Hal wrote

This is a different approach to the subject than I have addressed, publicly, than in the past,though Bogey will recognize it. I think that the approach to free will,from a Biblical basis,which is the primary thing we are really debating,here, has to include the fact that scripture says we are created in the Creator's,(God's),image. An analysis of the Hebrew and the thought behind the Hebrew phrasing,would indicate that we are not created in the image of an anthropomorphic God,but that we,(anthropos),are created in the image of a Theomorphic God,which INCLUDES free will,since by very definition,God has to have free will,indeed,the freest will of all,or we are not talking about God,in the true definition of the word,at all.

I think Hal has pretty much hit it right on here. I wanted to comment on something he said though which I had not thought of in these terms, but it makes an interesting point.

He mentions that God is not anthropomorphic but theomorphic. I like this idea.

First off I think there is a great deal of confusion, even among Christians and especially among evangelicals and among those even more so southern evangelicals, that God is an old man sitting on a throne in the middle of outer space somewhere shaking his fist at us when we sin. This notion is in fact not only erroneous, but so erroneous as to be utterly indefensible and so far off base that it need not be redefined or refined, but jettisoned and a new idea of God must be conceived of altogether. The problem is that this notion is so widely held that when those who would attack the Faith are met with resistance which begins with, "Well I don't believe in that god either so let's talk about the God who is instead..." the response often borders on violence because the detractors of thd faith think that this notion, being so widely held after all, is the notion of God which Christianity confesses.

But it is not, and it never has been.

And for those who will say, "Well I speak to lots of Christians and they think God is like this...." two things. One, truth is not subject to public opinion. If ten million people hold a view of something erroneously then all of them are wrong. Two, just because lots and lots of people believe something doesn't make it right (nazi germany, ufos, compassionate conservatives) or anything less far fetched.

The Bible uses anthropomorphic language to describe God; the eyes of God search the earth, to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed, etc, but such language is not a statement about the actual nature of God, but rather about the way in which God relates to us in such a way as we can understand. We have no concept of what God is like, but we know things about ourselves. For example we know the tender care of a mother nursing her child and the safety of a child in her arms, so when the Bible calls the Lord El Shaddai (God the breasted One) it does mean that God literally descends and feeds us from His breasts, rather it means that the affection and care which God shows toward those who love Him and are called according to His purpose is like the care of the nursing mother for her child. The anthropomorphic language exists to serve as an analogy for us to help us understand the care and nurture and wrath and judgment of God.

So what is God like?

Well on the authority of none less that Jesus Himself, which by the way settles the argument for faithful Christians, God is a Spirit. Not the Spirit, as in Holy Spirit (that's the Trinity.... aaaaand we don't have time) What that means is that God is non-corporeal. God does not have a body. God exists and has being and that being has a nature which is part and parcel of that being, but is not contained locally within a body. Remember the notion of God in the box?

Is God in a box? Well since God is everywhere, yes.

...and no, since God cannot be in the box only, or rather in this box but not that one.

You see incomprehensible. God exists perfectly and His being needs nothing to exist. He did not need someone to praise Him so He made us. Such a statement implies that God was lacking something (praise) and had to make it. The problem is how could God possibly make something which was not within Him in some fashion already. In other words if there were no us, God would praise Himself and be right to do so. After all, who else would a perfect being praise perfectly if not the perfection from which such perfect praise originates in the first place. Once again Trinity.

The point is Hal's idea of the Theomorphic is helpful because it distinguishes God-ness from everything else-ness. God in Himself makes and upholds all things, and that Creation bears His image, but that Creation is not God and neither is it exactly like God. So what it means to be made in God's image it to be higher that the Creation which only indirectly bears the image of God, and yet to not be exactly like God since we are Creature and He is Creator.

I know I am inviting a discussion on the nature of man from Hal here so feel free buddy and I'll hash that one next.

What I want to say here though is that we must jettison a lot, a lot of really bad thinking where God is concerned and instead read the Scripture for what it has to say about God. Because far from saying that we and our rock are the bright shiny center of the universe and God dotes on us because He has nothing better to to do, instead Scripture points out that we, one and all, are wretched fallen sinners who's idea of self is way to big and who's idea of God is way to small.

Just thinking.

Can we please fire the Christian Conservatives

So yesterday I was listening to NPR and the host was talking about the family. For those who don't know the family is a 'christian' group of politicos who lobby for things like anti-abortion, gay marriage, pro family, etc causes. Ya know, the sort of folks who send you emails about America going to hell and have arrived at the hair brained conclusion that they can actually do something about it.

Anyway

This particular show was about a politician in.... Africa somewhere (I know but this is blog not journalism so deal with my fuzziness OK)... who is attempting to pass a law which would make "chronic homosexuality" a crime punishable by death.

No really.

Anyway this particular Mr. Niceguy is a member of the family and is doing so for... uh God I guess. So after throwing up in my mouth a little I got really bent about this. The thing is I am a conservative Christian and I am sick ad naseum of these folks attatching the name of my Lord to their bigoted cause.

And yes it is bigotry. You wanna know how I know?

Simple, the political pukes who pound their desks and holler about family values and how gay folk are taking them away have not read their Bibles. Scripture does condemn homosexuality, which they are oh so fast to point out, but it also condemns any and all sexual activity apart from marriage. Scripture lumps gays, the high school jock and the cheerleader, the twenty something live ins, and the common law folks all together and declares them equally guilty. This means that those politicians who pound the lectern with a Bible in one hand a flag in the other while giving tearful hand wringing speeches about the family and the children are, in all likelihood, just as guilty of sexual sin as the gays they are so very concerned about. For that matter, these good ol boys are probably sipping scotch with some lobbyist chatting up their son who's popping the finest girl in private school with their chests puffed out as they say things like, "Manly" and "Boys being boys."

But somehow when these folks decide to speak of crumbling morality and God and country they never seem to be able to confess that Scripture only knows two kinds of sex, that which is between a married man and woman and that which is sinful.

Funny thing is the Bible makes it abundantly clear that all such behavior can be repented of and ammended, but somehow these guys don't seem to be really interested in mercy for gay folk or for morally lax folk. Ya know like guys who accidentally solicit sex from undercover cops in airport bathrooms.

No instead when these yahoos get together and start throwing around words like sexual and sin they only seem to have eyes for gay folks. Why? Because they are personally offended by gay folks. They just don't like gay folk that much because gay folk are a 'them', and anytime you single out a 'them', you're a bigot.

And frankly I am sick to death of having God's Name come out of the mouths of bigots and having my faith be associated with bigoted men and their bigoted causes.

I know a lot of folks are predicting the dems will get swamped in the midterms and maybe they will, I am not a lib so I can't say I would mind too much, but oh my goodness if I have to hear one more hack holding a Bible telling to be afraid of all the 'thems' that are stealing America I'm going to freak.

Scripture tells us to not oppress the poor, the fatherless, the widow or the alien in our lands. As a Christian I am pretty sure that makes the republican party a 'them' to me from a Christian perspective.

Be afraid... or ya know don't and be a person in stead

The Problem of Pain

Among the arguments against the existence of God which have been put forward over time this is one of the big difficult ones to deal with. The question goes something like this, the Church affirms the goodness of God and that God is all powerful which would seem to indicate that God, being good, would not want suffering in His Creation, and since He is all powerful would eliminate it so what gives?

Let me begin by saying that this question is enigmatic to say the least and that some brilliant thinkers in Church History have said some pretty spectacularly stupid things trying to answer it. See Leipzig and Candide.

The issue is that any attempt to answer the big question does nothing whatever to deal with the fact that pain is a big issue experienced personally and that big answers do not play well at the hospital bed of a friend or the grave of a child. So as to not "attempt to handle at arms length problems to deep for my reach" I want to be perfectly clear that my answer is I don't know. The purpose of this post is not to attempt to alleviate the suffering of one who hurts but to explain my own understanding of this problem. This is how I deal with it and I do not make the slightest pretext that this is going to solve the issue for anyone who reads it, but rather this is to try and explain what gets me out of bed when I am having a rotten day.

I will explain in three points,

1. What do you mean by good and all powerful?

2. God is better than we think

3. And we all know it

First off I think the person who says that a good God would not allow suffering has zero understanding about the God put forth in the Bible. Christ teaches more on Hell than all the other people in the Bible put together and He does so without apology. He also emphasizes emphatically (alliteration cool huh?) that Hell is a place of suffering and that it is God who sends people there. "Do not fear the one who can kill the body, but fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in Hell" Since Hell is a place of punishment prepared for Satan it stands to reason that we are not being admonished to fear the Devil, but rather the God who will send us to Hell. The Bible also says that God sends people to Hell BECAUSE He is good not in spite of it. The question Abraham asks God when judgment is pronounced on Sodom and Gomorrah is, "Shall not the Judge of the Earth do right?" That is Abraham is surprised by the judgment and is wanting to save Lot and any others who are innocent, but the question is answered that yes God will do right. God has mercy on Lot and spares him and destroys the cities of the plain, in doing both things God has done right?

Why?

Because God is holy. God is separate utterly from sin and is righteously indignant with sin. When God says that He hates sin He is not confessing a sin but rather is expressing His own absolute rightness. There can be no other expression of God's rightness in Scripture than His furious anger and indignation over our sin which is a direct rebellion and affront to His glory and holiness. Nothing that a sinful man could ever do will earn him a hearing with the Almighty and God does not listen to the pleas of the condemned. Since all men are guilty before God, any and all calamity which befalls them is a righteous expression of the goodness of God.

But God is also merciful. God spares Lot and not because he is good, remember Lot offers up his daughters to the mob to be gang raped... not a good guy. And when he escapes promptly gets drunk and commits incest with both of them. So let us set aside the notion that Lot must have been good in some way because God spared him. Not so. Lot was a rat amongst the rats and deserved the same condemnation which befell the cities, but he received mercy from God for God's own purpose (I think because Lot is in the Messianic Line because one the children of incest is Moab, Ruth was a Moabitess and the great grandmother of King David and thus also a great grandmother to Jesus) and in so doing God revealed again His goodness. And if we want to continue to use this example, I would say the presence of the Dead Sea where Sodom used to be speaks pretty highly of God's power over Creation.

So the first point is that I don't think it contradicts the goodness or power of God that we suffer.

Second off, I think we take this very goodness for granted every single second of our lives.

How do I know?

Because we are surprised by suffering. When things like tsunamis, hurricanes, disease, war, poverty and suffering take place we are surprised. We are affronted that planes are flown into buildings. Shocked that hurricanes flood cities. And appalled that entire peoples can be wiped out by fire, flood, earthquake and disease. We have no frame of reference for dealing with these things because we do not expect them to happen. We are "standing on a planet that's revolving at approximately 1100 mile an hour" around a star which could kill us at any second with a solar flare, protected by the cold blackness of outer space by a layer of atmosphere which is infintessimal when compared even to our planet with comets and meteors flying by at several thousand miles an hour which could wipe us all out in a blink, living among quadrillions of germs which could mutate at any second and kill us all, etc, etc, etc, and we never think about it. We assume the basic goodness of Creation, so much so that we get pissed when it backfires on us.

But why should we be? Why shouldn't the "planet shake us off like a bad case of fleas?" If we are assuming that there is no God then we are stupid to assume that universe prefers our existence over our non-existence, and yet that is exactly the assumption we make when we blithely carry on day by day without the slightest thought that any second the whole thing could go radically different. Notice I did not say wrong, because to say wrong assumes that not suffering is right, which brings me to my last point.

We all know God is good.

I have never met even a hardened atheist who will not say something to the effect of "look at the world, something is wrong." Innately we all know that we are not supposed to suffer. We know it is not normal.

A quick word. I am not going to argue that God exists because evil exists. I think to do so assumes that there is such a thing as evil and that this proves the existence of good. While I do believe that this is valid, it assigns a value to 'evil' and 'good God' which some here may not agree with, which ya know is why I'm trying to explain the problem of pain in the first place.

I want to instead posit the existence of human beings and suffering. I think everyone in the room can agree these things exist. The point is this. We, all of us, know that there is human suffering, and we have a difficult time explaining it. There are those who will say that God is good don't worry, and there are those who will say there is no God and suffering doesn't matter, but the adults in the room know these arguments are equally flawed. Rather, we know that suffering is wrong. We know that when nature kills us it is because something is wrong. We know that when dictators sanction the rape and murder of their populace that it is wrong. And those who will say that it is cultural and we shouldn't make such judgments about other cultures... shut up you're stupid. Its wrong. Period.

We know this suffering is wrong, and we can't explain how we know, but we know that the answer is not here. Education, ecclesiastical rule, totalitarian rule, socialism, communism, social welfare, charity, theocracies, all of the institutions of men have failed to alleviate suffering. I think deep down we know the reason why is that people are in charge of them. People seek good and want good, but cannot ever find it. And yet we know that it exists. And the reason we know is that we know God exists and that He is good even if we won't admit it. We have not found this good in and amongst ourselves because goodness does not exist in a sinful world. And we may speak platitudes about the basic goodness of humanity, but such words are empty as soon as they are spoken because in order for something to be basically good it must must also be partially, even basically bad. Its like meat that is sort of rotten. It may not kill us to eat it, but it isn't a heck of a lot of fun either. There is no such thing as goodness among men, but we know that goodness exists and is desirable, and this goodness must therefore exist outside of and apart from us.

And that goodness I think is best described as God.

And our frustration when things go bad is that we see this not as a badness in God, but an inability toward goodness in us. We see the suffering in Sudan, and Nazi Germany, and Cambodia, and name it, and we know that inside if the fetters were removed, there are some among us if not we ourselves who would not find sympathies toward a cause which brutalizes another in the name of our own advancement. It is the beauty of Heart of Darkness when Marlow realizes that he is not so different from the aboriginal peoples upon whom he has looked with such disdain.

This frustration toward wickedness wells up inside us because it violates our natures which long for goodness. A goodness found only the God who made us.

The God we long for.

The God we know is good.

I have no idea why God allowed my friend to have a stroke, I have no idea why God has allowed my family member to begin that slide which apparently will claim her life. I don't know.

But I do know the frustration and sorrow that I feel about these things is proof to me that God is good and things are not as they were meant to be. But I believe there will come a day when they will be. Because the God who is good may allow us to suffer for a season because it serves His ultimate goodness, but that He in mercy will wipe away every tear one day.

Time Free Will Sovereignty

So then I left a hanging sentence two blogs ago.

How bout then YANKEES!!!!

Sorry, I promise the adults will now be posting for the duration.

tee hee hee

Ahem.... really.

So the question was how can a man's will be free if God is sovereignly overruling all of creation. First off I think it is important to say that by overruling I mean that God rules over creation not that He capriciously overturns all of our intentions for His own will. However, in that God does rule over Creation we must ask the question is God's knowledge causal to our actions? I think the answer is no. And for the explanation I will turn to C S Lewis.

In Mere Christianity Mr Lewis spoke of not of the means by which God relates to creation but the manner in which God relates to creation. He said that the first thing we must grasp is that God is timeless. This does not mean that God lives forever and ever and ever, it means that God's existence is separate from time itself. I know that may seem like a strange proposition but I feel it is important to understand. First off we know that time is a part of the physical universe (Einstein) and that time is relative to everything in the universe (Einstein) and therefore time must not be thought of as universal constant but rather as dimension by which we measure our existence. It is not only that time is not constant for us it is that the way by which we experience time is such that it only applies to us and if there are little green men on the other side of the universe they may experience time in a totally different way. But they do experience time because they exist inside the universe.

However God does not live in the universe. The universe is created by God, upheld by God, and yet is not God. And neither is it like God. God is not physical (Augustine did not get it and neither do I, the Bible tells us that God is spirit and thus non-corporeal and I don't know what that means exactly) and does not live in the physical universe. However God is not separate from the physical universe either. For example, let us take the idea of God in the box. If we assert that God is everywhere and we have a box then is God in the box? Yes. However, if God is everywhere and we have a box is God only in the box? No. So how can this be. I think the answer, and btw so does Lewis, rests in the understanding that God's existence and His knowledge are simultaneous. The idea being that while I know myself, my knowledge is lacking and therefore I cannot truly say that I know myself exhaustively. As such, sometimes the things I do seem startling even to me, and the outside world is often just abjectly shocking. God however knows everything not in its totality as though He were some store house library in the sky, but perfectly. That is there is no knowledge which God lacks. So if I have a box, does God know that box perfectly? That is does God know its size, physical properties, the way it smells, is it held together by glue or tape, what is in the box, is the box empty, the chemical composition of the box, everything. God knows the box totally and exhaustively and with a perfect knowledge that neither lacks nor can lack anything which could be known about the box. In that sense God is in the box. However God is also non-corporeal and therefore is not locally in the box.

The way by which God relates to the box is by His knowledge. The way which a timeless God relates to temporal me is by His knowledge. God knows me exhaustively. He knows all of my thoughts, words and deeds, but also he knows my will, knowledge and motives. In fact God knows these things infinitely more than I do. Why? Because God knows them perfectly while I know them partially, and the difference between 1 and -1 if only zero may be added or subtracted to either figure is infinite. God cannot know me less than perfectly and neither can I know myself perfectly and therefore the gap in my knowledge is not small but infinite.

But that is not all that God knows about me. Because God is not only perfect in His knowledge He is also timeless. Therefore God knows what will become of me tomorrow not because He is instructing the fates to lift and set my feet each step of the way but because God is already in my future. He is already there. God is here with me, in the past with me, and in the future with me, because (Augustine) to be perfect in being means that time never perishes for God and neither is it future to God. The future need not kill the present and neither does the present need to be buried in the past, but rather all time exists simultaneously for God who exists perfectly beyond this physical universe and its temporal dimensions and yet knows all things in that temporal universe and governs them second by second by His knowledge of them.

So God does not have to try and guess what I will do because He knows me perfectly. God need not try and guess how those around me will react to me because He knows them perfectly. And God need not try and guess how we will affect each other because He knows us perfectly and our reactions to each other are a temporal causal chain. This is what it means to say that volition is free and yet shaped by forces within and without. A man's dislike of tomatoes causes him to not eat tomatoes. He does not eat them because he does not want them. His dislike causes him to not eat them. God knows that a man does not like tomatoes and thus is not surprised when he orders his chicken sandwich without the tomatoes.

But what about the future?

Lets roll dice.

Let us assume that we are throwing craps in Vegas and our mark if eight and we are trying to roll a hard eight. If we knew the exact physical properties of the dice, table, backboard, velocity of the thrower, angle of throw, air pressure, electro magnetic influence, temperature, elasticity, position of dice in thrower's hand, etc, we would know to an absolute certainty that a shooter was going to get hard eight or not. And we would know one hundred percent of the time. That is perfect knowledge allows us to predict what will happen, and God can do this with us.

But it is more than that.

Now let us assume that we not only can predict with perfect certainty and already exist ten seconds into the future and as such have already experienced the hard eight, then we would not only know in the sense of predictive prophetic certainty, but also in the sense of experiential knowledge which is absolute in its certainty. God knows my tomorrow because He is experiencing it right now.

So does this knowledge violate my volition?

I think the answer is no. And Lewis explains why. He said that since God is already in our tomorrow He does not need to lead us by the hand to wait on us around the corner. While God knows our actions because He knows us, He also can be with us always because He is with our future even before we experience it. This knowledge, while certain, is not causative in that it does not compel us to act other than in that way which we choose to act. Our will is only violated if God turns us left when we would have turned right, but (Edwards again) God need not force us to change our mind by compelling us left against our wills, He need only change the things internally which shape our volition and thus affect a change in our affections about left. That is we go left because we want to and no because we are compelled. And God does not have to force us left to know it will happen, and neither does His knowledge compel us left against our will. And if are more bent to the right, God does not need to change the shape of the road, He need only change us.

This is what it means to be saved by Sovereign choice and free will. If God changes m,y affections by changing my heart (making that which is dead alive Ephesians 2 Romans 8) and thus I see God in a way which I never saw Him before and I change my bent by my choice because He changed me and not my direction. I cannot choose Him without Him, but with Him I will not choose other.

God does not need to turn the world over and shake it to cause me to arrive at where He knows I'll be and neither does He need to drop a map from Heaven. Imagine the great Celestial chorus following us around yelling "LEFT LEFT LEFT!!!!!" No rather God need only whisper to that part of us that is us and we turn because we are truly starved men and He is truly the Oasis of Rest Everlasting.

He does us no violence and yet overrules us by His knowledge and presence with us.

So what about pain?

Later

Still Thinking

OK, so its been a while but ya know the Yanks are in the World Series so chill.

My buddy asked me some questions and I thought I would take a second to answer them as such as I can.

He wrote,

"Hmm. Well. First,I think that mental faculties do indicate a Creator, since I don't believe in 'spontaneous generation' of intellect any more than I believe that horse hairs turn into snakes,(and this was one belief of that earlier,simpler version of evolution),.BUT,that having been said,let's get on to the free will issue."

I am not arguing for the spontaneous generation of the intellect, however I do not think that the presence of an intellect in and of itself is necessarily proof of a Creator. The reason why is really simple. We experience intellect through our eyes only, and have a tendency to think that is the only way in which it can be experienced. However, we do not know what it is like to be say a snail, and as such do not have anyway of knowing for sure what or if snails think about anything. We may say that your garden variety snail seems a little slow, but maybe they are just really deep thinkers.

Understand, I do think that self/soul/nephesh/pneuma awareness is unique to human beings, but I am not sure that we cannot call the behavior of other animals 'non-intellectual' in the sense that they are surely aware of the world around them and react to it some certain ways. I know this is a little ticklish for some, but I do not think that the uniqueness of man necessarily precludes some sort of experience of the physical world on an intellectual level by other animals in Creation.

As such, I do not think the mere fact that we are curious about ourselves really holds water as a proof for the existence of God.

More to come.

Peace.