The heart of the word, "god," is power. In all religions, God is seen as transcendent power. This is the one idea that all concepts of God share.

Today I picked up an old collection of theological essays, Frontline Theology, edited by Dean Peerman. I read "Religion, Faith, and Power," by Richard R. Niebuhr. I've like Niebuhr for a long time.

In the course of his essay, he says: "If I must choose one word now to indicate the meaning of the word, ‘God,’ it is power. (Of . . . alternatives available . . . This one [power] seems to me the most universally significant.)." That sounds almost like what I wrote above. I would agree with Niebuhr if by, "God," he means "god."

The Christian God is distinguished as the God whose power is love,
whose power is subordinated (sub-ordered, arranged beneath) to love,
whose power is in the service of Holy Love.

The power of love, not the love of power.

Open Theism Again

He was talking about me. How do I know? Because he had been kind enough to let me know before mailing the letter for publication in the Texas Baptist Standard. For months this San Antonio pastor, a former student of mine, had been emailing, calling on me to repent of the “heresy” of Open Theism.

I am recording here a part of my response to the published letter, a letter that was the opening volley in a war against open theism among Texas Baptists. I record this, hoping to further an awareness of the nature of this controversial doctrine of God’s relationship to the future.

Sad to say, I have been told by people wiser than myself that there is no chance that open theism will ever find favor among Baptist Christians. So far as I know, I am the only Texas Baptist to openly identify with open theism, but I disagree about its future. The views of Copernicus, Columbus, and Semmelweis, although widely believed today, were a long time gaining acceptance. This is a pattern well-known to historians.

The fact is that I strongly affirm most of what my adversary says open theists deny. Using the language of his letter, I believe “God is: holy, good, loving, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-present,” although I define omniscience more precisely than it is understood traditionally. I also believe “salvation is: by grace alone, through faith alone, by the work of Christ alone.”

Again using his language, I do not “deny the foreknowledge of God,” although I understand it differently than many do. I certainly do not “describe God as one who makes mistakes,” or who “repents as a man.” [Italics mine] God does not make mistakes nor does he repent in the ways characteristic of humans.

I do affirm that God “risks, regrets, and repents,” but not as men repent. Also, in contrast to the charge in the letter, I strongly affirm God’s capability to work all things together for good.
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To move now beyond the letter and my response, I believe that open theism clarifies what Christians believe about God. The truth is that most of us live by a theology of openness whether our doctrinal understanding agrees with it or not. Open theism is an effort made to bring our doctrine and our practice into harmony. It can help us integrate thought and life and lead us toward greater Christian integrity.

The alternative to open theism is a closed theology in which everything in history and eternity is already a “done deal,” and we are without choice. Moreover God is without choice. Open theism denies such a closed world. It affirms the good news that the future is open–that God is open. We live in a world of possibilities; nothing has to remain as it is; no one has to go on living as they have. Change is an open possibility.

The Bible (The New Testament as well as the Hebrew Bible, which was Jesus’ Bible, and which is the Christian’s Old Testament) is at it heart and in its purpose a gospel message. It is good news. Open theism is rooted in the gospel story, in the love of God, in what prayer is all about, and what evangelism is all about. Its major challenges come from concerns about divine sovereignty, prophecy, foreknowledge, predestination, and foreordination, and in the immutability–unchangeability–of God, all of which I will address another time.

Open theism is the theology Christian actually live by, that unconsciously we believe. We live believing the good news that the future is open, that it depends on how we decide to relate to God. We are free to repent of our sinful ways and turn to the God whose arms are “open wide.” Our future is open. It is not already in and done from all eternity.

We pray believing that prayer affects God. Prayer, by itself, does not change things. It does not operate by some kind of independent magic. It is God, who in response to our prayers, changes things. Some things will not happen if we do not pray; some things will happen only if we do pray.

What God will do in the future depends in part on our prayer life, our living relation to him. Although many of us would hesitate to say it explicitly, in practice we believe that prayer can change what God will do. The future, under God’s control, is partly dependent on us.

We evangelize the non-Christian, believing who although lost at present, their future is open. Although now in their unforgiven sin, they stand under the wrath of God, if they repent and believe the gospel, we know that God’s gracious love stands ready to forgive and accept them. It has long been observed that although many Baptists preach Calvinistic sermons, they extend Arminian invitations.

Open theism, contrary to some representations of it, does not necessarily choose sides in the Calvinism/Arminianism debate. If these systems are defined in narrow form, open theism rejects them both. On the other hand, it affirms–as historic Baptist practice and cooperation has done–features of both. It is a mistake to cast open theism as merely another way of describing the old predestination/free will debate.

The biblical statement, “God is love,” is the defining foundation for open theism. Love is not God, but God is love. Holy Love is the very heart and character of the God revealed in Jesus the Christ. All other attributes and actions of God flow from his holy love.

Love is a relationship–a personal relationship. It is neither a principle nor merely a power. It is a word used to describe personal relationships that are as God intends.

Love by its very nature is grounded in freedom. Love cannot be forced; it must be freely chosen, else it is not love. This is why God created the human with freedom of choice. We are created for a relationship of love with God and with each other. God loves us and desires our love, but in the very nature of love cannot force that love. Our rejection of God always disappoints him; our love for, trust in, and worship of God always pleases him.

We miss the major thrust of the Bible if we think that our response doesn’t affect God at all, that it makes no difference to him. And if it does make a difference--any difference--to God, then, in some sense, our decisions change something within the very heart of God. We make a difference to God, and we are dealing with a God who is open to reconsider some of his actions. If this is really so, the story of this kind of God is good news.
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We will explore this further.

"Open Theism"

If God is relative, not absolute, than it would seem that God is subject to change, and of course we all know that God cannot change. Again, we are under the influence of Aristotle and his Unmoved Mover, and are still in agreement that Patripassionism is heresy. Yes, God changes.

Note the several references in the Scriptures where it is said that God repented of one thing or another. We all understand that God has not done something wrong for which he must repent, but we also must recognize that God, in some sense, changes course in these passages. God is often frustrated, but never thwarted. If he fails to find those who will trust and obey, he continues to move to accomplish his will and purpose. I

t was not God’s will that Israel have a king in the days of Samuel, the judge of Israel. God was their king. But when they were insistent, God made a shift, relative to their stand, and gave them Saul as king. God could accommodate himself to the situation, and did. When Saul became a disappointment, God selected David as a replacement; when David failed at significant points, Solomon was God’s choice, but God again found the need for a course correction after the failure of Solomon.

Nowhere is change more evident in God than in the Incarnation. God, by divine knowledge and creative experience knew everything about human being, but he did not know by experience what it meant to be a human being until Mary had her child named Jesus who was in all points human. This is something new for God, to be Emmanuel.

And when Jesus prayed in agony in Gethsemane, and later on the cross asked in despair why God had forsaken him, surely no one is prepared to say this made no difference to God. The full story of God’s incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth means there is some kind of difference in God after the incarnation. God, in some sense, is changed.

Now Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the second “person” of The Trinity, knows, bu experience, what it is like to live as a human. That is who he was on this earth, and as the writer of the Hebrews notes, that is who is now, and always be: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Rather than proving that God doesn’t change, it refers to the fact that God is changed forever as a result of the incarnation.

God’s character doesn’t change, God’s purpose doesn’t change, but because his character and purpose are relational in nature, it is God’s character to be free to change, relative to the living people and their free responses as they are involved in the working out of his purpose.

God is love, God can be trusted eternally; Jesus is the truth and the only way. In him alone is life and that life is the light of men. This truth doesn’t change.

But God is alive and dynamic, not a mere eternal principle, Force, or Absolute Idea, so there is a continual process of change in God as he still suffers for us, in us, and with us. Since we are free and God is free, the future depends on the way we respond to God: in faith and obedience, or in rebellion and disbelief.
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Another potential objection immediately arises. If the future is dependent on our response to God’s initiative, then it would seem that God would not know what the future will be, the future would be open. Doesn’t God know everything? Isn’t God omniscient?

The answer lies in the distinction between the potential future an the actual future. The eternal, holy God who created the entire world knows everything that has happened--the actual past--knows everything that is on the scene of the present--the actual present--and knows all future potentiality. Nothing could occur that would surprise God or catch him unprepared. But the actual future is another matter.

H. L. Cravens, a legendary teacher at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, was a nationally acclaimed, championship checker player. Occasionally on days set aside for fun, he would challenge as many university students as desired to play him in a game of checkers--all at once. Tables were set up and as many as sixteen checkerboards might be lined up as students took him on.

Dr. Cravens stepped to the first table, the first checkerboard, and moved a checker, then to the second board, and on, until he had played each student. Then he would walk back to the first table and start again with the first student’s game. He took only a few seconds at each board. In a short while, a few boards began to be folded, then more, until only two or three remained. Dr. Cravens always defeated all challengers, although I do remember one fellow who claimed, “I almost beat him.”

For years I assumed that my friend knew all possible moves on a checkerboard, and had strategies for dealing with any of them. I suspected that after the first two or three moves he knew whether his opponent was a serious player or not, and that he could usually predict what each player was likely to play next.



A couple of days before his death, visiting in his home, I told him I had often spoken of his checker knowledge as analogous to God’s knowledge. He confirmed most of what I said about his knowledge of checkers, but noted that he did not begin to know all possible moves that might develop during the course of a game between skilled players. He believed those moves to be almost infinite in number.

He did agree that after the first few moves he knew what kind of player he was up against, and that at any given moment he knew not only what possibilities there were for the next move, but also what move a player was likely to make. He also knew ahead of time how he would respond, depending on what choice his challenger took.

As indicated earlier, I see H. L.’s knowledge of checkers as a pointer to God’s knowledge of the future. The world and human history are infinitely more complex than a checker game, but God created it all and does know all its possible moves. Humans were created with genuine freedom, but again, God knows all possibilities that exist for humanity as well as for each person. In the sense that he knows all future possibilities and cannot be surprised or caught unprepared, God knows everything. But because God is love--relational--and because he created humans with the freedom that love entails, God does not know the actual future until it happens.

At any given moment, he knows not only what moves are possible, but he knows what moves are likely because of the pattern and character of the past. He is prepared to accomplish his purpose not matter what human choices are made, but if the human is genuinely free, God cannot know which option will be taken until it is actually taken.

God can be trusted to complete the creation and redemption he has begun; he will not be defeated. There will come the time when “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,” the day when the victory will be complete and he will be known as “King of Kings and Lords,” will put all enemies under his feet, “and he shall reign forever and forever.” But until then, both God and his creature struggle with the powers of evil, and the moment by moment development of this conflict is open and unknowable in its actuality until that moment happens.

To repeat, God knows all the past, the entire present scene, and all potential futures, but he does not and cannot know the actual future until it occurs. Our understanding of God’s knowledge hinges on the distinction between potential and actual future events. More fundamentally, it hinges on our understanding of the relation between love and freedom.

Is Faith What God Is About?

This post is an expansion of a blog I wrote March 6, 2007. It is for the most part an expanded look into “faith.” This is not a complete overlap of the other. They complement each other.

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The preacher asked “What is God about? It was the kind of question that I pay attention to. If I can know what God is about in this world, then in the limited time I have remaining in life, I want to be about the same thing.

The question was rhetorical, so I was not surprised when the minister gave us the answer: “He is about bringing us to the point where we have at least a crumb, a beginning point of faith . . .” A little later he spoke again of faith, this time in relation to the book that stirs all kinds of imagination, the biblical book of Revelation. “Revelation,” he said, “is not about who is left behind, but about those who have faith.” He referenced Revelation 7:14-17.

So God is about getting us to the point of faith; the book of Revelation is about those who have faith. Is faith what it is all about? I remember a Bible professor who in all kinds of contexts, not just religious, was frequently heard to say, “You just have to have faith.” What was that supposed to mean?

If faith is the final word, it is meaningless. Faith without an object is dead, being alone. Faith is always “faith in.” Depending on the object of faith, we can speak of species of faith: religious faith (whether Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, or some other), political, economic, national, scientific, or secular.

Strangely, the president of the United States has spoken much about “faith-based initiatives.” Others, following a similar line of thinking speak of “faith communities.” The fact is that all initiatives are faith-based. All true common-unities share, among other things, a common faith. In my hometown, we had a highschool football coach whose teams had won more state championships than any other team in the United States. The town, the bankers, and the young football players had great faith in this phenomenal coach.

We live by faith–all of us. We live by what we believe in, what we believe about. We make our decisions and take action based on those things we are convinced of, those things–persons included–that we trust. The atheist is a believer. The atheist believes there is no god.

Faith is not a stand-alone word. Faith is not an end in itself. The Christian Bible says: “Faith without works is dead.” A favorite Christian hymn says:“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way . . ..”

Faith, and I’m not speaking just of religious faith, is mediate a medium, an intermediary, a go-between. Faith is an attitude, a stance. It is a bridge, a door, a relation, a motivator, a means, a way, an enabler.

Faith always points beyond itself, as do its synonyms: trust, confidence, commit, rely, accept, conviction, convinced, depend on.

A faith refers to an organized structure derived from the above, it has content and related constituents. In this sense it is a complex.

Faith may be merely intellectual, personal, or pragmatic, the coalescence of all three.
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Now, having given something of a wordy disquisition on the word, faith, I return to the question of what God is about, the question that got all this stirred up within me. What is God about?

The Bible says “God is love,” and Jesus, when asked what the greatest of all God’s commands was, answered, saying that everything God is about can be stated concisely. All God wants of his human creation is for them to love God and to love each other. If God is love, and if love is all he desires, it seems clear to me what God is about: God is about love.

Faith is an attitude, a chosen stance that puts its confidence, its trust in God. When a person adopts this relation to God, the way to love is opened, the person accepts God at face value, and commits their life to the practice of the divine love that faith enables them to accomplish.

Faith is the necessary intermediary between their old life and their new life of reliance on God. Faith does the work; love is the accomplishment.
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But even love is not what God is about, not ultimately. Why love, except that God commands it? Love leads to what it is all about, what in the end God is, has, and always will be about.

Love changes things, changes everything. If you’ve ever been “in love,” you know this. Love is enjoyable, when under its spell, all else is forgotten and we are at peace. We feel that our life has been enriched beyond measure.

I summed it up best in the March blog:
“What is God about? The incredible, incomprehensible, inexhaustible riches of the love, joy, and peace that faith in the triune God leads us to and graciously bestows upon us. That is what God is about.”

Music, in it simplest form, is much like a trip from the house to the mailbox, perhaps along the way making a brief stop to pick up the newspaper, then back to the house (and, as we will see, the Christian Bible is much like a musical composition). Almost any piece of music in the Western world begins with a note or chord called the “tonic.” This sets the “tone” for the piece of music; it tells us what “key” the music is being played in. The tonic is “home.”

The major movement of music is from the tonic to a note or chord called the “dominant,” then back home to the tonic: tonic to dominant and back to tonic. But just as the trip to the mailbox and back may involve a brief stop for the newspaper or to smell the rosebush, so the trip back from the tonic to the dominant usually involves a visit to the sub-dominant.

Thus, the basic pattern of music is the movement from tonic to sub-dominant, to dominant, and back to tonic. You leave home, take a trip, and come back home. This movement away from home adds interest to life, but the arrival back home brings us back to our comfortable world.

The Christian Bible, and the Christian religion are commonly understood as a simple movement of similar sort: from Creation to Sin to New Creation, or, Generation to De-generation to Re-generation. There is nothing wrong with this simple pattern. It is the movement of the biblical story just as surely as tonic, subdominant, dominant is the movement of a piece of music.

Sometimes we take longer trips, like downtown shopping. Several stores, a few visits, fill up with gasoline, but eventually “home, sweet home.”

“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” follows the basic pattern. So does “The Star-
Spangled Banner.” But along the way, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” while maintaining the basic pattern, adds some new and interesting elements. These move us from the sweet and somnolent tones of “Twinkle, Twinkle,” to an arousing, energizing, and heart-stirring call to pride and/or action.

Anyone can sing “Twinkle, Twinkle.” It is easy. The national anthem of the United States is a much more challenging and difficult piece to sing, but it stirs us more deeply than the little lullaby.

The New Testament book of Romans follows the pattern of generation, degeneration, and regeneration, but adds enough challenging, enriching, and thought-provoking elements that few of us find it easy reading. There is somehow more involved in the basic pattern than we had realized. The basic pattern is still there, but it no longer is simple.

Music becomes much richer, more complex, challenging, provocative, disturbing, and difficult (both to play and for the ear and mind to follow) when we move from “The Star-Spangled Banner” to Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 in E Flat. This symphony is, in one sense, a movement from the tonic (E Flat), to the sub-dominant (A Flat), to the dominant (B Flat), and eventually back to the tonic (E Flat).

In Symphony No.3 in E Flat once the tonic chord sets the tone, the music quickly moves to chords that sound a different, improper sounding tone. To simplify the rest of the symphony, it changes its tonal center several times, always eventually coming back to the original tonic with its E Flat tonic and its subdominant and dominant. Much of the time, however, it sounds like it has departed completely from the original theme, perhaps having lost it, or changed its mind.

Complex music ordinarily requires several hearings before it begins to make sense, and can be seen as a unified whole. Those who take the trouble to hear it again and again find it a source of great wonder, joy, and satisfaction.

The Christian Bible is not a simple piece of literature; it is quite complex and diverse, often sounding seemingly contradictory notes and themes. Leviticus, Judges, the books of he Kings and Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and several of the Psalms, all exemplify these problematics. Of course, this only covers some of the problems.
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I propose that God’s love is the tonic note of the Bible. We might say that the sub-dominant is God’s kind of love that humans can share with each other, and the dominant is the human love of God. The final movement is back to the tonic: the love of God. The entire Bible and the entirety of a faithful Christian religion are written in the key of Love, not love as is ordinarily understood, but the Holy Love demonstrated and taught by Jesus.

I base this analysis on the following biblical statements: “God is love,” “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments," “Love never fails,” “. . . faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love,” “the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”

Much of the Bible sounds as if it had little if nothing to do with love. Much seems clearly contradictory to love. Much sounds as if power, control, or harsh demands is the central theme.

The Bible is a difficult, complex book that, based on a single reading, can be as disturbing as it can be life-affirming. But those who read it repeatedly and thoughtfully, especially if once they have clearly heard the tonic, Holy Love, begin to see that it all makes sense, all fits together, and all reflects the sometimes joyous, sometimes quite demanding development of the highest, the infinite love. Everything ultimately stems from love and leads back to that home.

Read it enough and its love will become something to enjoy and will bring a satisfying peace.

The tonic is love; the subdominant is love; the dominant is love; the way back home is the way of from love to love.
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I don’t pretend to have God figured out. God is disturbing and awesome mystery; God is life and hope. If you were to go to asking me questions, there would be many I could ot answer. I know most of the answers that have been given to most of the questions, but I still am unable to answer some of them.

I am confident that all flows from the divine love, that love is all that is required, and that God’s holy love, revealed in Jesus, is the standard by which we will be judged.

God is relative, but in what sense? In dictionary sense, in etymological sense, but not in the common sense that understands it to mean: “relative to an individual’s personal preference or taste,” nor any other of the connotations commonly associated with the word.

The Christian God is relative in the sense of: “not absolute, connected, in relation to, dependent upon,” and other such. God is relative to each individual person or thing in his creation; he is connected, in relation to all his creation and as such, all has some kind of connection with God. Whether it is a good relationship or not is another matter.

And as I have said repeatedly in these blogs, God is internally and eternally related, connected, in relation to, and in some sense dependent because the one God is trinitarian. Father is dependent on Son and Spirit, would not be Father without Son, Son would not be Son without Father, and I am sure there is much more that lies beyond me.

So much for this effort at clarification.
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When I write that God changes, what can I mean by that? A few years ago a student took several classes with me, but missed the course in Christian Doctrines where I explain what I mean. He did not take that class, but heard by the student grapevine that I believed God changes. I learned later that he took this to mean that God wasn’t necessarily what Christians believe and teach, and, therefore, perhaps could not be trusted.

In other blogs I’ve explained what I do mean by divine mutability, let me clarify what I do not mean.

A well-known Christian Hymn states it quite well:

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not;
As Thou has been Thou forever wilt be.

God’s character does not change. His faithfulness changes not, nor his compassions, love, holiness, sovereignty, grace, mercy, loving kindness, righteousness/justice. This is who God is. As God has been, in these senses, he forever will be. God can be trusted to be faithful to his revealed character.

For the senses in which God does change, read the previous posts on this blog.

I am wrong; God is not relative–unless . . . in the biblical story, God deals with every situation in the same way. But He doesn’t.

Examples:

Genesis, chapter 4.
When Adam and Eva disobeyed and ate forbidden fruit, God drove them out of Eden where they were condemned to sweat and toil for their livelihood. Then when their son, Cain, violently took his anger out on his brother, Abel, God condemned him to be a wandering fugitive, but “put a mark” on him, a mark that would protect him from the violence of others.

Genesis, chapter 6.
When, in the days of Noah, “the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” God responded with “behold, I will bring a flood of waters on the earth . . . [and] everything that is on the earth shall die.” (Except, that “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord”).

We could continue in Genesis with the cases of Lot’s wife (a pillar of salt), and Jacob (limping with a wounded thigh). Skipping to Numbers, we could consider Miriam (leprosy), and Moses (forbidden entrance to the Promised Land).

On and on through the Bible we could go, but this has been enough to make the point. When God punished human sin, the punishment was different each time. They were not all driven from their home, drowned, turned to salt, stricken with leprosy, nor forbidden to taste the fruit of their life’s labor. On each occasion, God related differently, his response relative to the situation.

Turning to the New Testament, we observe only a few of the actions of Jesus. Simon’s mother-in-law was healed when Jesus took her by the hand and lifted her up. A paralytic was merely told, “Take up your bed and walk,” and immediately was healed. Apparently, a Syrophoenician woman’s demon-possessed daughter was healed only after she argued about it with Jesus. None of Jesus’ healings followed a fixed pattern. Moreover, it seems certain, at least to me, that his differing treatments were not chosen arbitrarily. Each was relative to the occasion.

None but Nicodemus were told they needed to be “born again.” Only to the Samaritan woman was offered “living water.” Only the “rich young ruler” was told to “sell all that you have and distribute to the poor.” Only the thief on the cross was told, “today you will be with me in Paradise.” We find no specific “plan of salvation.”

In Paul’s writings, some are “saved,” others “cleansed,” “redeemed,” “regenerated,” “reconciled,” “justified,” “received the Spirit,” “set free,” “made alive,” “delivered and transferred”–the language is always relative.
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In the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments were not given as universal requirements; they were directed only to Israel, relative to God’s special purpose for this, his covenant nation. In the New Testament, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was not addressed to the entirety of the human race, but only to his disciples, relative to God’s purpose for them. Both groups, the recipients of Ten Commandments and of the Sermon on the Mount, have meaning only relative to larger God’s concern for his entire broken creation.
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No, God does not operate by any predetermined, set method. One last example is found in the way God deals with Israel’s enemy nations. In the Old Testament, God almost always uses violent and militaristic means to save his people, Israel. God is a warrior. In the New Testament, with Israel–and then with his New Israel–under Roman oppression and persecution, God the Warrior does not come to the rescue. Rather, his chosen method of response–revealed, exemplified, and taught by Jesus–seems to be suffering, sacrificial, and loving service. This appears to be some kind of major shift in God’s modus operandi.

We may conclude that for us today, God deals with each of us according to our own need, personality, situation, and openness to his help. Accordingly, we should avoid limiting our presentation of God, our way of working with God to any set formula or pattern.

Everything considered and all action taken is always relative to God and to the unique occasion.

More to come.

Prove that God is not relative. A couple of days ago I suggested several ways to do this. Today, I address the first three:

• God is not relative unless the Bible clearly reveals a trinitarian God.
• God is not relative unless the Bible clearly affirms that God is love.
• God is not relative unless the Bible asserts that all God wants of us is love.

Few readers would deny that the Bible clearly reveals a trinitarian God, clearly affirms that God is love, and asserts that all God wants of us is love. Some, however, would question how this demonstrates divine relativity. Therefore we will review each of these core Christian beliefs.

Love is a personal relationship. Love is the ideal way one person relates to another. Love relates persons. Love is relate-I’ve. Some have suggested that it would be better to say that love is relation-al. To say that love is relational is certainly true, but the word, relational,
breaks down to relate-ion-al. The relational is relative. (I hope you can relate to this.) Since God is love, God is relate-ive/relative in nature.

Christianity is not an ordinary monotheism. It, rather, is a trinitarian monotheism: one God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit, in eternal relation, eternally relating to each other in love. The heart of God is relate-ive/relative.

All of God’s laws, all God’s commandments, all of his requirements are subsumed under the greatest commandment: to love God and to love each other–to rightly relate to God and each other. Everyone is relative to God; God is relative to everyone and everything. Some of us relate rightly, some wrongly. God relates to some of us with blessing and to others he relates his disfavor.

The Trinitarian God is internally and eternally relative. Humanity was created relative to God, to each other, and to the rest of his creation. God is relative to all creation; all creation is relative to God.

In the great ecological web of life, everything is related, ultimately to everything, supremely to God. Relational disconnect is impossible in a world created by the trinitarian God who is love.

I realize that I am using “relative” in a special way, but it is a valid usage of language, and it is sound reasoning. In our next blog I will talk about a second usage of relative, one that echoes throughout the Bible.

I realize also that today’s blog is somewhat abstruse. I will try to avoid this kind of writing as much as possible.

I realize also that this has been repetitive and reiterative, but “repetition is the mother of learning.”

If you have been reading this blog for some time, you know that it claims as The Gospel Truth that God is relative and that there are no absolutes. This claim flies in the face of the long-established history of Christian thinking. Thus, it is highly probable that this blog does not tell the truth.

Be aware, however, that what I write and my line of reasoning proceeds from development within the complex story that the Christian Bible narrates; I am not reasoning from the traditions that root in Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, nor any other tradition. If I am wrong, it is because I have not read the Bible with clear eyes.

Anyone who would prove that the idea of divine relativity is wrong-headed, all they would have to do is to prove that:

• The Bible does not clearly reveal a Trinitarian God
• The Bible does not clearly affirm that God is love
• The Bible does not plainly say that all God wants of is love
• God deals with every situation in the same way
• God micro-manages every actual occasion, totally controls every actual entity
• God is never disappointed
• God is impassive, apathetic
• God is never dependant on anything or anyone
• God’s course of action is never frustrated
• God ordained all the attitudes and actions of: Cain, Noah after the flood, Saul, David, Solomon (indeed, all the kings of Israel and Judah), the Herod family, Judas, Simon Peter, Saul of Tarsus, as well as the churches in Corinth, Galatia, and the Seven Churches of Asia
• The Bible speaks uniformly of faith
• The Bible sets forth one linguistic form of a “plan of salvation”
• The Bible speaks of salvation in any definitive language
• God never changes his mind or way
• God intends the failures of the Israel of the Old Covenant
• The human birth of Jesus, Immanuel, was not a new experience in the life of God
• Jesus’ cry of despair made no difference to God
• The Gethsemane prayer and Golgotha’s despair don’t mean what they say.
• The Bible explicitly claims that God is absolute
• Prayer makes no difference to God
• Human repentance makes no difference to God
• God is not up against any strong countervailing forces
• The Bible indicates any kind of ultimate sovereignty other than the Jesus kind
• Any of God’s commands, laws, demands are not rooted in love, aspects of, instances of, and guides or tutors to love.

If you would disprove the idea that God is relative and that there are no absolutes, I am open to consider the possibility that I’ve taken a wrong direction, but I am open only to challenges that are spelled out in terms of the above options. I do not accept the authority of any theologian, tradition, philosopher, or creed, although I freely admit that some of them, inescapably, have been significant elements in the formation of the way my mind works.

I know this much: I know it is possible that I have misunderstood the Bible, because I know that I have neither God nor the Bible figured out. They remain beyond my comprehension.
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It remains for me to revisit many of the line items listed above and explain what I mean and what some of the implications are.

God’s Administration Concised

[This is a supplement to the previous blog, which should be read in preparation to best understand this one. Today I am using the traditional--and appropriate–term, The Kingdom of God.]

Jesus’ theme was “The Kingdom of God”; the Kingdom is thus the core of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but nowhere does the New Testament define the meaning of the Kingdom. Dozens, if not hundreds, of books and lectures have done this for us, but in ways that continue to controvert each other.

Debate about this meaning has raged for more than a century. Few of these touch on more than just one part of the meaning. What follows is a concise definition, one that fits each biblical occurrence of the term.

The Kingdom of God is: Wherever God is King.
The Kingdom of God is: Wherever God rules.
The Kingdom of God is: Wherever things are done the way God wants them done.
The Kingdom of God is: Wherever God’s will is done.

The Kingdom of God, on the scene of human history, is: Wherever God is allowed to rule.
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Some would claim that God is King everywhere, thus the rephrasing: wherever God rules. Again, many would claim that God rules everywhere, thus the rephrasing: wherever things are done the way God wants them done (which, paraphrased, means: wherever God’s will is done).

Most thinking people would agree that many things are done in this world that are not done the way God would have them. In the biblical story, God repeatedly says so. This invalidates the claims that God is King everywhere, and that God rules everywhere. In an ideal kingdom, things are done as the king desires (dictates). God’s dictates are not always done.

Wherever (“wherever,” not meant geographically, but, wherever it is the case that) God is found in control, there is the kingdom of God. Wherever there is a church, a family, an individual, or anything that operates like God wants it to operate, there is the Kingdom of God.

Thus, it is possible for someone to be, “not far” from the Kingdom, in other words, nearly ready for God to rule. The Kingdom is “within,” or “among” you; that is where God rules when he does. Jesus says that we should pray: “Thy kingdom come, they will be done (the same idea reiterated), on earth as it is in heaven.” In heaven things are done God’s way. We are to pray to God that his rule might come on earth as it already is in heaven. Jesus told Nicodemus that without a fundamental change in who we are, God cannot rule in our lives.
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Moving now from the core definition to actual human history, God rules only where he is allowed to. Again, I can almost hear the objections coming: God can rule wherever he wants to. He is not dependent on human co-operation. He is the sovereign (later we’ll devote a day to the idea of sovereignty).

No, God does not impose his will on us. He does not coerce. He is not a tyrant. Read the Bible carefully and you will find that, after the creation of the human and until the end of human history, God works in this world only where there is co-operative human trust and obedience.

Note that in Mark 6:5-6, the Bible says that, in his hometown, “[Jesus] could not do any miracles there,” because of their unbelief. It does not read that he did not do any miracles, or that he would not do them. Rather it says that he could not do them, not because he lacked either the power or the desire, but because of their unbelief.

Here where we live, within the time of human history, God works in relation to us. He works relative to our cooperation. We can disrupt God’s work, God’s rule, by failure to trust and therefore to obey him. God will not force his way on us. God is not a dictatorial tyrant.

Remember, however, that the New Testament makes it clear that a time is coming, beyond human history, when God will rule completely, whether or not anyone believes. God’s rule will, one of these days, be total. It might be a good idea to get on good, cooperative terms with him before that unpredictable day arrives.

The President of the United States, George W. Bush is in trouble. At a rate that is increasingly disturbing to the president, the American people are losing confidence in his administration. Most particularly they are reacting against his administration of the four-year-old war with Iraq. They are much more opposed to the way he has administered the war than they are opposed either to the president or to the war.

On the other hand, the war would have never come about were it not for the detestable way that Saddam Hussein, for more than two decades, administered the internal affairs of Iraq.

Governmental administrations are judged in a variety of ways: the personality of the chief governmental officer, the accomplishments of their administration, or as in the two widely different administrations above, by the manner in which they conducted their administration, the way they led or ruled.
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In the 21st Century, many of us live in nations that have no king, want no king, and are turned off by the very idea of having a supreme ruler with the power to single-handedly rule according to his own dictates. Thus, the idea of the Kingdom of God does not resonate with many of us.

When we are told that, in the Kingdom of God, we are to obey, submit, trust, and surrender our own wishes to the “will” of God, we do not hear this as tidings of “comfort and joy,” as a word of “good news.” We are not about to surrender our all, the all of our “only-one-time, only-one-chance” life, to anyone. It is our life. We find the very idea of submission repugnant.

So when Jesus comes saying, “repent and believe the good news of the Kingdom of God,” these words have little appeal to the heart or mind of 21st Century people. For most of us, there is nothing new about this; we have heard these words and the accompanying story for most of our lives. It is not new, and we see nothing good about “entering” any this or any other kingdom.
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So, what if I make a change in the language, a change that is completely consistent with the language of the New Testament. Drawing on the immediately previous blog for an understanding of “repent” and “believe,” I suggest we take Jesus to be saying: “Change the way you think about, the way you understand everything. Reorient your focus. Change your mind about life.”

“Why,” we ask, “should I give up what I believe to be true and go some other direction?” The answer: “Because God’s way of governing is near, is available. God’s way of ruling is more appealing and attractive than anything we know about. God’s way of ruling–God’s administration, (kingdom)--is good.”

And what is so good about it? For one thing, it takes most of the ways our world is run and turns them on their ear. Someone has called it the “upside-down kingdom”; others say that it is, rather, the “right side up” way of control.

Yes, governance is always about control; it is about the power to control. The Bible claims that the time is coming when Jesus Christ will be made “king of kings and lord of lords, and he shall reign forever and ever.” The time is coming when he shall be put in complete control of all things.

That–exactly that–is the good news. This Jesus, whose story and words we find in the New Testament, will have all things put under his feet. He will be made the supreme administrator and given the power to do what he wants. Why makes this a good word? How can this be good news?

Read, or reread about Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (I suggest, for reading purposes, that you change the traditional order, and read Mark, Luke, Matthew, and then John–just a suggestion). Try as you read to set aside everything you have ever heard or read about Jesus. Try–although none of us can completely do it–to read all this again as if it were the first time you had read it, as if you had never heard anything about it. Then try to imagine a world where this one, Jesus of Nazareth, was in charge of everything. Then you will know why this government, this way of administering human affairs is called, “good.”
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Part of what we are called on to “repent” of--in the 21st Century as it was in the 1st Century–is the old understandings of God’s ways, understandings passed on to us by our society, (and that includes our Christian society). This Jesus Way is not new; it began long ago. On the other hand, it is new, because it has been distorted, perverted, misunderstood, modified, and misrepresented until nowadays it is almost unknown and unrecognizable.

The Jesus Way was born in what we have come to call the “Greco-Roman” world. Judea and Galilee were occupied and ruled by the Romans. The entire Roman Empire, at that time, was, in its language and thought, a Greek world. But the Jesus Way was born a part of that world that was innately Hebraic, formed and filled with the stories and ways of the Hebrew Bible.

The Jesus Movement sprang from this cultural mix. It was relatively pure and simple as it entered the 2nd Century, but then this spring of “living water” began dividing into two different channels–one Greek philosophical, the other the Jesus Way of life--that have commingled, separated, coalesced and divided until by our time they seem to have become inextricable.

This blog is a continuing effort to extricate, as much as possible, the Jesus Way--the kingdom or administration or governance of God--from the theological traditions that have allowed the waters of this spring to become polluted. In the days ahead, we have much more of this to consider.

In this blog, “God Is Relative,” I am quarreling with the church, and with its historical self-understanding and development. But realize, please, that this is a lover’s quarrel. In spite of my anger and disappointment, I am not going to abandon the church; I’ve never considered that

My feelings about the church are ambivalent. It is one of the places I am most comfortable; it is one of the places I feel most uncomfortable. I feel at home in church. I am part of this family. I am part of this very dysfunctional family. I am staying, but I understand quite well why many others choose to leave, or having visited, choose not to return.

I intend two things in this blog: First, to speak to those who grew up in church, but left and have no intention of returning, those who grew up in church but miss it and wish it were different, and those who have stayed in the church but are uncomfortable about it. I am also writing for those who have no church background, except enough to bore or anger them, but who know that something is missing from their life, something neither science nor “stuff” can satisfy.

My second intention is to call on the church to reconsider what they believe and teach about God. The church routinely misrepresents God, thereby furnishing many with a good reason to abandon and/or ignore church and church people. This dysfunctional “family of God” needs family counseling, needs it badly. I am attempting to make some small contribution to get church folk to consider seeking such counsel. It is available.
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Someone recently told me that I am, in fact, writing more to folks who are an active part of the church, rather than to that large population that has no active relationship to the church and is not interested. If so, I am failing in what I set out to do. I am an active member of both groups, and am attempting to address both.

I am attempting, in this series of blogs, to present an alternative understanding of the Christian God, and of the changes this might bring about. I am writing nothing original. Many others, addressing different elements of this need, are speaking, writing, and leading toward a different future for Christian understanding and action.
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I was surprised when, recently I realized that what I am attempting is frighteningly close to the same thing that Jesus was doing. An uneasy place to be. A place that possibly could be arrogant or naive. Near the beginning of the story of Jesus we are told that he “came saying: ‘repent and believe the good news of the Kingdom of God.’” Who am I, I asked myself, to be attempting the same thing? Nonetheless, I think it fits.

Please stay with me as I get a bit academic about words and ideas. I promise not to stay there long.

Let’s take that one word at a time, beginning with “repent,” a word that is commonly misunderstood. Shuv is the major word in the Hebrew Old Testament translated as, “repent,” This word has the very simple literal meaning, “turn.” This includes left turn, right turn, turn around, turn back, turn aside, or any other usage of the word. It refers to a change of direction, whether literal or figurative, physical or mental, intentional or emotional. That is all.

Metanoeo is the major word in the Greek New Testament translated as, “repent,” This word is derived from the Greek preposition, meta, and the noun, nous.

“Meta,” depending on its context, can be translated as: among, with, after, afterward, behind. “Nous” is the Greek word for the mind, reason, thought. It comes from the verb, ginosko. Note the “no” shared by the verb and the noun. Note also, in English, that “knowledge,” and “know,” share the same “no.”

When combined as meta-noeo (repent), and used in the New Testament, it takes from nous the idea of how we think, what we think, the way we understand reality. From meta, it takes on the common time-related sense of “after.”

To repent is to change the direction of our thought–shuv–from the way we previously have understood reality, from the previous major premise of our reasoning, and now, after thinking one way for perhaps most of our life, to adopt a new mind. In a major way, to have a “second thought,” an “afterthought.” To repent is to rethink reality, and adopt–and therefore live by--the new understanding.

Thus, when, on several occasions in the Old Testament, God is,said to repent, it is telling us that God had taken some action or had spoken some intention, but then turned, changed his mind, had second thoughts. As a result, he changed either his actions or his attitude. Both reflect change--of some sort–taking place within God. They indicate both that God is affected by human conduct and that God has affections, an emotional life.

This repentance on God’s part challenges the traditional ideas that God is incapable of, cannot, does not,change. More particularly, it challenges the idea that God is unaffected emotionally by anything. Stated more positively, it indicates that the biblical God is indeed a “living” God, an involved God, and a God who cares.

Paul Tillich believed that everyone believed in God, that whatever our “ultimate concern” is is our God. One fellow, in resonse to Tillich’s definition, said, “My ultimate concern is whether “The Ultimate” is concerned with me.” The divine repentance is one indication of God’s involvement and concern.

The traditional Christian understanding of God sees him as absolute, all-powerful, unchangeable, unaffected by anything, and all-knowing. (Although they would, and will, cry out in horror, the fact is that the common understanding of the Christian God makes it hard to distinguish God from a tyrant). This blog is an argument that this way of thinking about God needs to change.

We need to repent, to rethink, to reconsider the entire biblical story and its stories, and to see what God is and does.

“Repent and believe the good news of the Kingdom of God.” Belief is not a religious word. It is a word that shapes all aspects of human life. We live by what we believe to be true. We act on the basis of what we believe, what we are convinced of, what we are convicted of. We all put our faith in something. We all trust something, some things, principles, persons.

To repent means that on the basis of a new mind, a new understanding, we change the focus of our belief, our faith, our trust, and thus, the basis and direction of all our thought and action. Repentance and faith are two sides of one coin.

On one occasion when Alexander the Great was quite sick, his doctor–and good friend--brought a potion for him to drink. However, Alexander received a note from one of his advisors, saying that the doctor had poisoned his medicine. Acting contrary to conventional wisdom, Alexander--believing, trusting, having faith in his friend–unhesitatingly drank the medicine, thanked the doctor, and got well.

We never repent if we still believe the old way is the one to be trusted. We repent only if somehow we come to believe the old is wrong, and/or that another is the better way.

[My next post will continue this rephrased and expanded statement of what I am about in these writings. Thus far, I’ve spoken only of “repent and believe,” and must deal also with “the good news of the kingdom of God.]

The End Does Justify the Means


Few days pass between the times I hear someone disparagingly say, “Yes, they believe the end justifies the means.” They don’t know what they are talking about. They have not thought about what they are saying.

The end does justify the means. It is always what justifies the mean, we just don’t realize it. We commonly misunderstand what our disturbance is really about. Were we to attain conceptual clarity, we would realize the problem lies in a disagreement about the appropriate ends.

If the end, if the goal, is to convict the accused in a court of law, any means is justified if it leads to conviction. If the end--goal, purpose--is to achieve a just society, we may use only those means that will lead to that end. Once again though we may use any means that will in truth produce a just society. Our real issue is always one of ends.

Adolf Hitler was justified in the death camps since his goal was to develop a pure Aryan race of people in Germany or Europe. Our problem with Hitler is our disagreement that this is an appropriate end. If Hitler’s actual goal was to restore stability, a lasting stability to the economic and social life of Germany, he used the wrong means. They only seemed, for a short time, to justify the means he used. It remains true that his chosen means could not achieve a civil society as its end.

The idea that the end justifies the means is often identified with pragmatism, simplistically understood as, “whatever works is right,” or “whatever works is the truth.” Again, I affirm the validity of the pragmatic understanding of life. The real issue at stake here is tied up in two concerns: how do we understand works, and, the question of time?

Are we talking about what seems to work in the immediate situation, or are thinking of what works in the long run? The difference is enormous. The American pragmatist philosophers, Peirce, James, and Dewey, were considering what works “in the long haul.” This is quite different from what seems to work in the instant.

Here we see the nature of pragmatism and the ends/means question converge. If for a student, the end is simply to make an “A” in the class, and if cheating works--accomplishes an “A”--then cheating is justified by the grade received. It was the “right” thing to do.

Few would concede that making an “A” in school is the end of human being and doing. If, on the other hand, the end is to become an educated, trained, and skilled person, cheating will not work. That means cannot accomplish that end. It is wrong. If the end is to become a person of character and integrity, productive and responsible in private, business, and civil life, cheating on a test won’t work. That means prevents us from attaining the desired end.

Means and ends always exist in relation to each other. As Hegel indicates, the means are aufgeheben (caught up and remain) in the end, thus some ends cannot be achieved by some means. Means enter into the ends they are instrumental in reaching. They continue to participate in the end itself.

If your goal is an angel food cake, you may use any list of ingredients and any method of preparation, if it produces a genuine angel food cake. But not just any means will fit your purpose. Two tablespoons of cayenne pepper, or baking at 150 degrees for twelve hours will never produce a satisfactory dessert. On the other hand, there are many variant recipes for angel food cake and many of them produce a delicious treat. Especially with strawberries drizzled over the top.

Because Christians are in the forefront of condemning those who act as if they believe that the end justifies the means, I add one more example to illustrate the fallacy of their condemnation. If the kingdom of God is the ultimate end of human life, indeed of human history, then anything may be done that leads to that result.

We are free to act, believe, or lead others in any fashion imaginable, if and only if, it leads to the rule of God–the Kingdom of God--in our world. On the other hand, no act, belief, or leadership, however trivial, is justified if it contributes nothing at all to making this world more of what God desires and intends.

Pragmatism is not the only view that understands what is here at issue. Situation ethics agrees completely, in fact, it includes pragmatism as one of its basic premises. Actually many ethical theories begin with a consideration of the Summum Bonum, the greatest good. They start with the question, “What is the end/goal/purpose of human life?

If ethics is to tell us what we must do if we are to be good, it must first define the nature of the supreme good. However it construes “good,” it then sets out a system on how we may attain that end. The ethical system that develops is valid only if it serves as a means to the formation of good people who perform good deeds and are capable of making judgments about the deeds and character of others.

As I said, situation ethics is a special instance of this kind of teleological approach to morality. People condemn situation ethics because they have come to see certain rules and principles as ends in themselves rather than as means to the Summum Bonum.

Situation ethics--like its kindred idea, relativism--is a term used quite loosely. Certainly many use it as an excuse to justify behavior that is highly questionable. But if we recognize that the term came into popular usage in the 1960s after the publication of Joseph Fletcher’s controversial, Situation Ethics, we are obligated to understand the idea as he first developed .

Few have taken the time to give the book a thoughtful reading. I admit that the style of the book is a major hindrance to understanding what Fletcher argues. Apparently in an effort to make it the best-selling book it was, Fletcher filled it with illustrations of its application in sexual morality. He seemed to justify a variety of sexual situations in a way that disturbs many readers who want to be fair with his thought.

The fact is that Fletcher’s generous use of example situations to illustrate his point accomplish the exact opposite. They obscure the ideas that are the heart of the book.

One of Fletcher’s dominant ideas is that we can’t pre-scribe what action is right until we are in an actual situation. Verbal examples, such as he mistakenly included in his book, are not actual life situations, no matter how completely they are described. If Fletcher were consistent with his guiding principles, his examples would have been excluded or, at least, greatly qualified. As it is, they confuse. But, of course, they do maintain interest and did help sell the book. Most of the controversy was occasioned by the misleading “illustrations.”
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In the entire biblical narrative, we see God in action and hear God speaking, always, in relation to a specific situation, an actual occasion. What is right or wrong depends on God’s judgment in this particular situation.

The end desired by God never changes. God’s goal, purpose, end, is that his way–self-giving love--should rule, control his entire creation, producing in the end a universal community of peace and joy. Again, if we carefully examine all God does and says in the scriptural story, we find that he uses any means that will, in the long haul work–and some of these make us wonder about him–to accomplish his intention.

Michael Card, writing on Incarnation, said: “While we struggle with our many ‘clumsy words,’ God needs only one Word to perfectly communicate the depth and mystery, the passion and the overwhelming grace of who He is.” If this is true, and most Christians believe it is, then the gospel accounts of Jesus validate the claim that God is relative.

If Jesus is God’s full and final word that God has to speak to us, we learn who God is by keeping an eye on Jesus as we follow him through the gospel stories. What does he do and say, and in what manner? Let’s follow him through The Gospel according to Mark, where the elemental narrative is traced, and see what we find.
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When we first meet him, he is coming into Galilee, “preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.” Those who first saw him in action, knowing nothing about any subsequent understandings of Jesus, would have identified him as an itinerant preacher.

Almost immediately he begins gathering about him a select group of followers (disciples/those who follow because they are drawn to someone, with learning as their intent). These will comprise the group that later will be known as The Twelve disciples. He is not only a preacher, he can now be seen as a leader.

He saw two fishermen, Simon and Andrew, and told them to follow him and he would “make them fishers of men.” If we note this, we will find that--apparently--he never spoke of making fishers of men to anyone else. Next, he summons another pair of brothers, James and John who also are fishermen. It would be fair to assume he told them he would make them “fishers of men,” but the text doesn’t mention it. It would only be an assumption on our part.

The next selection we read of is a tax man named Levi; Jesus did not tell him that he would make him a collector of God’s taxes. It is not long before many other disciples join Jesus. They elect to follow him. Out of this group, Jesus will choose only a few. We are not far into the narrative before we learn who they are. For the present purpose, I mention only one, another Simon. He, we are told, is a member of the paramilitary group called the Zealots. Jesus says nothing to him about making him a gospel soldier.

We know none of the specifics of Jesus’ calling of any of the twelve, except the five noted above. From those, however, we see that the words of his calling varied from person to person.

We also note that he could be identified as a preacher, a not unusual type in the world of Judaism. He might be known to others as a leader, the leader of a small group that he may have been organizing for some special purpose. We might watch to see if he might be recognized as an organizer. Preacher, leader, organizer–all might be appropriate titles by which he could be known.

Shortly after the choosing of the four fishermen, Jesus appears in a Jewish meeting house on the Sabbath and astonished the congregation with the authority of his teaching. From this point in the story, we will see teaching as one of the two or three of his most prominent activities. We can add teacher to our list of possible titles that might be used to identify him.

After leaving the synagogue, he went directly to the home of Simon and Andrew, where Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed, sick. When they told Jesus about her, he took her by the hand. Immediately she was healed. No mention is made of a request for healing, no mention of the faith of Simon, his mother-in-law, or anyone else. The significance of faith, relative to the work of Jesus, is not as clear as later generations have made it.

If you are reading this with a copy of Mark open before you, you may find interesting to watch for the place of faith in Jesus’ healing ministry. As in this case, it is not always mentioned at all. We will see faith often given great prominence, leaving us to wonder about those occasions when it is not mentioned in Mark’s story.

Healing by Jesus follows no set procedure. Watch to see if it does not vary from one individual to another; see if he deals with each occasion in its own singularity, seemingly dependent on the situation.

I mentioned that teaching would prove to be one of the two or three activities that dominate the story of Jesus’ activities. Healing will emerge as one of the others.

The story has yet to lead us out of Mark’s first chapter, and already we can notice that he deals differently with each situation. Whether some of us are prepared to talk about situation ethics, we do begin to observe in Jesus a situational approach to life. What he does is done relative to the situation. He takes whatever the appropriate action to bring the Kingdom of God, the power of the Gospel to bear on the needs of the occasion.

If, as Michael Card has suggested, God needs only one Word to make himself and his ways known to us, and if Jesus is the Word of God, then, among other things, we see that God’s action is apparently relative to human need. God relates to us where we are, wherever that might be---each of us in each of our specific situations. In God’s eyes we are individuals, and every situation is different. We cannot discern any simple formula by which God always performs his work.

Moreover, we have at least a hint that Jesus might be legitimately known by titles other than Savior, Lord, or Messiah. Even these titles are relative. To those in trouble, he is their Savior; to those who commit their lives into his trust, he is their Lord, their Master; to the Jew, he is their hoped for and anticipated Messiah, the one anointed by God to redeem them. We will find that Jesus is given many titles, and that each is understood relatively. No one of them is absolute.
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Since we are still in the first chapter of Mark’s story, told with God’s one Word, we will follow the story for at least another day or two–probably no more than that unless you ask for more. The major point I want to make will have been well-established by that time.

If I believe God is relative, how did I come up with the idea, and what makes me so sure of it that I am publicing it as a definitive truth?

The idea never occurred to me before I was fifty-years-old, but it came about as a result of fifty years of church attendance and thirty-some years of Bible reading. It gradually emerged from nearly thirty years of formal study of theology. No teacher or preacher ever suggested the idea, neither intentionally nor directly. It came to me full-blown, plain and clear out of my entire experience with the things of God.
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I am such a logical thinker that most friends and acquaintances assume that logic is my primary mode of thought. I am a logician, but have not always been. I am not by nature a logical person. It is a method of thinking that I learned only in my late thirties. I have since, taught logic in universities for more than thirty years. It is now so imbedded in my mind that it is second nature for me to think logically.

My primary thought, however, comes from my sense of the whole. I am by nature a gestalt thinker. I somehow sense meaning before I understand or can explain. It might seem to be intuitive knowledge, but it comes not from intuition but from observation of the “big picture.”

Ordinarily my perception of the gestalt of a thing is somewhat vague or fuzzy; it is definite without sharp definitions. That first impression generally proves to be correct, but not always. I am keenly aware that I could be wrong, so usually I turn to logic to check it out.

Gestalt: A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts. From Middle High German: “form, configuration, appearance.”

After half a century of living with God and the things of God, I saw divine relativity as the gestalt of the Bible, not seen in its parts but in the whole. I came to see it first neither in the details of any particular verses of scripture nor in any specific part of the Bible. Rather, it arose in my consciousness as the dominant biblical theme. All else found its meaning only as it contributed to this overall picture.

All of this is, I realize, somewhat vague and subjective. Neither evidence nor proof has been offered. Thus, as is my habit, I turned to logic to see if the idea of a relative God stood up under the careful scrutiny of reason.

In psychology, rationalization is the process of constructing a logical justification for something that was decided on the ground of some mental process other than logic. Ordinarily, rationalization is seen as a logical coverup for flawed beliefs.

In what follows, I have carefully avoided any improper use of reason to rationalize my theological position. I leave it to you to decide whether I am reasoning or rationalizing.

One of the more useful logical forms is called the Reduction ad Absurdum, “a mode of argumentation that seeks to establish a contention by deriving an absurdity from its denial, thus arguing that a thesis must be accepted because its rejection would be untenable.”

In the following, I present numerous theological reductios, to prove that it is absurd to deny the notion that God is relative. The blog is long, so if you get the point early on, you might want to just skip down and see how it is ended.
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If God is immutable, then he cannot change (by definition).
God does change (as I will establish in the next paragraph).
Therefore, God is not immutable.

In 1 Samuel 8, the story is told of Israel’s plea to Samuel to provide them a king, like other nations. When Samuel speaks to God about this, the Lord tells him to listen to the people, but to warn them of what life under a human king would be like. He lets Samuel off the hook, telling him that the people have rejected God as their king, not Samuel as their respected leader.

The people ignore God’s warning about the nature of a kingship, and in chapter 10 the story is told of Saul as God’s choice for their king. See in particular, 10:24.

A reading of the first ten chapters of 1 Samuel makes it apparent that God is their king and has no desire to be replaced. However, in response to the insistence of his covenant people, God has Samuel anoint Saul king over Israel. God changed his plan of action, in response to his people.

Later, in 1 Samuel 13:13-14, the text indicates that Saul and his descendants would have ruled over Israel forever if Saul had been obedient. Since, however, he had not, God rejected whom earlier he had chosen. In chapter 16:12-14, God explicitly takes his Spirit from Saul, his chosen, and an evil spirit now enters Saul.

In this passage, God’s Spirit now comes upon David, God’s new choice. God’s earlier choice failed, so he makes a new choice. In doing so, God has changed his course of action, not his purpose, not his character, only the means of accomplishing that purpose. Nonetheless, in some sense, he changed.

We could have adverted to the story of Noah, Moses, or later, to Solomon, Jonah, or a multitude of other instances. If God is immutable--and this is a cardinal feature of traditional Christian doctrine--then, by definition, he cannot change. He does, in certain definable senses, often change in the course of the biblical story, therefore God is not immutable. Thus, the cardinal doctrine of divine immutability misrepresents the God revealed in the Christian scriptures, and therefore must be rejected.

An interesting question about the supposed divine immutability can be seen in a particular contrast between the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, God is found regularly warring against and defeating the enemies of his people, Israel. In the New Testament, Rome has invaded and now occupies and rules over Israel, but there is no indication that God is going to war against and defeat this Roman enemy (except, perhaps, depending on how you interpret the book of Revelation, he may intend to do this in some future–a future distant from the present).

In the past he has defeated the Egyptian, the Amalekite, the Canaanite, the Midianite, the Philistine, . . . the Syrian, and numerous other enemies of his people. In the present, New Testament, situation, God takes no military initiative against the Roman. In fact, when God-with-Us (Immanuel), Jesus is arrested by the Romans and Peter draws his sword against them, Jesus not only attempts no self-defense, he denounces the use of the sword.

It would appear that in the New Testament, God has changed his modus operandus from using violence as a common way of dealing with his opponents to the use of suffering as a means of transformation.
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If God is omniscient and omnipotent, he knows how to make his people obey.
In Hosea 6:4, God says he doesn’t know what to do.
Therefore, God is not omniscient.

God has richly blessed Israel, he has punished/disciplined them, he has sent prophets to warn them, he has pleaded with them--all efforts to persuade them to obey and thus live out God’s purpose for them. But in Hosea’s time, after much pleading, a frustrated God finally says: “O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee?”

Nothing God has done has worked. He has done all he knows how to do to correct them, to bring about an attitude adjustment, but Israel, for the most part, has ignored him. Now God, seemingly at his wit’s end, doesn’t know what to do.

Many of us have heard such words from our frustrated parents, or perhaps as frustrated parents, spoken them to our children. After teaching them the right, correcting them, punishing them, praising them, taking them into our arms and pleading with them, they have still rebelled. Finally the day came, seems always to come, when the parents throw up their hands and ask, “What is it going to take? Your father and I have done everything we know how.” In desperation the parent often adds, “You tell us. You tell us what it is going to take.”

The supposedly omniscient (all-knowing) God here appears not to know how to change his people. So, later, in Jeremiah and ultimately in Jesus, God lays aside his Plan A and sets forth Plan B, a New Covenant (New Testament).

If God knows everything (and if he has all power, can do anything he wants to do), why doesn’t he know how to make his special people do right?

The fact remains that if God is omniscient, he knows how to induce obedience. Hosea 6:4 documents at least one instance in which God confesses that he does not know how to do this. Therefore, God is not omniscient, at least not in some so-called absolute or comprehensive sense.

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If God is impassible, he will neither grieve, be pleased, nor be angry.
He is on occasion grieved, pleased, and angry.
Therefore, God is not impassible.

For at least seven centuries, the divine impassibility has been a common feature of Christian theology. Impassibility refers to the inability to experience emotion, especially suffering.

In very early Christian discussions of God as Father, Son, Spirit–Trinity–Jesus, the Son of God, was seen as so distinct from God the Father, that while it was affirmed that Jesus suffered on the cross, God did not suffer because God the Father (pater) was impassible. Those who differed were called patripassionists, and patripassionism was declared a heresy.

So, let’s suppose that God cannot experience emotion, and then examine God’s written story as inspired by the Spirit of God. I’ll not devote space to detail the references, but repeatedly the Bible speaks of God as: being well-pleased, being not-pleased, angry, loving, having compassion, hating, patient, long-suffering, frustrated, indeed having a rich emotional life.

Whatever this might mean upon further investigation, it does show that God experiences emotion. And it demonstrates that what we do or don’t do affects how God feels. God has affections, and God’s emotions are somewhat dependant on us.

If God is impassive, he has no feelings. But the written record gives irrefutable evidence of God’s feelings. So, it cannot be true that God is impassive.
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If God’s actions are not relative, then he will give no case-specific commands.
Most, if not all, of God’s commands are case-specific.
Therefore, God ‘s actions are relative.

God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel, not to Finland, Brazil, Zambia, and not to any other nation or people. God commanded the Israelites to march around Jericho for seven days. He did not tell them to use this maneuver against any other city. Jesus’ commands/teachings in the Sermon on the Mount were not addressed to the world, but to his followers.

Jesus told only one person, a rich man, to sell all he had, then follow him. He told only one woman to go call her husband. He did not tell everyone to wipe the dust from off their feet. He gave this order only to his apostles. Examples could be multiplied. You can check the book for yourself.

Another way of making the same point is to note that almost everything God says, almost everything that God Incarnate says, is directed to a specific person or group on a specific occasion.

It all depends on the situation. Just an example or two will suffice. Each prophet was addressing a particular historical occasion in Israel’s history. They were not standing on some high hill speaking God’s universal word for the entire world to heed. Jesus told only one person he needed to be born again, he offered living water only to one, he healed some because of their faith, others because of the faith of the faith of someone else. It all depended in the need of the situation; it was all occasion appropriate. God does not operate by some single inflexible plan.

If God’s actions are not relative, he will use the same approach in every situation, but he does not use just a single method. We may conclude then, that God’s actions are relative.
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If God is not relative, then Father/Spirit/Son do not relate.
Father/Spirit/Son do relate.
Therefore, God is relative.

This blog has gotten far too long today, so I will abbreviate some things that are obvious. The Father affirms his love of the Son; the Son prays to the Father; The Spirit validates the Son.

God is love. Love is not some kind of substance or principle. It is a relation between persons. God is love. God is trinitarian eternally. God is one God: Spirit Father, Son, in eternal relation, a singular community of love. Christians are not mere monotheists, they are trinitarian monotheists.

If God is not relative, there is no relation between the Son, the Spirit, and the Father. However, God is an eternal center of loving relation. God is relative.
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Many more reductios are possible. It is absurd to question the divine relativity. It is understandable historically that it is questioned, but in the light of the written and the living Word of God, it is an absurd question or challenge.

God is love. That is the eternal fundamental. All else we know of God is a partial of that love.

Church Good and Bad

I’ve been in church since I was about two-years-old, and it has tormented my mind most of those years. The rest of the story is that almost everything good in my life has come through the church. But unlike me, many of my childhood friends with church-tormented minds didn’t stay. With a variety of emotions they left the church and went off in every direction.

Some who have been long gone don’t seem to miss anything about their church experience: hymns, sermons, Sunday School, Bible, Jesus, they’ve shed it all. Others continue searching incessantly for alternatives. They’ve tried other churches, different denominations, Zen, Buddha, Transcendental Meditation, Shirley Maclaine, and anything else that offers any hint of sustenance to the human spirit. Another large group, although they have completely rejected the religious establishments, continues, in some sense to believe in Jesus, pray, and live an approximation of a Christian ethic. Often they dismiss the Bible along with the church. They may accept and appreciate parts of it, but they owe it no authority. I understand them, know how they feel, what they think, and am their near kinsman.

Unlike them, some of us uncomfortably have stayed with the church because even with all of its perversions we still believe that deep within its shell we can hear the heartbeat of life, truth, and hope. We are waiting for, and some of us are working at the restoration of this frail, limping institution that too often mocks any idea of the “body of Christ,” God’s agent of hope for his broken world. We remain more or less marginal members of an eccentric, disturbed, and stagnant social institution. To our friends we look like fools, and within the church we seem rather powerless, losers all the way around.

Where does God, relative or absolute, fit into this picture? Ultimately the whole thing is a God issue. Although those who left have many reasons, and likewise those who remain are variously motivated, at heart it has all developed out of our understanding of who God is. This is the great divide: who is God, and what is God about?

Christians live with contradictory answers to the God question, and for at least sixteen centuries they have made their uneasy peace with the resultant tensions. They have lived with the contradictions for so long that these mental and emotional conflicts are submerged in the unconscious. Thus Christians rarely realize the contradictions that keep them from attaining integrity. Two different ways of talking about God, each working counter to the other, repeatedly lead to the disintegration Christian efforts to bring God’s healing the a world that sees only too clearly the lack of integrity.

Both ways of understanding God are rooted in the Bible. One is nourished by the Spirit who is the source of life; the other grows out of and is maintained by the human quest for certainty and security. The contrast between them matured in the fourth century, and continues vigorously. Two different readings of the Bible, two different ideas of God, lead to two contrasting but often intertwined ways of life: one destroys, the other heals and enhances; one closes, the other opens. One gives power the primacy in the heart of God with love being at best secondary, and often only one of many attributes that are under the control of God’s power. The other knows that in God the primacy goes to love, with the divine power in the service of the divine love. One typically deals in abstract statements about God, the other deals in concrete relationships with God.

Look at the Christian churches in your own community or anywhere around the world and you will see the contrast. Listen to Christians speak and read what they write; you will hear two different ways struggling for attention. Read Christian history and discover the ongoing demonstration of the dissonance. But if you hear only one, either one, of these voices it can seem so clear and convincing that the other way is completely blocked out. If one of them is dominant, it often leads to immediate rebellion, atheism, or secularism. If the other is dominant, it often brings faith, hope, and love to those who hear it.

God Is My “Next of Kin”

Christians often say they have a personal relationship with God--and that is essential--but the good news is that the obverse is true: God has a personal relationship with us.

God is my next-of-kin, my nearest relative. He is my Father, my Creator and Sustainer. No one, not even my wife, relates to me as well as God does. All his dealings with me are fitted to my unique personality and my immediate need at any given time; they are relative to me. In this sense of the word, at least, God is relative. His interaction with you is unique; it is relative to you.

Everything God says is relative: all commandments, warnings, perhaps even all promises. The Ten Commandments are not universal in their import. They were given to his covenant community, Israel, as part of their very formation and identity. They were not addressed to the Apache, the Yoruba, the Finn, nor the Indonesian. They were relative to God’s purpose of establishing a people through whom salvation would come to the Apache, Yoruba, Finn, Indonesian, and even the Anglo-Saxon–indeed, to his entire fallen human creation.

On the other hand, the Sermon on the Mount was not addressed to God’s entire covenant people, the Jews. It was specifically addressed to his disciples: “Seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them.”

He told neither Zachaeus nor the “rich young ruler” that they must be born again; only Nicodemus heard these words from Jesus. Zack and the sorrowful young man were addressed relative to their personal situation. Even the Great Commission, with its accompanying promise, is given to the Apostles, relative to the imminent departure of their Lord.

Jesus is our relative, if we have chosen to relate positively to him; he is our brother:

For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. . . .
. . . .
Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, ...
--Hebrews 2:11 & 17

Everything he did and said is relative. Each healing, each parable, each question/answer is relative to the particular situation and person. If there is an ethic involved in the Jesus Way, it is a situational ethic (whether it can be identified with Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics, is another matter).

The book that tells his story is relative. Each of its parts relates to a particular actual occasion in the history of God’s covenant relation to the descendants of Abraham–both the biological and the spiritual descendants. The Bible is relative, its sixty-six component books are relative, and it is about a relative God–our nearest relative.

Some of us might think that being God might just be good work, if we could get the job, or so it would seem. We could be in control of everything, have all power at our disposal, know everything, and thus make the world and everything in it exactly as we like, or think we would like.

But it doesn’t seem to work out that way for God, at least not for the God of the Bible. Being God doesn’t sound easy, as the Bible tells his story, in fact sometimes it is quite frustrating. Too often things don’t go as he planned: Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, just for starters. He doesn’t always get his way, and sometimes no matter what he does, he winds up disappointed. Again, just one case in point: He must send his hope-of-the-world people into a brutal exile because no matter what he has done for and to them, they insist on "doing it their way” rather than God’s.

God doesn’t always know exactly what is going to happen–“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.” These people–like us–easily, lightly, and often abuse their God-given freedom of choice to frustrate the divine intention. God promises to hear and forgive and heal, but it is a maybe so promise: “If” they turn from and seek. But whether they will turn in time, or turn at all, he has to wait and see. God’s continuing problem is these humans he has created—in his own image, no less. It is not easy being God, certainly not an easy emotional life.

But back to the human, me and you. Our individual lives are bad enough, but when we begin to interact with each other we can form a well-dug-in line of defense against God, or mount a powerful offensive against God. To his own displeasure he has to deal with a creation that refuses to stay on the track created for their freedom and peace.

It has not been easy for me to say that being God is not easy. But, there is “the rest of the story.”

Being God is a good life. God is love, eternally God is love, and love is satisfying, thrilling exciting, and enjoyable. In fact, it so good being God that the God nature must be shared. This is why God created humans “in his own image”: looking enough like him, being enough like him that God can common-icate with them and share the thrill, let them in on the satisfaction, excitement and joy of a love that must be expressed and made open and available to his supreme, god-like creature.

So, all in all, it is easy to announce the good news: God is relative–re-lative, relational, akin, positively connected and interactive. Genuine relationship is the source of life’s greatest pain, the root from which springs all peace and joy.

What does God most want of us: our love or our compliance, our trust or our subservience? Jesus chose love as the answer he gave. Theoretically, evangelical Christians–“born-again” drives them–choose “trust.” The old hymn, “Trust and Obey” claims that “there is no other way.” Trust and obey, love and therefore comply, why ask that we choose between them? God wants it all: love, compliance, trust, subservience, obedience. These are not separable. Why then ask what God wants most?

I raise the question because, having been in church since before I was two-years-old, I’ve seen the unloving demand for compliance dominate the attitude of many churches. I’ve watched many leave, rejected by the church, because they would not comply with the church’s interpretation of God’s expectations. If anyone stepped out of the bounds–or refused to live inside the boundaries set by the church–they were easily dismissed. Hardhearted churches. Members becoming meaner year after year. That is what I have seen; that is why I renew the question of the “greatest commandment.”

I’ve listened, especially in recent years, to the supreme emphasis being given to God’s supremacy and thus, our compliance. The sovereignty of God rules. Again, I’ve witnessed the hardheartedness of these “sovereignty” people. That is why I ask which God “most” wants.

God wants our love. That is, as Jesus clearly stated, what God wants. All else flows from the love of God. “We love because he first loved us.” All else is wrapped up in love. “If you love me, keep my commandments,” as the natural re-sponse to our love for him, the depth and breadth of that love will all love involves. “The fruit of the Spirit is love . . ..” Love leads the list of the fruits of the Spirit. The other fruits–joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control–all grow out of the interactivity of God loving us, us loving of God. And neighbor. And enemy. When loving, we find we are filled with joy, know and produce peace. “Love is patient.” Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control–these all are components of love.

As Covey has so pointedly stated: "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." Love is the main thing, a loving love, a divine kind of loving, a Jesus kind of loving.

If we love God, we will love each other, and compliance will follow. If we love God, we will, with no sense of pressure or threat, be subservient to his sovereignty.

God is sovereign, but his is the sovereignty of love, not of sheer power or coercive will. It is easy to be subservient to the sovereignty of love.

When out of love we serve the God of love and bow before him and ask, “Lord what would you have me do?” others will be attracted to the joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control they see demonstrated. Unthreatened, uncoerced, they will want to know how and why we live like that. At that point they will be willing, they will be ready to hear the word of God.

Once upon a time I was in the church house on a Sunday morning, listening to the minister, listening especially closely as he spoke of some fundamental questions Christians ask about God: "What is God about?" The question is vague, therefore open to several possibilities, most of it hinging on what we understand by "about."

The minister, however, followed his question immediately with his answer: "He is about bringing us to the point where we have at least a crumb, a beginning point of faith."

A bit later in the sermon, again he made a vague statement that, "Faith is not about who is left behind, but about those who have faith." Still later, he said, "Jesus, plus whatever you bring, is more than enough."

I found these claims intriguing, so I recorded them in a pocket notebook that I habitually carry. This sermon was preached, and these notes taken, quite some time ago, and since I recorded neither the sermon text nor the context, now they are stand-alone statements. I abstracted them from their setting in a living sermon, and reduced them to words on paper and thus can reread and consider them all I want to.

I took note of them because, it seemed to me, that they called for further consideration. What I am now writing is something of a considered response.

"What is God about?" "Bringing us to a point of faith." Yes, that is something of what God is about. Perhaps it is what God penultimately is about, but certainly not what God is ultimately about. What is the point? Of what use, of what value is faith? Faith, by its very nature can neither be our goal, nor a resting place.

"God is love," and love is what God is about. "God is love," and the greatest, most comprehensive expectation is not about faith, but about love. True, we can love like God loves, like God expects us to live, only if we have faith in, trust, believe in him. Faith leads us to love. Faith is a necessary, but not a sufficient response to what God is about. "Now abideth faith, hope, and love, but the greatest. . . ."

God is about love, but even love is not what God is what God is simply about, at least not as his final purpose. The divine love, living and active in our hearts and minds, finds its culmination in joy and peace–the joy and peace that is the life of eternity.

Joy. God enjoys being God, though he is often grieved. God is love, and nothing is quite as enjoyable as love. "It pleased God to . . . " do a variety of things in creation and redemption, in gifts and callings. God wants us to know the joy of love.

Peace. Biblical peace is not merely the cessation or absence of conflict. Rather, peace is the full experience of the amazing graces and riches that God offers.

What is God about? The incredible, incomprehensible, inexhaustible riches of the love, joy, and peace that faith in the triune God leads us to and graciously bestows upon us. That is what God is about.