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.

God adapts, cuts slack, gives space, keeps his options open, can be changed, but in the big picture he never loses control. Sometimes he shares it to a degree, but he is the executive, the superior, the one who ultimately decides.

I readily concede at least the following:

For 2,000 years Christians have known that God is absolute: The Absolute. This has been axiomatic for the finest Christians the church has produced. This is the judgment of all the great doctrinal statements of Christian history. As I challenge this historical and traditional understanding of God, I understand that these are not the bad guys; they are the epitome of the Christian religion.

Clearly, at least in our ordinary usage of the word, the biblical God appears to be absolute. This is the strong consensus all across Christian history. Obverse, in the way we ordinarily use the word, we have a hard time believing that the biblical God is relative.

Good people, great people, truly devout and highly intelligent people have thought, felt, proclaimed, and defended the absolute, unchanging, all-knowing, totally sovereign and transcendent character of God. Yes, it is easy, perhaps natural, to read the Bible and see it a God who is absolute, in total control, and who changes not. On the other hand, it is natural and easy to see that God is love, is trinitarian, and holds us responsible for out decisions and subsequent actions.

I am "absolutely" certain that there are no absolutes, but I cannot say "absolutely" that everything is relative. But of this I am sure: everyone, everything that I know and have known, seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched was related to other things. Likewise, every emotion, hope, fear, love, ambition–never isolated, always related to. Everything is always connected to something else, and that something else is always connected to something else, ad infinitum.


Nothing happens always; nothing is everywhere. All happens somewhen; all happens somewhere. You say, all except God, and truth, and right and wrong, and maybe more.

"Common sense" knows intuitively that there is no way everything, God included, is relative. Something has to be absolute if for no other reason, to supply the relativities something thing to be relative to.

Relativity is relative. Everyone has their own idea of what the word means, just as everyone knows that God–if there is a god–is absolute. That is what "God" is understood to mean: absolute, authority, power, control.

Relativity is relative? Yes. There is no fixed, standard definition of the word; it depends on who is using it. Einstein’s general theory of relativity is an idea that differs widely from moral relativity, or the relativity of color, or of truth, or of cousins, grandchildren, and all the rest of our kinfolk–our relatives. In what sense is God relative? Is he our relative?

I assume that if God is not absolute, there are no other contenders for absolutism; everything would be relative if God is not absolute. But, someone might say, is not that claim absolute? No. It is total, conclusive, all in all: everything is related, directly or indirectly, to everything else, and all is relative to God, just as God is relative–related–to all.

What is more, and foundational to all the rest, God is relative to God. God the Father relates to God the Spirit, who is relative to God the Son, the Son relative to the Father and the Spirit, always, eternally the Christian trinitarian God, who is the one God, is relating internally. Since God is relative, everything else follows suit.

God is love.

We’ll have to revisit this from other directions because most if not all, of what is told in the biblical story is relative one way or another.

I had intended to delete the previous post on this verse, but since there was response from Norwood, I will leave it in place despite the need of some editing. I like what Norwood has to say, and take no real exception to it. Well, one exception. A better term might be "essentially relative," but certainly not "relatively essential."

My intention in this blog is to show that divine relativity is the essence of God, as best a human can comprehend the divine mystery.

This post contains the revision of the earlier post, and a followup on it.
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"Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
AV (KJV)

I memorized this verse more than sixty years ago, and have never forgotten it. In my memory it lives in the phrasing of the King James Version. And in the words of that version, it has disturbed me for a couple of decades. So, finally, I have devoted time to deliberately scrutinize the verse.

I have learned, through the process described in this blog, that part of my frustration lies in the King James language. But that doesn’t cover it all. I intend to bring this quandary, and this post, to a relatively satisfying conclusion.

"Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come." NASB

2 Corinthians 5:17 is one of the most widely quoted verses in the New Testament. On a first reading, it no problem to understand.

If anyone has given their life to Christ (is a Christian, a believer in Christ), God fashions them into a completely new person (born anew, re-generated). The person they were no longer exists. See (examine with your own eyes, observe, it is obvious), a new person has appeared.

But this poses a logical dilemma:

Either 2 Corinthians 5:17 speaks of total conversion, or it is not literally true.
If it refers to total conversion, then it is a false statement
If not literally true, it could be relatively true
Therefore, 2 Corinthians 5:17 either is a false statement, or it could be relatively true

This verse is in the form of a conditional (if, then) statement. Logically, when the if part of the statement is true, the then part of the statement must be true. To state it a different way, when the then part of the statement not true, the if part of the statement cannot be true.

If an individual is completely converted, their old life is completely gone
The old life is not completely gone; elements of the old life remain
Therefore, they are not completely converted.

To restate:
If an individual is "in Christ," then it is a certainty that their old attitudes, values, and way of life have disappeared. If we find that the life of a person who claims to be "in Christ" retains any of the same old attitudes, values, and ways of life, then we must conclude they are not truly "in Christ."

Long-term observation indicates that some old attitudes, values, and ways of life continue in the lives of all professing Christians. If this is true (and I think it can be demonstrated), then no professing Christian is "in Christ." In fact, there are none "in Christ." Can one be a Christian, but not "in Christ?" If so, then what does "in Christ" mean?

On the other hand, if we understand this verse to be relatively true, then it is possible that an individual might have a definitely positive relation to Christ--relatively in Christ--but not completely. They could be a relatively new creation with their old life relatively gone. The new is in the formative process, and the old in the process of being eradicated.

Of course, this raises a question about the nature of the entire Bible.
If the Bible is absolutely true, then 2 Corinthians 5:17 must be absolutely true

2 Corinthians is not absolutely true (so it seems from the preceding)
So, the Bible cannot be absolutely true
If 2 Corinthians 5:17 is relatively true, then the Bible is relatively true
2 Corinthians 5:17 is relatively true (so it seems from the preceding)
Thus, the Bible must be relatively true.

This necessitates a complete re-viewing of the Bible, a re-vision of our understanding of the Holy Scriptures. Now, it must be looked at from a new perspective, a perspective that differs from the consensus of Christian tradition.
________________
The above is a revision of the post,
I have not only revised, but have written a followup of the above.
The following is the followup
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Several Translations

"Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
AV (KJV)

This seems to speak to the individual who is "in Christ," therefore , since "he is a new creature" for whom "all things are become new," the implication is that all the "old things are passed away."
The entire conditional statement indicates a complete change, conversion, of the person. Nothing of the pre-Christian life remains.

Obviously, the color of a person’s eyes, their fingerprint, and such, will not have changed. If those changes are excepted, where can we draw the line between those things that don’t change, and those that do. "All things?" What does "things" comprise?

For me, this translation indicates that when one becomes a Christian, all of the spiritual--moral and religious–life is transformed, made new. Thus, if all is not new, if some of the old remains, the person is not "in Christ." I’ve not known anyone where this total transformation has already come into being. If not, either the passage is not a true statement, or there are no Christians to be found.

Neither of these conclusions is acceptable, so we look to other translations to see if they might clear this dilemma for us.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new."
NKJV

The New King James did not clarify, rather it turned the word "creature" into the more ambiguous, "creation."

"When anyone is joined to Christ, he is a new being; the old has gone, the new has come."
TEV

Here, the word, "therefore," is omitted. It is no longer presented as a logical conclusion of what precedes the verse.
For me, "joined to" Christ has a clearer and more distinctive sound than "in."
"Being," rather than "creature, creation," moves from the language of God’s creation to the abstraction of philosophical terminology.
(We may begin to wonder what the Greek text says, in order that we may better evaluate these variants among the translators.)

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"
NIV

I have arbitrarily chosen the NIV rather than the KJV, as the base translation to compare others to.
This, like the NKJV, prefers, "creature." The only help with the dilemma is the deletion of the word, "all." This legitimate deletion–it does not occur in the Greek text--allows a relative conversion rather than an total, or so-called absolute conversion.

"Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come!"
NASB

Nothing much different.

"And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone; and now the new one is here."
JB

"Therefore" omitted, losing this as a conclusion from the preceding.
"Creation," is ambiguous in this context. It could mean the Genesis creation, and that creation renewed.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come!"
RSV

I like the "passed away," our common euphemism for "died."

"Anyone who belongs to Christ, is a new person, The past is forgotten and everything is new."
CEV

A wide departure from the Greek text.

"There is a new creation whenever a man comes to be in Christ; he is a new creation; what is old is gone, the new has come."
Moffatt
The sentence is changed from a conditional to a categorical, declarative.

"So if anyone is in union with Christ, he is a new being; the old state of things has passed away there is a new state of things."
NEB

The state of what things? This language is more philosophical than biblical.

"For anyone united to Christ, there is a new creation; the old order has gone; a new order has already begun."
REB

The verse seems to speak of individuals, but the REB seems, with the word, "order," to be speaking more universally.

"Accordingly, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone. Look! The new has come!"
Verkuyl

A quite good translation. Therefore, accordingly, so, hence, function as synonyms.

"So, if anybody is in union with Christ, he is the work of a new creation; the old condition has passed away, a new condition has come!"
Williams Translation

Nothing significantly different.

"Therefore if any person is (engrafted) in Christ, the Messiah, he is (a new creature altogether,) a new creation; the old (previous moral and spiritual condition) has passed away, Behold the fresh and new has come."
Amplified Bible

"This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!"
NLT

"This means that," functions synonymously with "Therefore."
The NLT seems true to the meaning of the Greek text, but departs freely from a literal translation.
__________

The following is my concise and literal translation:
"Therefore, if anyone in Christ, new creation. The old has passed away. Look, has been made fresh."
Roark translation of the Greek New Testament, British and Foreign Bible Society,1958

Optional terms that may be legitimately substituted, are shown in what follows:
"Therefore [so, accordingly, thus, hence, we may conclude that], if anyone in Christ, new creation; the old has passed away [gone, no longer here], look [Behold] become [come to pass, been made, made, come, become, is, done, created, happening] new [fresh]."

Expanded, but still true to literal Greek: "Therefore, if anyone (in Greek, ‘is’ is implied) is in Christ, the old has passed away. Look, has already begun afresh."

So, what follows is Roark’s preferred variant, but still a literal translation into ordinary English:
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the old has passed away. Look a fresh beginning has been set in motion."
_______________________
What does "in Christ" mean: united to, joined to, in union with, belongs to, or something else?

The old what is gone?

Has passed away? Dead, gone, no longer here? Other options?
How dead? None of it remaining, all gone?

A new, or fresh beginning? What is new, how fresh?

Has begun, or, on the other hand, has become, or come to pass?

Is it a process that has begun, or is it an accomplished deed?

My last translation indicates that I take this verse to be understood relatively. However, it remains ambiguous.

One thing rings true: We need to carefully scrutinize both our relation to Christ, and the conduct of our actions.

2 Corinthians 5:17: a Dilemma

"Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come." NASB

2 Corinthians 5:17 is one of the most widely quoted verses in the New Testament. On a first reading, it no problem to understand.
If anyone has given their life to Christ (is a Christian, a believer in Christ), God fashions them into a completely new person (born anew, re-generated). The person they were no longer exists. See (examine with your own eyes, observe, it is obvious), a new person has appeared.
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But this understanding poses a logical dilemma:

Either this is absolute literal truth or it is relative truth

If absolute literal truth, then for anyone who is a Christian, their old ways of life are no longer a part of them; the life they are now living is a new way of life, different from the old.

If relative truth, then for anyone who is a Christian, their old ways are relatively gone; the life they now live is relatively new.

Therefore, either they are complete converted, or they are not completely converted.

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This verse is in the form of a conditional (if, then) statement. Logically, when the if part of the statement is true, the then part of the statement must be true. To state it a different way, when the then part of the statement not true, the if part of the statement cannot be true.
If an individual is completely converted, their old life is completely gone
The old life is not completely gone; elements of the old life remain
Therefore, they are not completely converted.

To restate:

If an individual is "in Christ," then it is a certainty that their old attitudes, values, and way of life have disappeared. If we find that the life of a person who claims to be "in Christ" retains any of the same old attitudes, values, and ways of life, then we must conclude they are not truly "in Christ."

Long-term observation indicates that some old attitudes, values, and ways of life continue in the lives of all professing Christians. If this is true (and I think it can be demonstrated), then no professing Christian is "in Christ." In fact, there are none "in Christ." Can one be a Christian, but not "in Christ?" If so, then what does "in Christ" mean?

-----------
On the other hand, if we understand this verse to be relatively true, then it is possible that an individual might have a definitely positive relation to Christ--relatively in Christ--but not completely. They could be a relatively new creation with their old life relatively gone. The new is in the formative process, and the old in the process of being eradicated.

-------------
Of course, this raises a question about the nature of the entire Bible.

If the Bible is absolutely true, then 2 Corinthians 5:17 must be absolutely true

2 Corinthians is not absolutely true (so it seems from the preceding)

So, the Bible cannot be absolutely true

---------------
If 2 Corinthians 5:17 is relatively true, then the Bible is relatively true

2 Corinthians 5:17 is relatively true (so it seems from the preceding)

Thus, the Bible must be relatively true.

_____________
This necessitates a complete re-viewing of the Bible, a re-vision of our understanding of the Holy Scriptures. Now, it must be looked at from a new perspective, a perspective that differs from the consensus of Christian tradition.

It’s little wonder that people don’t like God. He has been misrepresented. When we listen to the diverse testimony of the Bible, it is easy to see how we might get off track and miss the main line. Which of these many witnesses are we to believe? Can their divergent testimony be harmonized?

No simple resolution of the tensions will work, mainly because God is not simple. He is complex, and so is the story the Bible tells–it has to be if it is to faithfully represent God. The Bible and its God are complex, difficult to comprehend, and always relative. The guitar, an apparently simple instrument, turns out to have unimaginably rich possibilities beyond strumming three chords. Life is not simple, nor is love, nor truth, nor the Bible, nor the gospel, nor God, nor the guitar. Add to that:, nor am I, nor are you. Michael Levine observed that "Some people involve themselves in religion as an opportunity to approach mystery, and other people go into religion to escape mystery."

God has been misrepresented because of naivete, obscurantism, and self-interest. It is just as naive to reduce God to "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so," as it is to think that God’s main concern is getting us into his heaven. It is just as obscurantist to believe that Augustine and John Calvin are the final authorities on God as it is to believe that John Wesley or Thomas Aquinas can tell us all we need to know. It is just as selfish to identify God with Americanism, capitalism, or the Republican party as it is to believe that God will produce abundant health and wealth to all who faithfully obey him. God can be reduced to neither John 3:16 nor the prayer of Jabez.

You may not agree. You may be one of those who believe that God reveals himself clearly, that any sixth grader can understand the Bible, or that all we need to know about God is how to "get saved" so we can avoid hell when we die (a concern to an ever decreasing number, at least in Europe, the Americas, and Australia). If you find this way of thinking satisfactory, then you haven’t read the whole Bible, paying attention to what it tells about God, and what God himself says. Or, you have read, selected the conventional, and ignored the rest.

I suggest that the Bible is more akin to a complexly plotted novel or a rich orchestral symphony than to a blog of children’s literature or a three-chord popular song. It is more akin to a kaleidoscopic view of God than it is to a how-to blog, a blog of rules, or a blog of doctrines. It is more akin to poetry with its metaphor, simile, and suggestiveness than it is to an encyclopedic reference blog filled with objectively validated facts.

"In the beginning God." That’s where you have to begin, otherwise you begin, and end, with nothing. You come to life’s end with nothing. That’s no way to live, and certainly not what you want to realize your life has come to at its close.. So many deaths are sad, are failures, are empty, a waste. On the one hand many in the 21st Century are convinced that the only honest beginning for thought and life is to realize there is nothing: no truth, no meaning, no purpose, no goal. Nothing. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!"

And on the other hand, if it is true that the only place to begin is with God; if the only place to begin to make sense of life, to give meaning to our own actual, personal, precious life is to start with God, then the question becomes, "Which God? What do you mean by the term, the concept? What God are you proposing?" In this blog we are dealing explicitly with the God to whom the Christian scriptures, in their complex and simple, clear and obscure way, bear witness.

Don’t be too sure you already know all about him, have him all figured out, and have lost interest. The fact remains that everything we think or do, everything we treasure or hate, is rooted in our response to the God question: is there a God or not, and if so, what is he/she/it like? Paul Tillich claimed that everyone has a god, that whatever is your ultimate concern, that is your God. One versified response to Tillich got directly to the point: "My ultimate concern is whether the ultimate is concerned with me." A philosopher once was asked, "What is the most important of all questions?: He answered, "Is the universe on our side?" And yes, the ultimate is concerned with us, the Creator of the universe is on our side.

What I’m proposing in this blog is a Copernican revolution of our understanding of the Christian God. Remember. Copernicus didn’t deny the existence of the sun, the earth, or any other phenomena of astronomy. He simply changed the perspective with which we considered them, and that changed everything. It opened the way for all kinds of new understandings, many of which led to new courses of action, making possible, among other things, all our space exploration. When the Copernican cosmology was first presented and explained it was not at all clear what it might illuminate and change. Nonetheless, in time, it constituted an amazingly productive revolution.

Remember also that Copernicus was strongly opposed in the beginning, but now is accepted almost universally. I hope to convince you that we have been presented with major misunderstandings of who God is, what he is like, what he wants, and how he goes about what he does. I intend to present a better perspective from which to understand and respond to God.

I intend to be as faithful to the biblical materials, even to the mainstream of Christian belief, as Copernicus was to the facts of our solar system. Nothing new will appear on these pages, rather there will be a shift of center. It is all to be found in the Bible, always has been, but sometimes it is hard to see what we what is right in front of us. Whether this is so, you will have to examine and decide.

Now if you believe there is no such thing as transcendence, no mystery, nothing that can’t be stated precisely, you might as well click onto some other site. Your blinders will prevent you from seeing. If you believe all can be reduced to scientific explanation and technological solution, don’t expect a blog written in your language. On the other hand, if you expect a defense of liberal or conservative, evangelical or mainline views of God, you will not be hearing the insider language of your chosen habitat.

I have lived on the border between the church and the world, know both languages, both ways of thinking, and cross the border often. My citizenship is on the church side. On that side we can discern two perceptibly different ways of sensing, understanding, and responding to God. They are not inherently incompatible, in essence they are harmonious, but too often in practice they have gone their separate and destructive ways. Most of the criticism of Christianity, some quite valid, stems from this division.

The Christian Century, a highly-respected theological journal formed at the beginning of the 20th Century, took its name from the belief that that was going to be the Christian century. It didn’t happen. God was on trial in the twentieth-century. He had an excellent team of advocates for the defense, and a multitude of character witness were called to give their testimony–testimony sworn on the Bible. Most of those character witnesses did not serve him very well. We often found ourselves doubting the credibility of those who served as God’s character witnesses. Their tone of voice and melodramatic character didn’t ring true, so it was easy to dismiss the testimony they gave in defense of God”s character. No, the 20th Century didn’t turn out to be the Christian century.

The Christian church and its God were on trial, a lengthy trial that did not reach a clear verdict. Apologists for the trinitarian Father, Son, Spirit were razor-sharp, hard-hitting and indefatigable, but for all the “evidence” they amassed, conviction was rare. Between the counsel for the defense, the extreme rationalism of their arguments, their lack of evidence compelling to heart and soul, and the dubious character of their character witnesses, the most generous verdict is that the century ended with a hung jury. A mistrial should be declared.

Once upon a time a photographer impressed Pablo Picasso so well that the controversial painter broke his rule about photographers and allowed the fellow to bring his camera into the studio and told him he was free to shoot pictures of anything he wanted to. In fact he allowed him to move in and live there six weeks, knowing the photographer intended to publish the pictures The most informative page in the book showed photographs–taken at intervals throughout the day–of the painter’s way of developing a painting.

Picasso approached a steer standing in a nearby pasture and did a painting of it, right on the spot. The photographer took a picture of the steer itself, and then of the painting at that time. The painting and the photo looked almost identical. (Many people don’t realize that Pablo could paint realistic representation with the best of them, and did until he was fourteen-years-old.) The next several shots show the progress (some would say regress) across the day as the painter modified first this color and then that shape until when he was finished it looked like what we have come to expect from Picasso. It bore little resemblance to what we all know steers look like.

Picasso, one of the most articulate painters of history, explained, saying something to this effect: “I distort and modify until I can present that which the eye of habit does not see.”

That idea, “that which the eye of habit cannot see,” sheds light on much of the mental darkness that obscures the way we see reality. We live mostly by habit. We see mostly by habit. We think mostly by habit. Our thinking follows the conventional wisdom and the political and social correctness of our fellows; this wisdom and correctness come directly from the habits of societies. Once Picasso focused our attention of some element we had never really paid attention to, we look at cattle in a new way, seeing clearly that which had there all along, but now we see there is more to the steer than we had realized.

In this blog I am attempting to present an unfamiliar way of seeing God, a way has always been there, that the mind of habit sees but neither notices nor acknowledges, all the while remaining unaware of what it means. What you will find in this blog is like what the writer of I John says: “I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning . . . On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you.” We will be giving careful attention to something that has been part of the Christian religion from the beginning, but that much too often has been marginalized.

God is hard to figure out. The Bible gives a good many stories of God in action, God’s declarations, assertions others make about him. The problem is that it doesn’t all fit together very well. I read somewhere in one of Giardina’s books, [I've tried repeatedly to find the reference again, and still must do it] where the fellow said to the woman who had helped him several times, “Hit was you talked me into learning to read. I wanted to do so’s I could read the Bible. I ain’t so sure now hit’s a blessing. They’s hard sayings in there.” Besides, the Bible–-which for Christians is the only objective testimony to God they will accept–is itself hard to figure out. The Bible, the blog that is supposed to tell God’s story, is complex, much like the God it tells of. But there is no shortage of simplistic ways offered to resolve its difficulties.

That is one of the two major weaknesses of the Christian world: the proverbial plenitude of simplistic answers to complex problems. The other weakness is that it is hard to find a Christian who actually follows Jesus, who, according to the Bible, is God’s personal representative.

In this blog, we are concerned with the first weakness: simplistic descriptions of a complex God, as well as very complicated explanations of God that moves his very essence toward the edge of their attention. We will not accept simplistic views of God’s complex book, nor simplistic presentations of a rich, multilayered, polydimensional gospel. We will find that the mainstream of Christians has always accepted–although unconsciously–the relativity of God and of his expectations. Christian doctrine often acknowledges, without realizing it, that God is relative, but it treats the idea (which it fails to see clearly) as only one among the many things that need to be said about God.

If we are to know God primarily through the biblical story, we have to recognize that, like a complexly plotted novel, it is made up of many smaller stories. Let’s think of the Bible as a courtroom scene, with God on trial before the human race, as in fact he is (whether the scene will be one day reversed is a different consideration). The writers of the Bible serve in the courtroom as character witnesses. They claim to know about God, some even claiming to know him. They give their testimonies, some of which are hard to follow. Some are just plain hard to understand. After a bit, the stories they testify to begin to converge, but testimony from other witnesses diverges from the emerging consensus. Some diverge widely. Some of their stories have internal contradictions. The time comes when we begin to wonder about questioning the character of the character witnesses themselves. Do we have good reason to trust them?

So as our exploration sets out we are well aware of the well-known difficulties of understanding God and his word . Some of us have resolved the problem by withdrawing from the field and abandoning religion, at least the Christian religion. At the other extreme are those who, as already suggested, offer us naive or obscurantist and oversimplified harmonizations.

Most of us find neither of these options satisfactory

We were talking about the Threeness of God on the last post.

The Trinity is a mind-boggling mystery. What we seem to have is a complicated divine society: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all plicated together in eternal common unity, eternally related and interactive with each other .

In spite of what theologians have maintained for centuries, God is not simple. God is singular, but not simple. Christianity, along with Judaism and Islam, is commonly called one of the great monotheistic religions of the world, and it is. But it is not a simple monotheism. Christianity is a trinitarian monotheism. Without that modifier we cannot come to see God clearly. I am aware that talk about the Trinity has always been avoided as dull, abstruse, and irrelevant, but as you will see a bit later, it opens the way to a new perspective on God: a relative God.

Not only is God not singular, neither is he remote. God did not form a world, set its laws in motion, breath life into it, and then sit back to see how it all worked out. He stayed in touch. Still does. In Walter Mosely’s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, Socrates Fortlow’s bitter aunt Bellandra Beaufort, used to tell him, "God ain’t nowhere near here, child, . . . He’s a million miles away; out in the middle’a the ocean somewhere. An’ he ain’t white like they say he is neither."
"God’s black?" little Socrates asked the tall, skinny woman."
"Naw, baby," she said sadly. "He ain’t black. If he was there wouldn’t be all this mess down here wit’ us. Naw. God’s blue."
"Blue?"
"Uh-huh. Blue like the ocean. Blue. Sad and cold and far away like the sky is far and blue. You got to go a long long way to get to God. And even if you get there he might not say a thing. Not a damn thing."
Aunt Bellandra’s God is not concerned with her; is not on her side. Life experience has left countless bitter people with a sense that God is neither interested nor available. If he is, he doesn’t care.

Not so with this biblical God. From the start he has been intimately involved with his handiwork. From walking with Adam in the cool of the day, to speaking to Moses from a bush, to his coming as Mary’s child, Jesus, who is called Emmanuel–God with Us–to "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself," he has been engaged and interactive with his special creation, his created image, homo sapiens, as we call ourselves. To acknowledge that God is interactive opens the way to a radical adjustment of how we look at God.
When God created the world, especially us humans, he entered the scene as a participant, interacting directly with his creation, even while allowing us humans the exercise of freedom. From the beginning God stays in touch. He mentors these inexperienced and vulnerable human beginners. God cares about them and cares for them; he attends to the needs of this special in-his-own-image-and-likeness creation. He creates them with potential, with an open future, and provides them with all the essentials necessary for the development of a rich and satisfying life. He gives both tender loving care, and the discipline that is needed if they are to reach their full potential.

If God cares about us, that means that we make a difference to God. God is moved by what we do or neglect to do. We affect God’s feelings. Our conduct has some bearing on the decisions God makes. In some sense he depends on us, another idea that runs contrary to the conventional picture of a God who needs neither help nor anything else from us. If God depends on us, at least for some things–for anything–he is to that degree vulnerable for we just might fail him (and often do). We and God share response-ability and mutual vulnerability. We re-spond reciprocally; we both can be wounded.

Moreover this means that human history, and each of us individually, has an open future. It is not an already settled, done deal. Erin O’Shaughnessy opens her novel, Pasaquina, postulating that "No Latino villager ever hurries, for, after all, where is there to go? They are either going to heaven or to hell, and that has already been decided. Only the Anglos hurry, and Father Herrera says that is because they are trying to live like hell on earth while at the same time planning how to cheat God into going to heaven at the last minute."

Whether O’Shaughnessy’s view reiterates a worn-out prejudiced stereotype or not, she makes it clear that many Christians of whatever ethnicity or nationality see Christianity primarily in terms of heaven and hell. Later, we’ll have to give some time to that misconception. Our immediate point, however, is the assumption that it really makes little difference what we do with our lives because God has already determined the future in its entirety. If God in any sense depends on our assistance–and as we shall see, he does--much of the future remains yet to be worked out. It means that a great deal of what happens is up to us.

To say we make a difference, that we affect, and that God is dependent implies that God can be changed. No idea is more firmly fixed in Christian thought than that God never changes. To even suppose that God might change threatens the whole picture. If God can change, is anything secure? And yet all through its pages, the Bible manages to affirm both that God changes, and that he can be trusted.

It isn’t just playing with words to suggest that if we affect God, that means he has affections, another idea contrary to conventional Christian teaching. Psychologists use the word "affect" differently from most of us. For them, a person’s "affect" refers to their "feeling or emotion, especially as manifested by facial expression or body language." If we affect God, if God has affections (feelings, emotions), does God have an "affect?" Over and over the Christian Scriptures reveal a very affectionate God.

The proposal of a genuinely interactive God raises all kinds of questions. It may well make us uneasy but it also suggests adventure, excitement, and openness to refreshing, brand-new possibilities. It means we count for something; we are needed; our lives can take on new meaning and value. We make a difference to God, and to human history.

So mine has been a long-standing quarrel with the Christian religion, both as I have experienced it and as I have studied it. I am well aware that I’m not alone. Many of you can identify. So did Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. Both Jeremiah and Jesus expressed strong displeasure with the religion of their time. I suspect you sense a resonance within yourself as you read these words. Your issues with the church may not be the same as mine, but you and I, we understand and respect each other because we both recognize that Christianity is somewhat less than completely convincing, at least the Christianity we’ve seen and heard preached. Whatever connection we might have had with the church in the past, there’s not much about it now that interests us.

We’ve differed in the ways we’ve reacted to our dissatisfaction with the church and its God. Some of us have challenged the truth and validity of the Christian faith. Some left, gave up on the whole thing, walked away and never looked back. Others left and have been trying out other ways to satisfy their spiritual needs; they took leave with regret; they’re still longing for something they left behind, but they’re not about to go back looking for it. Maybe it’s just nostalgia but sometimes when they hear someone singing a bit of some Christian song or they walk past a church on Sunday morning, they sense that something of who they are is missing. Usually they dismiss the feeling as the nostalgia that it probably is. Still, they know that something is missing.

And me? I’ve stayed. A lot of us have stayed. We’ve stayed because we’ve found no other place to go. We’ve stayed because, somehow, we still believe that the real thing is here hiding somewhere in the status quo. A bunch of us who are still in the church feel almost just like you do, but uncomfortable as it is, we’ve stuck around. We’ve hung on because we couldn’t see any real option. We are still part of the church because we continue believing that no matter how bad the kitchen smells, it’s the only room that can provide us with nourishment. We stay on and keep looking for ways to change the way the church thinks and operates.
We know that, most often, the church stinks. Like Denise Giardina says, there’s a lot of mean Christians that "don’t love nobody but Jesus." Churches are overloaded with mean Christians who more often than not talk about a mean God, a God who is all in favor of war and capital punishment and beating the devil out of their children. Nevada Barr refers to the sort of Christians who use the Bible Belt to beat the fear of God into their children. And sometimes their wives. Beat the devil out of them and the fear of God into them.

They make it sound like God is all about power and control, thus they become like the God pictured in their minds. Christendom–the world of people who call themselves Christians and organize unions of power structures they call churches–smells, literally, to high heaven. But some of us endure and fight as covert insurgents, change agents, for the revolution that we believe must come. We live by faith, with hope–and hopefully, with love. Our quarrel with Christianity is an insider’s quarrel with our Christian heritage, a lover’s quarrel with the church and its doctrinal heritage.

You may find here things you’ve always either thought or suspected, but that preachers and Sunday School teachers denied. You will find ambiguity, vagueness, even contradiction, but some of us have learned that if we are to be true to the "real world," truth is shot through with ambiguity, vagueness, contradiction, and impenetrable mystery. The Bible and its portrayal of God is true to the world as it really is. Thus there is no clear, simple way for it to tell what is involved in any honest effort to follow the way of Jesus. Some of us have learned to live by faith rather than by precise absolutes and micro-managing rules. We have overcome the neurotic need for absolutes, precision, predictability, certainty, accuracy, simplicity, and literalness. Surprisingly we have found that everything comes into sharper focus when we look at it in its naked reality.

Whatever it is that disturbs us about Christianity, I suspect that if we analyzed our feelings and thoughts, we would find our dissatisfactions are rooted in a dislike for the God that Christians tell us we must either believe in or else go to hell. Most of the time that seems to be all they care about–getting everyone into heaven. This blog quarrels with the conventional picture of God. In its place, it offers, for your consideration, a quite different perspective. Any time we shift our perspective on anything, we see it differently. We need to see God from a new perspective.

Most of our problems began because we had been around people who knew everything about God and wanted us to hear and accept their take on God. We have been unimpressed. These folks have been offensive, often obnoxious. We couldn’t believe that with their ugliness of spirit they had the nerve to claim they were messengers of good news. Little wonder we supposed their God was just as offensive. When Harry Emerson Fosdick was pastor of the Riverside Baptist Church in New York City, somebody occasionally would come to tell him they didn’t believe in God. He always asked them to tell him about this God they didn’t believe in. After they described their objections to God, Fosdick would respond, "I don’t believe in that God either."

If it is possible to talk about a believable and attractive God, what can be known about him? What would he look like? Actually, we can know quite a bit. lf we stick close to the story the Bible tells, we can know much about God, even though we are still dealing with a subject admittedly too heavy for us to ever quite get a handle on. This biblical God clearly can’t be handled or fully comprehended, but we can learn a lot about him. Some of it will surprise us. All of it may cause us to have second thoughts.


When it comes to the God question, the Bible doesn’t give us a clear and simple answer, but that has never kept folks from claiming to have found one. The solutions offered by religious people commonly misrepresent and oversimplify the God that emerges when we do that rare thing–with clear eyes, read the entire book, paying attention to what it actually says. God, as the Bible tells its story–which comprises a whole series of short stories–is complex. He doesn’t always behave the same way. Sometimes he resembles a terrorist, a freedom fighter, a force to establish justice, an artist, a loving father, mother, nurse, protector, a shepherd who keeps his eye on the least, the last, and the lost sheep of the flock. God is complicated.

Although people claim that Christianity is a monotheistic religion–belief in only one God-it is hard to find that idea validated on the pages of the Bible. Here is God the Creator, later to be known as God the Father Almighty. Then, here is God the Son, sent from the Father. We watch what this Son does, hear what is said about him, and realize the Bible believes that he is God. And then we find the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who descends on Jesus from the Father, and whom Jesus will one day send to teach all about himself. Again, when we listen to the witness of these documents, this Holy Spirit is God. Yet when we’ve read this exceedingly long, composite account that tells us something of God’s history, it clearly testifies to a single and supreme God. A person could get lost in the complexity of it all.

I am an angry Christian. I am angry at God’s misrepresentatives, and their misrepresentations of the Christian religion. From these misrepresentatives, the majority of listeners and readers gain a misleading understanding of who God is and what God is like.
If you are offended by this opening paragraph, let me make a beginning of explaining where I am coming from.

I’ve often gotten trouble because I can be so stubborn, but I have a reputation as someone who doesn’t seem to get angry; anger is not how I live, not who I am. But I have a right to what anger I express in this blog (you may relax; anger is not going to be the dominant word or tone of the blog).

From the pulpit I once heard a preacher say, "Nothing can be done in anger that couldn’t be done better without anger." Maybe Jesus could have cleansed the temple more efficiently if he had not acted in anger? Read or reread Galatians; Paul, while dictating this little book, was angry almost to the point of rage. Look at how often the scriptures inform us of God’s anger. Could God have accomplished more, would the world operate more harmoniously if God never acted in anger? I don’t think so.
True, it is dangerous when anger rules action, but when anger motivates and drives needed action, it is an important energizer.I am angry at Christians for systematically misrepresenting God, just as you and I both would be angry with some who radically misrepresented the one we love dearest. God is not a tyrant exercising power in cruel, oppressive and arbitrary ways. Yet this is the vision of God vast numbers have picked up in their childhood church experiences.

Read the biographies of the most noted entertainers and writers of the 20th Century and observe how regularly this view of God and his representatives on earth is the picture of God that has haunted them across the years since they escaped the regular reminders of his wrath. I am angry because of all those who have been run off without ever seeing God as he is revealed in the biblical story. A re-vision of the biblical God is needed. We are going to take another look at the Bible. This blog furnishes a sketch that is more faithful, that emerges from a re-view of the story

The portrayal of God’s character that I will sketch is not dependent on certain specific biblical texts, although there are many that paint the same picture explicitly. The fabric of most Christian sermons, Sunday School lessons, doctrinal statements, and defenses of the faith have been woven with the threads of many single, specific Bible verses, often disconnected from any context or setting. That method will not be used here. Rather, we will view the Bible as a whole and see what God looks like in the big picture. We are going to back off and look again, re-view at the central character in the story, then trace some of the defining features that emerge from the resultant revision of the way we view the divine character.

Small wonder that people criticize, mock, or just plain ignore Christianity. God himself repeatedly warned that if his people didn’t do right, they would make God’s name to become a joke and a mockery to the outsiders. When the times came that their actions made others turn God’s name into a byword, God told his spokesmen such as Jeremiah, Amos, and Ezekiel of his anger with them. In his fury, he allowed God’s own main team, his covenant community, to be mocked and treated like dirt.

There are things up with which God will not put; his anger is most commonly directed at the people who claim that they are God’s people. When they misrepresent him, he rejects them as his representatives. Just remember who it was that often received the fierce anger of Jesus. I am irritated with preachers, particularly evangelicals–I am one--Sunday School teachers, professional theologians–I am one--in other words, with the majority of those who across the centuries, have taught and spoken for Christianity.

Keeping my temper fairly well in check, I have been an active member of the church for most of my life. I remain so. I love God. The church is an essential part of my habitat. Some of my favorite people are professional theologians. I know some first-rate, for real, churches and individual Christians, but on the other hand I know more of the other kind.
In childhood it was mere confusion; through adolescence and early adulthood it became more of a recurrent uneasiness with what I heard at church.

Then in the process of acquiring three advanced degrees from a theological seminary, the anger emerged and came into focus. I still preach often, am active in my local church, and have recently retired after more than thirty years as a happy and respected teacher of Christian Studies in a small Baptist university.

Now that you are aware of what drives the writing of this blog, keep your critical mind alert. You may well wonder where someone got the audacity to write such a blog. I have tried carefully to be fair to Christians; I readily acknowledge that much of what this blog says does not accurately describe many Christians and churches. I am quite aware that I could be wrong in my basic criticisms and in the new perspective I propose. But I don’t think so.

Judge for yourself, using your own experience, good reasoning, the Bible, and common sense as criteria for making your judgment.

To help you decide whether to continue following this blog, I offer a clue. When in months to come, the blog has covered all I intend, it can be summed up in two sentences:
God is love, and
all his commandments are contained in the law of love, and
love is a relationship.
All else is support, clarification, detail, form.

In a dictionary, "absolute" and "relative" are defined, appropriately, in several conventional ways. In a good dictionary, you will find the basic definitions that I stipulate. From a close study of the previous etymological post, you should realize that my definitions are completely in keep with the original meanings and usages of these words. Please don’t try to read the words in my posts with you own, or the commonly accepted meaning. They are not wrong, nor is mine remote from them.

Here is how I use the words:

"Absolute," by definition: Completely removed from any connection, relation, link, or dependency on anything else, thus, completely (not absolutely) separate from everything.

There are no absolutes, except as a construct in the human mind. Nothing is related to nothing; every entity is related to other entities. Even God, the Christian God, the trinitarian God, is not absolute. The Father relates to and is dependent on the Son; the Father relates to and depends on the Spirit. The Son relates to and is dependent on the Father; the Son relates to and is dependent on the Spirit. The Spirit relates to and is dependent on the Son; the Spirit relates to and is dependent on the Father. Christianity is incorrectly categorized as one of the great monotheistic religions of the world. It is in a category of its own: trinitarian monotheism. God is, within God, relative: Father, Son, Spirit in eternal relation. God is, by his revealed character, relate-I’ve, relational (Love). The one God is the Divine Society.
The God of eternal love–Son, Spirit, Father in eternal relation–cannot be absolute. To affirm the absoluteness of God is to commit, perhaps, the greatest heresy of all time.

Whether you agree with me or not, please let me know if you misunderstand me.

[The goal of good writing is not that one should write such that readers would understand them; rather, they should write such that they cannot be misunderstood. Again, please help me by responding if what I write is not clear to you.]

"Relative," by definition: related to, involved with, linked to, connected of one entity with some entity other than itself. Relative also means, because in some way connected, thus in some way dependent on: situation in time, space, character, responses, and actions of others, immediate context, the kind and extent of the linkage. At least some of these, perhaps all, and probably much, much more.

We have much more to explore, as we have time, interest, and energy to do so. I’m going to keep on at it as long as I can. I see no prospect of running out of aspects of life that have not already been thoroughly explored.

Link to my post on Rick Davis' blog
http://aintsobad.typepad.com/ikant/

You might want to think on the word studies of "Absolute" and "Relative" that follow below. I hope tomorrow to justify and clarify the way I understand these words, and how I will use them in this blog.


c.1374, from M.Fr. absolut, from L. absolutus, pp. of absolvere "to set free, make separate" (see absolve). Most of the current senses were in L. Sense evolution is from "detached, disengaged," thus "perfect, pure." Meaning "despotic" (1612) is from notion of "absolute in position;" hence absolutism, 1753 in theology, 1830 in politics, first used by Gen. Perronet Thompson. Absolutely as an Amer.Eng. colloquial emphatic is first recorded 1892.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
viewed independently; not comparative or relative; ultimate; intrinsic: absolute knowledge.
characterizing the phonological form of a word or phrase occurring by itself, not influenced by surrounding forms, as not in is not (as opposed to isn't), or will in they will (as opposed to they'll). Compare sandhi.
Mathematics. (of an inequality) indicating that the expression is true for all values of the variable, as x2 + 1 > 0 for all real numbers x; unconditional. Compare conditional
something that is independent of some or all relations.
[Origin: 1350–1400; ME <>solve http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=solvehttp://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=solve
c.1440, "to disperse, dissipate, loosen," from L. solvere "to loosen, dissolve, untie," from PIE *se-lu-, from reflexive pronoun *swe- + base *leu- "to loosen, divide, cut apart" (cf. Gk. lyein "to loosen, release, untie," O.E. -leosan "to lose," leas "loose;" see lose).
abstracthttp://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abstracthttp://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abstract
1387, from L. abstractus "drawn away," pp. of abstrahere, from ab(s)- "away" + trahere "draw" (see tract (1)). Meaning "withdrawn or separated from material objects or practical matters" is from 1557;
abnormal http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abnormalhttp://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abnormal
1835, replaced older anormal and abnormous (1742) under infl. of L. abnormis "deviating from a rule," from ab- "off, away from" + norma "rule" (see norm). The older forms were via O.Fr. anormal (13c.), from M.L. anormalos, from Gk. anomalos, from an- "not" + homalos, from homos "same." The Gk. word influenced in L. by association with norma.
aberration http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=aberrationhttp://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=aberration
1594, "a wandering, straying," from L. aberrationem, from aberrare "go astray," from ab- "away" + errare "to wander" (see err). Meaning "deviation from the normal type" first attested 1846.
abdicate http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abdicatehttp://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abdicate
1541, "to disown, disinherit (children)," from L. abdicatus, pp. of abdicare "disown, disinherit" (specifically abdicare magistratu "renounce office"), from ab- "away" + dicare "proclaim," from stem of dicere "to speak, to say" (see diction). Meaning "divest oneself of office" first recorded 1618.
_________________________________________
relative (n.) http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=relativehttp://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=relative
1388, "a relative pronoun," from O.Fr. relatif (13c.), from L.L. relativus "having reference or relation," from L. relatus, pp. of referre "to refer." Meaning "person in the same family" first recorded 1657; the adj. is attested from 1530. Relatively "in relation to something else" is recorded from 1561. Relativism in philosophy first recorded 1865 (relativist is from 1863).
relate http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=relatehttp://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=relate
1530, "to recount, tell," from L. relatus, used as pp. of referre (see refer), from re- "back, again" + latus (see oblate (n.)). Meaning "to establish a relation between" is from 1771. Sense of "to feel connected or sympathetic to" is attested from 1950, originally in psychology jargon. Related in the sense of "connected by blood or marriage" is from 1702.

God Changes His Mind

The Holy Father told Jonah to inform Ninevah of God’s word: "Yet forty days and Ninevah shall perish." Yet forty days passed, forty-one, then more, and Ninevah did not perish. God changed his mind or else he had Jonah deliver a message that was not factually accurate. God changed his mind because Ninevah repented.

Often, what God does depends on what we do, how we respond to him. Surely it is obvious in I Samuel 8 that God does not want Israel to have any king but him. But the people repeatedly cried for a king, so God told Samuel to anoint Saul, the son of Kish, king. God appears to listen responsively to his people. God and Israel–his covenant community–participate in some kind of interactive relationship.

We’ll look into this much more fully on down the road, but for now consider the logic of the previous paragraph. If God changes his mind, then in some very real sense, God changes. If at times God acts in response to his people, then what God does, depends to a degree, on what they do. If we don’t read into the Bible our traditional–Greek philosophy influenced–belief that God is immutable, the text tells us over and again that the living God can and does change. No fickleness, but change; change, but always trustworthy.

If there are times when God’s actions depend on whether we obey or reject, then God sometimes depends on us, is dependent on us. Here is no philosophical "unmoved mover. Rather, like with a good parent, God’s love expresses itself according to the continually changing need. Much depends on us, yet God remains the Creator and we the creature; God the master, we the servant.

If God has a plan, it clearly is subject to revision. If it had been part of his plan that Adam and Eve would yield to the serpent’s temptation, he would not have punished them because it would have been part of his plan. In the days of Noah, things were not working out the way God wanted them to go, so he initiated a new plan for Noah. Later, God planned for a covenant people, governed by God, to bring blessing to the whole earth. But the people wanted to be governed by a king, so God revised his plan and named Saul their king. Saul didn’t work out; revision again became necessary. David was God’s choice. Then Solomon was God’s choice to succeed David. Solomon didn’t work out. Revision time again.

Repeatedly God’s covenant people undermined, subverted, and sabotaged God’s plan, so God revised his original covenant and promised a new and different kind of covenant, one accomplished through Jesus Christ. God keeps his eye on things, is amazingly adaptable, and is prepared at any time to make any necessary revisions to accomplish his purpose. The way is not a straight line, cannot be foreseen in its entirety, but God’s purpose will be realized, accomplished, completed.

If Jesus had such a thing as an agenda for any particular day, that plan often was revised as he saw the crowds and had compassion on them. Once he crossed the lake, intending a time of needed retreat. However, the throng quickly marched to the other side and swarmed him when he came ashore, so he spent the day teaching them. Often it was individual need that turned Jesus from his planned activity to act compassionately. Once again, in an attempt at retreat from the crowds, he left the Jewish world for the Canaanite, Syro-Phoenician region where he was accosted by a foreign woman who persistently begged for his time, attention, love, and healing power. Jesus seemed reluctant to change his plans, but her unrelenting appeal of faith brought about a revised course of action–and perhaps even a revision of attitude (attitude adjustment?) on Jesus’ part.
God’s way can be barricaded, detours set up, but whatever the obstacle, God cannot be blocked. He has infinite ways of going around, under over, or sometimes even right through the obstructions. God cannot be defeated; he cannot fail; he will prevail. He can be trusted, depended on. Whatever adjustments must be made, God can be counted on to succeed in accomplishing his purpose.