It is natural and fitting in an attempt to understand the teaching of
Jesus that we should begin with His doctrine of God. For a man's idea of
God is fundamental, regulative of all his religious thinking. As is his
God, so will his religion be. Given the arc we can complete the circle;
given a man's conception of God, from that we can construct the main
outlines of his creed. What, then, was the teaching of Jesus concerning
God?


I


In harmony with what has been already said in the previous chapter,
concerning Christ's manner and method as a teacher, we shall find little
or nothing defined, formal, systematic in Christ's teaching on this
subject. In those theological handbooks which piloted some of us through
the troublous waters of our early theological thinking, one chapter is
always occupied with proofs, more or less elaborate, of the existence of
God, and another with a discussion of what are termed the Divine
"attributes." And for the purposes of a theological handbook doubtless
this is the right course to take. But this was not Christ's way. Search
the four Gospels through, and probably not one verse can be found which
by itself would serve as a suitable definition for any religious
catechism or theological textbook. Christ, we must remember, did not, in
His teaching, begin _de novo_. He never forgot that He was speaking to a
people whose were the law and the prophets and the fathers; throughout
He assumed and built upon the accepted truths of Old Testament
revelation. To have addressed elaborate arguments in proof of the