God Stoops to Speak to Us: The Doctrine of Divine Accommodation – Gregg Allison

ABSTRACT: Divine accommodation describes how the infinite, transcendent, and holy God condescends to make himself known. It answers the fundamental religious question, “How can I know God?” by saying, “God reveals himself.” The doctrine, with roots deep in the Christian tradition, has been opposed by various theologians in both the distant and recent past. Yet considered in its far-reaching consequences, divine accommodation remains a crucial doctrine for preserving a biblical understanding of revelation and how people come to know God.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Gregg Allison (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), Professor of Christian Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, to explain the doctrine of divine accommodation.

The majority of people in the world believe in “God.”1 Of these people, the majority believe that this “God” created everything that exists.2 Of these “believers,” the majority hope that this “God” is knowable in some way.3 Our question becomes, then, “How can people know this ‘God?’”

Many people throughout the world focus on themselves as the answer to this question. They seek to know their “God” through engaging in religious ceremonies (for example, praying five times a day and going on a pilgrimage), following some law of freedom (for example, karma), focusing on self-denial through practices of abstinence or repudiation, seeking union with the cosmos or divine force, meditating to achieve self-emptying or an altered consciousness, and the like. That is, people initiate the way to know their “God.”

Christianity denies this is the way to know the one true living God, because there is no human starting point — nor can there be. On the contrary, God makes himself known to people. Christians answer the question, “How can people know God?” with one word: accommodation.

In this essay, I will define accommodation, give some analogies to help us better understand it, explore John Calvin’s contribution to this doctrine, call attention to attacks (one in particular) against it, highlight seven areas of the doctrine’s significance and implications, and offer a few questions for consideration and application.

Accommodation Defined

By way of definition, accommodation is “God’s act of condescending to human capacity in his revelation of himself.”4 In terms of the basic principle of accommodation, “for an infinite, perfect, and holy God to interact with finite, fallible, and fallen humanity, he must accommodate himself to our ability to understand him, coming down to our level so that we can grasp what he says and does.”5

The doctrine is closely associated with John Calvin, though it was certainly affirmed earlier in history. Calvin

underscored the appropriateness of God, who is infinitely exalted, accommodating himself to human weakness so that his adjusted revelation would be intelligible to its recipients. Indeed, God stoops like a mother when she communicates with her child. This accommodation is especially seen in Scripture: it is the Word of God written in limited human languages for sinful human beings with limited capacity to understand it, yet it does not participate in human error.6

Accommodation, then, acknowledges the need for God to “stoop” in order to reveal himself to us.

The above expression “God stoops like a mother when she communicates with her child” is just one of several metaphors/analogies theologians have used to portray divine accommodation. Others include a mother feeding her baby,7 a doctor prescribing medicine in accordance with his patient’s condition,8 an adult speaking with a child,9 a nurse “lisping” to an infant,10 or a schoolmaster teaching a young student.11

These helpful analogies underscore the condescension with which God acts as he seeks to make himself known through his communication in Scripture to human beings. Certainly, a mother, doctor, adult, nurse, and schoolmaster are of the same (human) nature as a baby, patient, child, infant, and young student. Such commonality shrinks the distance between the former and the latter. Such is not so with God, a divine being, in relation to human beings. God is infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient; human beings are finite, located, weak, uninformed. Such discontinuity exaggerates the chasm between the former and the latter.

Unsurprisingly, then, it is impossible for human beings to take the initiative to know God through even the best of human efforts. With this way to God shuttered, the only way for people to know him is by God making himself known to them.

This is divine accommodation.12

John Calvin on Accommodation

The leading Reformed voice on this doctrine was that of John Calvin (1509–1564).13 Two highlights of his significant contributions to the doctrine of divine accommodation are presented here.14

First, he used one of the powerful metaphors already noted. In his treatment of the Trinity, Calvin critiqued people who imagine that God is physical based on “the fact that Scripture often ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet.” Calvin chided,

For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.15

Accordingly, written Scripture (for example, its descriptions of God as having human body parts) does not reveal God as he is in himself: an immaterial being without physical components. Rather, it comes to embodied human beings (who do have body parts) in an accommodated manner so they can understand by analogy what God is truly like toward them: He “speaks,” “hears,” “sees,” “acts,” and “moves” for their benefit. Breathtakingly, the God who is high and lifted up descends low, speaking to human beings with baby talk.

Similarly, Calvin discussed Scripture’s use of the word “repentance” in relation to God. He referenced several passages: God “repented of having created man [Genesis 6:6]; of having put Saul over the kingdom [1 Samuel 15:11]; and of his going to repent of the evil that he had determined to inflict upon his people, as soon as he sensed any change of heart in them [Jeremiah 18:8].” Calvin added the examples of God’s repentance when he relented of destroying the Ninevites (Jonah 3:4, 10) and when he deferred Hezekiah’s death sentence (Isaiah 38:1, 5).

Calvin was concerned to ward off charges by many “that God has not determined the affairs of men by an eternal decree.”16 Thus, he explained that this mode of speech describes

God for us in human terms. For because our weakness does not attain his exalted state, the description of him that is given to us must be accommodated to our capacity so that we may understand it. Now the mode of accommodation is for him to represent himself to us not as he is in himself, but as he seems to us.17

God in himself has eternally decreed all things and will certainly execute his decree. At the same time, because such a reality is infinitely above human comprehension — people struggle to make one simple plan and carry it out effectively — God accommodated the revelation of himself and his ways in human terms, as he appears to them, and in accordance with human limitations, so they could comprehend it.18

Second, Calvin explained another significant purpose for divine accommodation. Describing Scripture’s use of jarring expressions — for example, “God was men’s enemy. . . . They were under a curse. . . . They were estranged from God” until they were reconciled to him — Calvin argued,

Expressions of this sort have been accommodated to our capacity that we may better understand how miserable and ruinous our condition is apart from Christ. For if it had not been clearly stated that the wrath and vengeance of God and eternal death rested upon us, we would scarcely have recognized how miserable we would have been without God’s mercy, and we would have underestimated the benefit of liberation.19

Though some people might be repulsed by such disturbing language — “enemy,” “curse,” “estranged” — the truth is that the wrath of God hangs over the head of sinful people. To unsettle them out of their indifference to or rebellion against him, God brilliantly (though unusually) “stoops” and grabs their attention, thereby prompting them to wake up to their dreadful plight. So, not only does God temper his revelation through written Scripture so that human beings can grasp by analogy something of God and his ways for their understanding, but even more, God accommodates that revelation so that fallen human beings experientially sense the dire straits in which they find themselves before him and his wrath and thus, completely undone and moved by his mercy, flee to him for salvation.

Accommodation Under Attack

The doctrine of divine accommodation has been a mainstay throughout church history. Some would even call it a hermeneutical and theological axiom for the proper interpretation of Scripture and for soundness of doctrinal formulation about God and his ways. But it has also come under fierce attack.

As recounted by Glenn Sunshine, a substantial critique and reformulation of accommodation came from the rationalist, anti-Trinitarian heretic Faustus Socinus (Fausto Sozzini, 1539–1604).20 Disapproving of Jesus’s affirmation of (what would later become the doctrine of) eternal conscious punishment of the wicked in hell, based on his teaching about Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19–31), Socinus dismissed it as a parable in which Christ accommodated himself “to the level of the [Jewish] people.”21 Thus, accommodation became a critical tool in the hands of skeptics to reject biblical affirmations that were, to those critics, unpalatable.

Similar attacks persist today in even more virulent forms. An important one comes from Kenton Sparks in his 2008 work God’s Word in Human Words.22 He wrestles with historical criticism and explains it in part with reference to (a novel idea of) divine accommodation. For example, he addresses historical criticism’s dismissal of Moses’s authorship of the Pentateuch, Isaiah’s sole authorship of his prophetic book, and Daniel’s authorship of his prophecy. Sparks invokes accommodation for Jesus’s (wrongful) affirmation of these men as authors of the books attributed to them:

If Jesus was fully human, as orthodoxy demands, then it is likely that he learned — along with other ancient Jews — that Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel wrote their books, irrespective of factual and historical realities. Moreover, even if Jesus knew the critical fact that Moses did not pen the Pentateuch, it is hardly reasonable to assume that he would have revealed this information to his ancient audience.23

Here we are on the horns of a dilemma: Either Jesus accommodated himself to incorrect ideas of Old Testament authorship, having learned wrongly that Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel authored their biblical writings, or Jesus knew these men did not author those writings but accommodated himself by not revealing the truth to his naive and misinformed audiences.

Moreover, Sparks notes clear indications “that the biblical authors were subject to their own finitude and fallenness when they wrote Scripture.” For example, Daniel expected the kingdom of God to come in his lifetime (as did Paul and John with respect to the Lord’s return). Thus, Sparks insists that we must hold out “the possibility that a limited perspective [on the part of the biblical authors] might inevitably lead to a mistaken perspective.”24 He continues,

The only question that remains, then, is whether God somehow protected or insulated their biblical words from their human fallenness. If he did so, it should be easy to recognize. Scripture would reflect a single, coherent, and consistent God-given view of morals and ethics from Genesis to Revelation.25

As to be expected, Sparks then rehearses inconsistencies in Scripture such as the biblical commands to slaughter women and children versus praying for one’s enemies, instructions about the beating of slaves versus treating them kindly, listing women as property versus regarding them as one in Christ, prohibiting the eating of pigs versus permitting it, the imprecatory psalms, and more.26

Such inconsistencies, for Sparks, are not limited to ethical matters in Scripture; they extend to theological diversity as well. In response, Sparks again invokes accommodation, defining it as “God’s adoption in inscripturation of the human audience’s finite and fallen perspective. Its underlying conceptual assumption is that in many cases God does not correct our mistaken human viewpoints but merely assumes them in order to communicate with us.”27 In a move seemingly undertaken to rescue this condescending God from error, Sparks claims that the doctrine of accommodation does not introduce human error into Scripture; it is rather the explanation for the errors that are already in the text. Furthermore, “any errant views in Scripture stem, not from the character of our perfect God, but from his adoption in revelation of the finite and fallen perspectives of his human audience.” This distinction permits Sparks to argue that “God does not err in the Bible when he accommodates the errant views of Scripture’s human audience.”28

Sparks’s notion of accommodation, like that of many contemporary critics of inerrant Scripture, diverges greatly from the church’s historical view. In fact, it ends up doing the opposite of what that traditional perspective sought to do when answering our opening question, “How can people know God?” If Sparks is right and (1) Jesus’s ideas about Scripture were incorrect or deceptive; (2) the biblical authors were mistaken as they wrote (so their scriptural writings are errant); and (3) Scripture contains inconsistencies (and thus contradicts itself) — even if Sparks blames such disasters on the biblical authors — then our “accommodated” Bible cannot be relied upon to answer the question of how people can know God.

The Significance and Implications of Accommodation

The importance of this doctrine, and the reasons Christians should reject attacks against it, can be seen in seven areas of significance and implication.

Doctrinal Significance of Accommodation

As for the significance of divine accommodation, first, there is no diminishing of divine authority. As John Frame explains of Scripture, “In the divine voice, God ‘accommodates’ himself to his hearers. . . . Nevertheless, this accommodation does not diminish in any way the authority with which God speaks (or, indeed, the power and presence of his word).”29

Second, this doctrine underscores that Scripture is adequate as divine revelation in human language. As article 4 of The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy states,

We affirm that God who made mankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation. We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation. We further deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God’s work of inspiration.

Third, as he always does in everything that comes to pass, God effectively accomplishes his eternal plan through the instrumentality of his word. Noel Weeks highlights the general biblical principle that nothing can thwart God’s plan: “Scripture does not see man as an impediment to the achievement of the divine purpose. Even man’s sin and blindness cannot prevent God from achieving his purpose.”30 The prophet Isaiah applies this principle to the (accommodated) word of God:

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven
     and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
     giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
     it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
     and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10–11)

Accommodation, therefore, is not a hindrance to God’s work but the framework for it.

Implications of Accommodation

Following Calvin, here are four implications of divine accommodation.

First, “Prayer influences divine sovereignty through a process of accommodation: ‘[God] so tempers the outcome of events according to his incomprehensible plan that the prayers of the saints, which are a mixture of faith and error, are not nullified.’”31 Listening to and answering the prayers of his people is an example of the sovereign God condescending to consecrate human beings, whom he does not and cannot need, to serve him in the accomplishment of his predestined plan.

Second, the divine discipline of believers is meted out in an accommodated manner. God disciplines his people “in accordance with what is healthful for each man. For not all of us suffer in equal degree from the same diseases or, on that account, need the same harsh cure.”32 Rather than employ a one-size-fits-all strategy to correct and sanctify his people, God condescendingly tailors his action for each believer because “he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14).

Third, accommodated preaching is suited to believers’ needs. Through sermons, God “provides for our weaknesses in that he prefers to address us in human fashion through interpreters [preachers] in order to draw us to himself rather than to thunder at us and drive us away.”33 Like effective human communicators, God accommodates his speech acts — assertions, commands, promises, and warnings that are voiced by pastors — to the hearing and responding capacities of his people.

Fourth, in the sacraments God provides accommodated means of grace for the church:

As our faith is slight and feeble unless it is propped up on all sides and sustained by every means, it trembles, wavers, totters, and at last gives way. Here our merciful Lord, according to his infinite kindness, so tempers himself to our capacity that, since we are creatures who always creep on the ground, cleave to the flesh, and do not think about or even conceive of anything spiritual, he condescends to lead us to himself even by these earthly elements [the bread and wine of communion] and to set before us a mirror of spiritual blessings.34

Lamenting the “dull capacity” of fleshly (i.e., embodied) believers, Calvin explains that God shows them himself and his promises through the physical elements of baptism (water) and the Lord’s Supper (bread and wine). Indeed, God “attests his good will and love toward us more expressly [through these ordinances] than by word.”35 In Paul’s words regarding communion, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26), not by a preached word but by an enacted word.

Summary and Questions for Application

In this essay, I defined accommodation as “God’s act of condescending to human capacity in his revelation of himself.”36 To better understand it, I gave some analogies — an adult speaking with a child,37 a nurse “lisping” to an infant38 — that have been used for accommodation. I explored John Calvin’s development of this doctrine and highlighted Kenton Sparks’s attacks against it. Finally, I underscored seven areas of the doctrine’s significance (e.g., Scripture is adequate as divine revelation in human language) and implications (e.g., accommodated preaching is suited to believers’ needs). To conclude, I offer a few questions for consideration and application.

How might a right understanding of this doctrine help us read our Bibles and know our God better?

Specifically, how does it aid you as you read about God’s redemption “with an outstretched arm” (Exodus 6:6), his shining face (Numbers 6:25–26), and his “eyes . . . toward the righteous” (Psalm 34:15)? How does it help you to understand the idea of divine emotions such as jealousy (Exodus 20:5), anger (Psalm 7:6), and grief (1 Samuel 15:35), and divine actions such as repentance (Jonah 3:4, 10), the pouring out of wrath (Revelation 16:1), and slowness (2 Peter 3:9)?

What dangers lurk when there is a misunderstanding of this doctrine? Do you ever find yourself questioning the truthfulness, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture because of difficulties in it? How can you settle this matter?

In light of this essay, how would you answer its opening question, “How can people know God?” Specifically, how would you answer the question, “How can you know God?”

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