’s own words, “particularly in Reformed theology… the fundamental principle of all doctrine and conduct.”6 Summarizing God’s whole eternal counsel, from creation through consummation, Bavinck states the same conclusion in different terms: “That is the ultimate goal of God’s plan and counsel as Scripture reveals it: the honor and glory of the triune God.”7

Historical Development

Tertullian, writing his Apology around AD 197, already describes God creating the world “for the embellishment of his majesty.”6 A century later, Irenaeus had already answered an objection the doctrine would keep meeting: rather than setting God’s glory against human good, he wrote that “the glory of God is man alive,” joining the two rather than opposing them.6 Anselm, in the eleventh century, developed the theme further within his own account of God’s purposes.6

The conviction reached its fullest post-Reformation statement in the eighteenth century, when the New England Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards devoted an entire treatise, his 1765 “Dissertation concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” to arguing that God’s own glory is the reason he created at all.8 Bavinck locates this within a broader pattern he traces through Reformed theology generally, in which God’s glory became, as he puts it, the tradition’s own “fundamental principle of all doctrine and conduct.”6 The Reformers’ retrieval of the same conviction is preserved in the Reformation’s own watchword, Soli Deo Gloria, glory to God alone, counted among the Five Solas.

Objections and Responses

Making God’s own glory the goal of creation makes God self-centered and devalues his creatures. Bavinck answers that if creatures may justly seek the honor due them, God can do no less without diminishing himself: “every creature will bow the knee before him” (Phil. 2:9), and God’s own honor, far from competing with human good, enhances it, since God’s good is creatures’ own highest good, echoing Irenaeus’s own answer to the same question.6

Making creation serve God’s glory implies creation meets some need in God. Bavinck answers that God did not create because he needed the world, but because he delighted in his own will to create and in the act of creating itself, the way an artist creates freely rather than out of necessity.6 The confession states the same point from its own side: God possesses “all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself,” not standing “in need of any creature which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them.”1

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 2. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 8, “The Living, Acting God.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 1. ↩

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 3, “Of God’s Decree,” para. 1. ↩

  5. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), Q. 1. ↩

  6. Bavinck, chap. 10, “Creator of Heaven and Earth.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  7. Bavinck, chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel.” ↩

  8. Jonathan Edwards, “Dissertation concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” in Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol. 8 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 399-536, cited in Bavinck, chap. 10, “Creator of Heaven and Earth.” ↩