For His Own Glory

Alvyn Pettersen ( Athanasius ) offers this intricate summary of Athanasius’ views on the question of whether God rescues humanity for His own glory or for the good of His creatures: “God created for humanity’s benefit.”  That is to say, God didn’t need creation.

Moreover, “the service of ‘those who do not exist’ [i.e., idols] is to humanity’s detriment.  God himself is not altered.  Certainly, the dignity due to God is indeed compromised by people’s ceasing to worship him; it is compromised in the same sense as a human monarch’s dignity, which, even while the monarch remains monarch, is denigrated by the people’s not recognizing that the monarch is monarch.  Status and recognition of status are not the same, and the indignity to the monarch in fact rebounds to the people’s and not the monarch’s detriment.”  God’s kingship is “not made less by its not being recognized,” but “their citizenship is indeed made the less meaningful.”  God’s wish that humanity recover and honor Him is therefore for the benefit of humanity.

Athanasius is saying that “Ignoring God is to God’s dishonor insofar as people who properly were created to live not only through God but for God now no longer live to God’s glory; but it is to their ruin.  What then looks like God’s jealousy for himself is in fact God’s jealousy for humanity’s godly well-being.”