A cursory search on the Internet[1] for the question, “Who is God?” provides a plethora of choices from experts in theology, philosophy, and metaphysics speaking on God’s “summary definition,” “15 Attributes,” “Infinite Nature,” and so on. Many (if not all) of these sites provide robust and thorough descriptions about God but lack any interpersonal introductions between the Divine One and mortal beings. They are more informational and observable rather than personal and relational.
In fact, the Bible itself provides one of the best examples of the latter in Exodus 3, when Moses first encounters God in the Burning Bush and God introduces Himself stating, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Eventually, when asked by Moses how to introduce God to the sons of Israel, God’s response is simply perfect and personal—Man: “Who is God?” God: “I AM.”
The Bible also famously laments, “My [God’s] people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos 4:6, NASB) and nothing could be closer to the truth as every good thing comes solely from God and not humanity (Jas 1:17, NASB). Thus, without or apart from Him, we are lost; with Him, “Nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37, NASB).
This reality was not lost on Quaker author and suffragette Hannah Whitall Smith (1832–1911) who powerfully proclaimed, “Comfort and peace never come from anything we know about ourselves, but only and always from what we know about Him.” Therefore, it is no wonder that Smith explicitly wrote her book, The God of All Comfort, “To show what God is, not theologically, nor doctrinally, but simply what He is in actual, practical reality, as the God and Father of each one of us.”[2] As between the Patriarch Abraham and God (Isa 41:8, NASB), Smith yearned to help people in her era (and their churches) build better relationships with God.
In other words, she sought to introduce her readers (many of whom who were suffering from a dysfunctional relationship with their Maker) to the true God of the Bible and the universe, utilizing (perhaps unknowingly) a practical theology approach. As Stephen Pattison notes, “Relationality is as fundamental to practical theology as it is to life itself. Within conversation lies otherness, difference, in-betweenness, togetherness and ultimately friendship and exploration of relationships of all kinds.”[3]
One can definitely sense this sentiment in Smith’s writing, when she explains:
It is our ignorance of God that does it all. Because we do not know Him, we naturally get all sorts of wrong ideas about Him. We think He is an angry Judge who is on the watch for our slightest faults, or a harsh Taskmaster determined to exact from us the uttermost service, or a self-absorbed Deity demanding His full measure of honor and glory, or a far-off Sovereign concerned only with His own affairs and indifferent to our welfare.[4]
Moreover, according to Smith,
We may spend our days in what we call our religious duties, and we may fill our devotions with fervor, and still may be miserable. Nothing can set our hearts at rest but a real acquaintance with God; for, after all, everything in our salvation must depend upon Him in the last instance; and, according as He is worthy or not of our confidence, so must necessarily be our comfort.[5]
Smith spends the next two chapters of The God of All Comforts striving to bridge the rift between people and God—through Jesus Christ, so that “[their] religious lives ought to be full of joy, and peace, and comfort, and that, if we become better acquainted with God, they will be.”[6] This aligns well with Bebbington’s understanding of an evangelical practical theology,[7] which exhibits four distinctive characteristics:
1. Biblicism: through history, evangelicals have used a mix of tradition, experience, and reason. However, the Bible is always seen to have ultimate authority in all aspects of faith and practice.
2. Crucicentrism: the death of Christ on the cross, and his resurrection from the grave, are held as centrally important by evangelicals.
3. Conversionism: evangelicals believe that there needs to be a definite turning away from a sinful life to living in the way of Jesus Christ.
4. Activism: evangelical faith moves its adherents to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.
Demonstrating this, Smith takes great pains to be sure her readers comprehend the quintessential intersections between God, Jesus, and humanity. She writes, “If we would know then the length, and breadth, and height, and depth of what God meant when He gave to Moses that apparently unfinished name of ‘I am,’ we shall find it revealed in Christ.”[8] Ultimately, “Only in Christ do we see God as He is; for Christ is declared to be the ‘express image’ of God.”[9]Moreover, “Christ revealed God by what He was, by what He did, and by what He said.”[10]
Dangerously, in Smith’s estimation,
If, in short, we have imagined [God] in any way other than that which has been revealed to us in “the face of Jesus Christ, we must go back in all simplicity of heart to the records of that lovely life, lived in human guise among men, and must bring our conceptions of God into perfect accord with the character and ways of Him who declares that He came to manifest the name of God to men.[11]
Instead, she recommends, “It becomes, not only our privilege, but our bounded duty to cast out of our conception of God every element that could in any way conflict with the blessed life and character and teaching of Christ.”[12] This is how God can truly become “the God of all comforts”[13] for His followers rather than letting them remain distrustful doubters who “Spread gloom and discomfort around them wherever they go.”[14]
Smith concludes her chapter with a practical appraisal of the right way and the wrong way to exercise one’s faith. She writes: “Christ comforts, man scolds. Christ’s Gospel is always good news, and never bad news. Man’s gospel is generally a mixture of a little good news and a great deal of bad news; and even where it tries to be good news, it is so hampered with ‘ifs’ and ‘buts,’ and with all sorts of man-made conditions, that it utterly fails to bring any lasting joy or comfort.”[15] Christ died to being humanity joy, not downheartedness or defeat.
Fortunately for all her readers, Smith provides a welcome remedy to this malady:
If we want to be comforted, we must make up our minds to believe every single solitary word of comfort God has ever spoken; and we must refuse utterly to listen to any words of discomfort spoken by our own hearts, or by our circumstances. We must set our faces like a flint to believe, under each and every sorrow and trial, in the divine Comforter, and to accept and rejoice in His all-embracing comfort.[16]
In a secularized, humanist, postmodern world that craves reasons to abandon God and to fall into the darkness of cynicism and distrust, Jesus’s words in John 6:67–70 and Peter’s immediate response to Him still ring true today: “So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘You do not want to leave also, do you?’ Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. And we have already believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.’” Likewise, Jesus’s followers are not to fear nor be weary for we have the gift of personally knowing our loving Savior and God who died for us to comfort us, eternally (Ps 147:3).
Bibliography
Bebbington, David W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Pattison, Stephen. “Conversations in Practical Theology.” Practical Theology 13, no. 1–2 (2020): 87–94. doi:10.1080/1756073X.2020.1722345.
Smith, Hannah Whitall. The God of All Comfort. E-book: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2024.
Endnotes
[1] “Who is God;” https://www.google.com/?client=safari. Accessed 09/28/2024.
[2] Hannah Whitall Smith, The God of All Comfort (E-book: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2024), 10.
[3] Stephen Pattison, “Conversations in Practical Theology,” Practical Theology 13, no. 1–2 (2020): 92. doi:10.1080/1756073X.2020.1722345.
[4] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 7.
[5] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 11.
[6] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 12.
[7] David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 2–17.
[8] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 20.
[9] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 19.
[10] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 19.
[11] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 23.
[12] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 24–25.
[13] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 29.
[14] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 29.
[15] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 45.
[16] Smith, The God of All Comfort, 43.