Relations, not Facts

Recent polls show that most Americans do not know the names of the four gospels, where in the Bible to find the Ten Commandments, any of the words to the 23^rd Psalm, nor that the Bible comprises sixty-six books. That indicates a lack of biblical knowledge at one level, but only a most basic level. This is disturbing to some of us, but such knowledge does not get at what the Bible is about. Bible study should focus on what it all means, and what it means to us and our world.

Before we begin studying the details, individual or small groups of verses, before we let ourselves get bogged down in controversy over any of the passages that are difficult to understand, we should look for the larger meanings, the purpose, intention, and aim of it all. What the Bible or any of its parts are all about is not a body of facts and information. It is about the nature and purposes of God, particularly in relation to his human creation.

Basically and ultimately the Bible is not about principles, ideas, doctrines, or rules for living; it is about relationships: God’s relation to his creation, particularly the human creation, and our relationship to him.

The Bible is about faith, forgiveness, trust, peace, patience, compassion, rebellion, hatred, lust, guilt, and the rest of the entire spectrum of personal relationships positive and negative. It is about love, the foundational relationship, the one that produces joy and peace. Bible study at its best explores these relations and their connection with each other. The meaning and significance of the biblical story is relational, relate-ive. The big picture must be understood before the details can find where they fit into the whole. And yes, it remains true that we can’t do much of this until we know the four gospels and the fundamental facts.

God Doesn't Know?

It seemed that everything God had done for Israel was in vain, accomplished nothing, and was treated by his people as worthless. Was God disappointed? Can God’s feelings be hurt? Does God have feelings, or is he impassive? According to the prophet, Hosea, God is frustrated and doesn’t know what else he can do to get them to keep their covenant commitments to him. Hosea indicates that God has tried everything he knows how to do, all to no avail. He rescued them from slavery, made them his special people–a people with a special purpose, for the rest of the world–has blessed them with a great land, defeated all their enemies, sent them prophets, warned them of the dangers if they did not do right, has loved them with an everlasting steadfast love. He has even tried punishment–severe punishment. Nothing has gotten through to them. They have ignored God and done it their way. And continue to.

According to Hosea, it is God’s own words that tell us he doesn’t know what to do with them. Can this be? God is supposed to know everything, but he doesn’t know how to do with this intransigent nation of rebels. Maybe we have been wrong. Maybe there are things God doesn’t know. We’ll have to explore this. If there is that which God doesn’t know, perhaps even can’t know, we must abandon the ancient idea that God is omniscient, all knowing. Is Hosea wrong, or have we been wrong all these centuries? It may be that God is more complex than we have simplified him to be, than our creeds and doctrinal statements have been able to formulate; it just may be that there is more to God than can be fitted into our formulas.

Misunderstanding of God.


We tend to take on those traits that characterize the god we believe in. This is why I oppose absolutist views of the Christian’s God. Those who understand a god as absolute, tend to emphasize on absolute divine sovereignty, that is, that the god exercises complete control of all things. They also emphasize power and the divine right to use this power in any way the god might choose.

The followers of an absolute god tend to exercise full sovereignty over their churches, they seek to control the lifestyle of the group, and power is exercised to maintain this sovereignty and control the behavior of the believers. Everything becomes inflexible, unchallengeable, and permanent in form and content. I’ve been in many Christian churches in the past seventy years and too often this has been the pattern I have observed.

It is such a misunderstanding and thus, misrepresentation of the biblical God that I am opposing in this blog. I am motivated by this widespread misunderstanding, this misrepresentation of God.

I readily grant there are biblical foundations upon which such a view of God can be built. In the Bible, God regularly exercises his sovereign power. The ultimate issue is whether to give God’s mighty power the preeminence or whether, in the total biblical message, God’s love is given priority over all else. I am convinced that God is love, holy love, and that all other attributes of God are subordinated in the service of that love.

Love is a personal relationship, and the Christian community should be relate-ive, relational, that is, a community characterized by the obvious exercise of holy love.

This is the basic rational for what I am blogging.

No Absolutes

When I say there are no absolutes, I am aware that I don't intend the common usage of the word. In its root meaning, however, the word means, "away from, separated from, apart from anything at all." It means, "non-relate-ive. It means "related to nothing, dependent on nothing, connected to nothing.

Nothing exists in such a totally disconnected way except as an abstract idea in a human mind. We can mentally abstract things from the real world (a world of connections and relationships) and think of them as totally separate from all else. When we leave the world of our ideas, however, we can name nothing that is not related to something else.

What about God? I believe in the biblical God who is known as Father, Son, and Spirit. God is not a solitary absolute. God was never lonely. The Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Father. Both love the Spirit. The Spirit loves them both.

The Divine Relativity

Again, I want to make it clear that I am using relative and absolute in a special sense, a sense that grows directly out of the root meaning of the terms.

For me, relative means related, related to something; it means relate-ive in nature, relational in essence. And since I believe that everything is related to something else, I believe that everything is relate-ive–relative–and cannot be rightly understood apart from relationship.

God is relate-ive in essence, because God is essentially trinitarian: Father, Son, Spirit in an eternal relation of love. Love is neither an idea, a principle, a force, nor a law. It is a relationship. God is love; God is relative.

I do not use relative in the sense that says the meaning or value of anything is up to each of us to decide for our self. I do not mean that everyone has their own truth or their own definition right and wrong. Although in one sense I believe everything is relative, I completely reject relativism as it is commonly understood.

I will deal with the way I use “absolute” in the next blog.

Orthodox Christian Relativity

To some recent respondents:

I may have, unintentionally, misled some with my use of “relative” and “absolute.” I agree with all criticisms if I meant these words in the ordinary sense. I need to define my terms more specifically. The root meaning of relative is “relate-ive,” and that is what God is all about. God is love. Love is a relationship, not a principle, a thing, or a theory. The incarnation, the atonement, and the resurrection of Jesus are all meant to make possible a restored relationship with God. A Christian is a person who is in right relationship with God.

God is love. God is all about relationship. Sin is anything that disrupts our relationship with God. God is eternally trinitarian. Christianity is not a mere monotheism, it is a trinitarian monotheism. The God Christians worship, serve, and trust is Father, Son, and Spirit in eternal relation to each other. This is one way I use the term, “relative” in connection (relation) with God.

There is a second use of the term, however, in my theology. That is that God relates to his creation according to his purpose, human need, or the historical situation. This has many implications I will deal with another time. It means, among other things, that he dealt with Israel differently than he dealt with the New Testament church. He dealt with ancient Egypt differently than he dealt with the Roman Empire. As I wrote before, Jesus dealt with each individual relative to their unique situation, and the New Testament epistles are relative to local situations.

One specific issue needs to be addressed. The book of Hebrews doe not says that “God” is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It speaks of Jesus as “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” One of the major emphases of Hebrews is that Jesus was in all points tested like we are, that he is our brother (See ch. 2), that he understands by experience what our life is like and therefore can be a faithful high priest on our behalf. That is who he was yesterday (in his days on earth), that is who he still is, and that is who he will be forever: “our “faithful and merciful high priest.” That will not change.

Now to the word, “absolute.” “Ab,” plus “solvere.”
ab-prefix, from L. ab-, ab "off, away from," from PIE base *apo-“
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,’ away; see ab-1 + solvere, to loosen.”

The above demonstrates the historical roots of “absolute.” It means “away from,” “loosened from any connection to,” i.e., “all by itself with no connections–relations--to anything.”

This would be true of a mono-theistic God, but the God who is a trinitarian monotheos is not separate from all connections or relations. Rather, as Father, Son, and Spirit, God is eternally relational in his very nature. He is not a “lone.” He is one God, an eternal, divine relationship–a relational mystery.

To believe God is absolute in the sense I have just described is heresy. I understand why so many use the term, however. Absolute is commonly understood as the ultimate, the highest and supreme attribute that can be given to anything. It is used as a term of worth-ship. I understand that, but consider the word misleading. Here are the words I use for the same: ultimate, universal, supreme, and, of course, holy.

This is a bit long for a single blog, but I must make one additional statement. I am a Christian. I’ve trusted my life into the hands of the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, the one who by his life, death, and resurrection made complete atonement for sin. I believe the historical statements of orthodox Christian theology. I do interpret the meaning of these doctrines differently than they have been commonly interpreted, but I do completely believe in the meaning of traditional Christian thought.

I believe a Christian is a person for whom Jesus Christ is decisive and definitive in all things present, past, future, and eternally.

On the other hand, I don’t worry about human judgments of my relation to God. I don’t have to be conservative, liberal, evangelical, Catholic, orthodox or neo-orthodox, post-modern, emergent, or traditional. “On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.”

No Biblical Absolutes

Contrary to popular understanding, the Bible delivers us no absolutes. Everything in the Bible is relative: on one hand, to God, and on the other hand, to some particular person or group, occasion, or need.

The ten commandments are not absolutes, they are addressed only to God’s covenant people, Israel–not to the Egyptians, the Amalekites, the Moabites, nor to the Yoruba or Arapaho.

The Sermon on the Mount contains no absolutes; it is addressed to the larger group of his disciples. These teachings relate specifically relate to those who commit to follow Jesus and allow their life to be disciplined by him.

The need to be born again is not presented as an absolute necessity. Only Nicodemus is told that he must be born again. Jesus says to one that all he needs is to sell out and follow Jesus. Another is told to leave his parents and follow Jesus. Still another, the Gerasene demoniac, is not allowed to follow Jesus, but told to stay in his home territory. There is no single “plan of salvation.” Jesus deals with everyone differently, relative to their personal condition.

The epistles of the New Testament offer no absolute teaching or rules. Each epistle is written relative to the needs in a particular church. The Galatian churches are not taught the same thing about women in the church as the Corinthian church. Different places, different situations. The letter called Philemon was written to Philemon relative to a runaway slave named Onesimus. Paul deals with rules differently with Timothy than he does with the Galatians. The book of Hebrews is written relative to Hebrew Christians and relative to the Hebrew Bible book of Leviticus.

Christians are not to try to impose absolutes on anyone, but to serve as faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ, living out all the things he has commanded them.

Last week we attended, along with maybe two hundred others, my brother-in-law's 90th birthday party. About half of these were relatives, many, like me, relatives by marriage.

We use the word "relative" in two or three different ways (at least). In speaking of the divine relativity, I use it in two of these senses.

We all have relatives, people we are related to. This is one usage. Human's are, by nature, inescapably, relate-ive. We are related to people, we relate to non-family members also. We are relative. In this sense, God is relative.

The common understanding of things that are "relative" is that there is no definite truth or goodness. That these--and other matters--are just "relative to the individual. No universal true, no universal good. It is a matter of personal choice.

Relative, by its nature, means "related to something or someone." In the common usage, it seems to mean, "related strictly to each individual or individual group." This usage, I reject as nonsense.

Another common usage of the term is that things are relative to the situation, relative to a context. Specific instances of right and wrong, truth and falsity may in some real sense be dependent on the particular time and place. God seems to be relate-ive in this sense. When we read the Bible, God appears--and acts--in ways that, by common standards, are not consistent with each other. God changes, relative to the circumstance.

In the end, everything is relative to God; God is relative to everything. God and thus, all reality is relational. God relates, we relate. God cares and is involved.

The Bible is about relations and relationships, not ideas, doctrines, principles or propositions. Everything about it is relate-ive.

I am Back

I am Back

It has been over a year since I have blogged. I took time off to finish writing a book that I began years ago. The first full draft is now finished. I expect to edit and rewrite for a few months, then publish late this summer. The book focuses on how to become a good or better thinker.

I intend to serialize it, a chapter per month, on my “Considerate Thinking” blog. Meanwhile, I am posting snippets of it on Twitter daily. Check Twitter–wallaceroark. http://twitter.com/#home

I hope to update at least two of my several blogs (see the bottom of My Profile) each week

God is relative, there are no absolutes, and that is the good news. Succinctly stated, that is the theme of this blog. I reason from this duofold major premise: the biblical statement that God is love, and its theological corollary that Christianity is a trinitarian monotheism.

The practical purpose is to return Christian thoughts and feelings to our responsibility–our sole responsibility–to love God and to love our neighbor, to turn our thoughts and feelings away from the notion that our responsibility is to obey the rules if we are not to face the terrors of a despotic God.

Edmund Morris, in Theodore Rex, quotes President Roosevelt I: “. . . of one thing I am sure . . . the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man.”

What Roosevelt says next is a good statement of what I think and how I feel about the “God Is Relative” blog: “. . . it may be that I am wrong, but if I am, then all my thoughts and beliefs are wrong, and my whole way of looking at life is wrong.”

John Said:

God is open. Incandescent. Welcome mat out.
Is that what follows
or what will or might follow?

Logic is the study of what follows.
Maybe. Probably. Certainly. Impossible.
Could be, who knows? Non sequitur.

Maybe it is possible, after all.
God created it, but cannot lift it--
without our help.
Somewhere, in all of this,
there is a big, big rock.

And it is falling,
gathering moss and souls
and nations and centuries.
Can it be stopped?

Not by Sisyphus.
Not without the holy dynamis

Is He in it with us?
Did it hit him?
Or is it
the other way around? Or . . .

What do I know?
God knows.
But what does he know?
And when?

Open question.
Curtain opened,
not completely.

Unintentional Saboteurs of the Christian Faith

They were in the coffee room, upperclassmen, three of them, preparing to become Christian ministers. My office was just around the corner so I heard everything they said. It was midmorning, September 12, 2001. It was not just their words; I could hear their posture, gesture, tone, and attitude. These were Christian Studies majors (Christ-ian Studies).

I have read all four accounts of the Jesus story. I have taught Christian Studies for thirty-some years. I taught "The Life and Teachings of Jesus” for more than twenty years. Jesus did not get his words and attitude from his surrounding culture. These fellows did. They sounded just like their surrounding culture.

They were venting. I wasn't at all surprised by the response of the typical citizen. It was in complete accord with the character of their culture, their socialization. It was what patriotic emotion deemed appropriate. But these guys called themselves followers of Jesus; they claimed to be believers.

There was a disconnect. And they were not the only ones in the Christian community saying things like this.

We ought to nuke Afghanistan back into the Stone Age.

Yeah!

We ought to bomb Afghanistan off the map.

This did not come from Jesus. They were not following the one they called their Lord. Claiming to be, studying to be, and training to be God's representatives, they misrepresented the God who came to us in Jesus Christ, "God among Us," "Immanuel."

September 12, 2001 is not the only time God's "representatives" have misrepresented God. For a variety of reasons, and to the undermining of Christian faith, this kind of unintended and unconscious sabotage has a long and widespread history.

Don't look at or listen to them. Pick up a Bible; read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Look at, look to, and listen to Jesus.

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.
__________________

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.
____________

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.
___________________

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.

_____________________


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.