More in the theology series...
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as All-Powerful
5. God as All-Knowing
6. God as Eternal
7. God as Spirit
8. Three in One
Probably no Christian belief is more mysterious than the Trinity. The Trinity of course is the firmly held belief, on the one hand, that there is only one God, coupled with the equally firmly held belief that God the Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. The overwhelming majority of Christians throughout the centuries have believed that God exists as three persons, even though he is only one substance.
It seems very difficult to explain this belief in any detail without running into imbalance either on the one God side or the three persons side. And if we do fall into imbalance, there is sure to be a name from history for the imbalance. For example, if someone suggested that there were three gods, that is polytheism. If someone suggested there was only one God who changed his roles and functions throughout time, that is called modalism or Sabellianism.
There is a massive history here, and it is not clear how practical it is to know it except that it reinforces to us a sense that what Christians believe sometimes has as much to do with the church in history as it does with the Bible. There were options the Bible seems to leave open that were quite decisively shut closed in church history.
For example, some Jewish Christians of the early second century believed Jesus was the Messiah without believing he was divine (Ebionites, Nazoreans). Some New Testament interpreters see them in continuity with some of the earliest Christians, perhaps like the Judaizers. Acts 15 possibly treats such people as "in" at that time, but they would be "out" at least by the late second century.
Another early heresy was the idea that Jesus became God at his baptism, adoptionism. Then there was the idea that Jesus the divine spirit being never fully became human, Docetism (he only "seemed" to be human). We already mentioned modalism, which is the idea that God the Father in the Old Testament became God the Son in Jesus, who then ascended and returned to earth as the Holy Spirit.
Probably the biggest historical challenger to what we now consider to be orthodoxy was a heresy called Arianism. Arius at the beginning of the 300s believed that Jesus was the "firstborn of all creation" (Col. 1:15), that Christ was the first thing God created and the most pre-eminent thing that God created, but still part of the creation. At one point in the mid-300s, probably more Christians were Arians than were trinitarians. Again, you can see how Arius could argue his point from Scripture.
These ideas only became heresies at a certain point in time. That is to say, while it may be obvious to us today that they are false, it was not always obvious at the time. We might expect to see some of these thinkers in the kingdom, even though their beliefs were eventually condemned. Some only became heretics after they were dead.
Historically, it seems pretty clear that the doctrine of the Trinity developed in order to clarify several beliefs that seemed in tension with each other. So the belief that there is only one God is central to a Jewish understanding of the Old Testament, even if most of ancient Israel believed in the existence of other gods that were not legitimate recipients of worship. That is to say, the official practice of ancient Israel was "monolatry," the worship of one God, and they were "henotheists."
But by the time of the New Testament, such gods were thought of as demons (1 Cor. 10:20), and belief in one God seems firmly established within Judaism. Subordinates to YHWH could be reverenced as a function of worshiping him, such as bowing to the king or reverencing exalted angels that represented YHWH or bore his name. The New Testament strongly affirms that there is only one God (e.g., 1 Cor. 10:4-6; Eph. 4:6).
Yet the New Testament also considers Jesus to be God (John 1:1) as a distinct person, and some passages consider the Holy Spirit to be a distinct person (16:7-11) who is obviously God as well. So we have one God, but we have three persons who are God. This is basically what the idea of the Trinity, clarified at the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), affirms. God is one in substance, but exists as three persons. This belief affirms everything that needs to be affirmed.
What is the practical pay-off? Probably the first that comes to mind from the history is a recognition of how much we owe to the church in the first four centuries for what we now believe about the Trinity. It may seem obvious to us today that the Bible teaches the Trinity, but it was not obvious to all the early Christians for several hundred years. Indeed, when the Reformation opened the door to a re-examination of catholic belief in the light of Scripture alone, we should not be surprised to find that some Protestants, like the Socinians, ended up rejecting the Trinity.
Even such revered Protestant names as John Milton (Paradise Lost) and Isaac Newton (laws of physics) seem to have rejected the classic view of the Trinity. John Wesley firmly believed in the Trinity, but believed individuals such as these would be in the kingdom. [1] Even today, there are "oneness Pentecostals" who are basically modalists who believe that the one God only has existed in history as one person at a time, and they would have an inerrantist view of the Bible. The long and short of it is that we seem to need more than the Bible alone in order to arbitrate such debates and that, as in the case of the biblical canon itself, one has to put some faith in the church to have certainty on the doctrine of the Trinity.
What other practical pay-off might the doctrine have? Certainly you hear lots of supposed practical insights allegedly drawn from the Trinity. Both egalitarians and complementarians sometimes refer to the Trinity as a basis for their beliefs. [2] Look, the egalitarian says, Christians have historically believed that the divine Son is not subordinate to the divine Father. The complementarian then responds with Scriptures where the (human) Jesus is subordinate to the divine Father. Both arguments seem rather arcane and probably unhelpful.
Others see the Trinity as an embodiment of love and relationship as an eternal attribute of God, with John 17 no doubt playing the key biblical role. The theologian Karl Barth structured his entire, voluminous theology on the structure of the Trinity. So much of the teaching we find right now on the Trinity seems quite speculative, especially considering how mysterious it is and how cautiously it came together in church history. So much thinking right now about it seems reminiscent of the layer after layer of paint added to Christianity in the medieval period.
In my view, the most practical view to take on the Trinity is to stick somewhat closely to its original form. We Christians affirm that there is only one God. We also affirm that Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God. We can talk of Father, Son, and Spirit as distinct persons while only affirming one God. To go much beyond this basic affirmation is to enter the often impractical world of speculation and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
[1] Egalitarians do not believe that it is God's long term will for wives to be subordinate to their husbands, even though God accommodated the culture of ancient times in parts of the Bible (e.g., Col. 3). Complementarians believe that God has built into the creation the subordination of wives to their husbands at least for the time prior to the coming of God's kingdom.
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
11. God as Unchanging
Showing posts with label practical theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label practical theology. Show all posts
Sunday, May 05, 2013
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Practical Theology 7: God as Spirit
More in the theology series...
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as All-Powerful
5. God as All-Knowing
6. God as Eternal
7. God as Spirit
John 4:24 proclaims that "God is spirit, and it is necessary for those who worship him to worship in spirit and truth." As is often the case, the first statement is often lifted out of its context and made to make an abstract theological claim. But as with all words, what were these words doing in context?
In John 4, Jesus is telling a Samaritan woman that neither the temple in Jerusalem or Samaria localize God. God is present in spiritual form, not in physical form. The spirits of human beings are what worship God. To say God is a spirit in this sense is thus to say that he is not visible or tied down to a fixed location. It points us toward the Christian sense that God is everywhere present in the universe, though not often visible.
The New Testament tells us that the Spirit of God spoke through the prophets of the Old Testament (e.g., 2 Pet. 1:21). The Spirit of God reveals truth to his people (1 Cor. 7:40). The Spirit of God empowers his people (Acts 4:8). Most intriguing of all, a few places seem to speak of the Holy Spirit as a distinct person from God the Father (John 14:26; 2 Cor. 13:13).
Of course this is exactly what Christians would officially affirm in the earliest centuries of the church. God the Spirit is a distinct person of the Trinity, of one substance with the Father. The practical implications are that God is with us, wherever we go. He is with us to empower us, as he did to the apostles in Acts. He is with us to give us knowledge of the truth (John 16:13), knowledge of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8-11).
The Spirit is God's seal of ownership on us (Eph. 1:13-14), a deposit and guarantee of our future existence. Spirit is the stuff of heaven--the biblical authors probably thought literally, although we are best to take it as a picture (spirit was understood in material terms at the time of Christ, just thin material). Romans 8:9 tells us that if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to him. In the same way, the Holy Spirit is the definitive ingredient of eternal life in Acts (11:18).
The Spirit of God cleanses and purifies our hearts (Acts 15:9). The Spirit sets us apart as God's people, both individually and corporately (2 Thess. 2:13). He "sanctifies" us, cleansing us and setting us apart. He can sanctify God's people thoroughly, in every aspect of our lives (1 Thess. 5:23).
What does it look like to have the Holy Spirit today? Some Christians think you will speak in tongues if you have the Holy Spirit, but the New Testament hardly says anything of this sort and Paul clearly does not think all believers will speak in tongues (1 Cor. 12:30). American Christianity has tended to dramatize receiving the Holy Spirit to where everyone would have some emotional experience patterned off of Acts, but this is hardly our experience of your average person "getting saved." We would normally expect a peace to come but some individuals have blocks that keep them from feeling God's presence.
We must leave it to God rather than formulate some "one shoe fits all" approach. Most people experience peace and a confidence that they are right with God--if they are taught to expect it (remembering that assurance is a fairly recent notion). Some people get a significant feeling of God's presence. Some people get a sense of spiritual power. Some people speak in tongues.
Others must trust in the knowledge that they have put their trust in God, whether they feel anything special or not. At times other believers need to be faith for the troubled. God has given the body of Christ collectively the spiritual authority to forgive sins (e.g., John 20:23). Sometimes we have to exercise this authority on those who, for whatever reason, are troubled by doubt.
There are instances in Scripture where God's Spirit comes on individuals who are not serving him (e.g., Saul) or are even still in the womb (e.g., John the Baptist). So we should not assume that a person must be an adult or a believer to experience the power or presence of God's Spirit. The Spirit can also depart from God's people, as seems to have happened to Israel at one point (cf. Ezek. 10:18).
What does God's Spirit look like against the backdrop of a robust understanding of creation out of nothing? It is fascinating to think that the picture of God as spirit both served to indicate his invisible presence everywhere while also indicating that he transcended the embodied realm. From the standpoint of creation ex nihilo, these are two quite different functions, although they connected well to each other in the worldview of New Testament times.
So in New Testament times, spirit is the stuff from the top of the creation. [1] If you go straight up, you proceed through layers of sky (=heavens. It's the same word. We only use two different words--sky and heaven--because our view of the world has changed from ancient times). When you get to the highest sky, you get to the highest heaven where beings like angels, "ministering spirits" (Heb. 1:14), were located. From the standpoint of Bible times, this is all part of one uni-verse. [2]
But with a robust sense of creation out of nothing, we now see more clearly than ever that the essence of God is "outside" this universe. The picture of God as Spirit in Scripture thus comes to refer to two quite different claims, both of which are truth: 1) that the essence of God is "other" than this creation and 2) that God is still nonetheless present everywhere in this world.
The trinitarian formulation of Nicaea in 325, like all revelation, was made within the categories of those to whom God revealed it. There are possibilities in a robust understanding of creation out of nothing for understanding God the Spirit as God in this universe and God the Father primarily as a reference to the essence of God outside this universe, remembering that the biblical language was not trying to explain these sorts of things. They were simply pointing to different things the one God did and they used different names to do so without defining them in anything like a philosophical sense. [3]
But these sorts of speculations should make us uncomfortable. They are, after all, the stuff of ecumenical councils and the whole of Christendom. It is also, however, a warning to the current trendiness of Trinity-talk right now among theologians. Theology literature right now is rife with what must surely in the end be wild speculation about how the nature of the Trinity impacts us. In the end, such theologians are probably embarrassing themselves beyond comprehension. Most of this speculation, I suspect, will turn out to be impractical, even if it comes in practical garb.
God the Spirit means that God is with us everywhere, even though we cannot see him. God the Spirit means that we have purity and power at our disposal. God the Spirit means that we have direction and knowledge at our disposal. God the Spirit means that we have God at our disposal.
[1] In Old Testament times, spirit is wind, breath (ruach). The Spirit of God is thus conceptualized as the wind or breath of God.
[2] The Bible does not seem to have any category for anything being outside the cosmos. It seems to operate with the picture of a three-story universe, with heaven being up and Sheol, the realm of the dead, being down.
[3] What I am saying here is that "God the Father" and "God the Spirit" is phenomenological language that refers to God as he appeared to his people and was experienced by them in their thought categories, God in the way he functioned with them. Philosophically and theologically, we might at least in theory give a more precise delineation if we had a more precise understanding of their roles. For example, could some functions that were experienced as being functions of "God the Father" have more precisely been functions of God the Spirit?
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
11. God as Unchanging
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as All-Powerful
5. God as All-Knowing
6. God as Eternal
7. God as Spirit
John 4:24 proclaims that "God is spirit, and it is necessary for those who worship him to worship in spirit and truth." As is often the case, the first statement is often lifted out of its context and made to make an abstract theological claim. But as with all words, what were these words doing in context?
In John 4, Jesus is telling a Samaritan woman that neither the temple in Jerusalem or Samaria localize God. God is present in spiritual form, not in physical form. The spirits of human beings are what worship God. To say God is a spirit in this sense is thus to say that he is not visible or tied down to a fixed location. It points us toward the Christian sense that God is everywhere present in the universe, though not often visible.
The New Testament tells us that the Spirit of God spoke through the prophets of the Old Testament (e.g., 2 Pet. 1:21). The Spirit of God reveals truth to his people (1 Cor. 7:40). The Spirit of God empowers his people (Acts 4:8). Most intriguing of all, a few places seem to speak of the Holy Spirit as a distinct person from God the Father (John 14:26; 2 Cor. 13:13).
Of course this is exactly what Christians would officially affirm in the earliest centuries of the church. God the Spirit is a distinct person of the Trinity, of one substance with the Father. The practical implications are that God is with us, wherever we go. He is with us to empower us, as he did to the apostles in Acts. He is with us to give us knowledge of the truth (John 16:13), knowledge of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8-11).
The Spirit is God's seal of ownership on us (Eph. 1:13-14), a deposit and guarantee of our future existence. Spirit is the stuff of heaven--the biblical authors probably thought literally, although we are best to take it as a picture (spirit was understood in material terms at the time of Christ, just thin material). Romans 8:9 tells us that if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to him. In the same way, the Holy Spirit is the definitive ingredient of eternal life in Acts (11:18).
The Spirit of God cleanses and purifies our hearts (Acts 15:9). The Spirit sets us apart as God's people, both individually and corporately (2 Thess. 2:13). He "sanctifies" us, cleansing us and setting us apart. He can sanctify God's people thoroughly, in every aspect of our lives (1 Thess. 5:23).
What does it look like to have the Holy Spirit today? Some Christians think you will speak in tongues if you have the Holy Spirit, but the New Testament hardly says anything of this sort and Paul clearly does not think all believers will speak in tongues (1 Cor. 12:30). American Christianity has tended to dramatize receiving the Holy Spirit to where everyone would have some emotional experience patterned off of Acts, but this is hardly our experience of your average person "getting saved." We would normally expect a peace to come but some individuals have blocks that keep them from feeling God's presence.
We must leave it to God rather than formulate some "one shoe fits all" approach. Most people experience peace and a confidence that they are right with God--if they are taught to expect it (remembering that assurance is a fairly recent notion). Some people get a significant feeling of God's presence. Some people get a sense of spiritual power. Some people speak in tongues.
Others must trust in the knowledge that they have put their trust in God, whether they feel anything special or not. At times other believers need to be faith for the troubled. God has given the body of Christ collectively the spiritual authority to forgive sins (e.g., John 20:23). Sometimes we have to exercise this authority on those who, for whatever reason, are troubled by doubt.
There are instances in Scripture where God's Spirit comes on individuals who are not serving him (e.g., Saul) or are even still in the womb (e.g., John the Baptist). So we should not assume that a person must be an adult or a believer to experience the power or presence of God's Spirit. The Spirit can also depart from God's people, as seems to have happened to Israel at one point (cf. Ezek. 10:18).
What does God's Spirit look like against the backdrop of a robust understanding of creation out of nothing? It is fascinating to think that the picture of God as spirit both served to indicate his invisible presence everywhere while also indicating that he transcended the embodied realm. From the standpoint of creation ex nihilo, these are two quite different functions, although they connected well to each other in the worldview of New Testament times.
So in New Testament times, spirit is the stuff from the top of the creation. [1] If you go straight up, you proceed through layers of sky (=heavens. It's the same word. We only use two different words--sky and heaven--because our view of the world has changed from ancient times). When you get to the highest sky, you get to the highest heaven where beings like angels, "ministering spirits" (Heb. 1:14), were located. From the standpoint of Bible times, this is all part of one uni-verse. [2]
But with a robust sense of creation out of nothing, we now see more clearly than ever that the essence of God is "outside" this universe. The picture of God as Spirit in Scripture thus comes to refer to two quite different claims, both of which are truth: 1) that the essence of God is "other" than this creation and 2) that God is still nonetheless present everywhere in this world.
The trinitarian formulation of Nicaea in 325, like all revelation, was made within the categories of those to whom God revealed it. There are possibilities in a robust understanding of creation out of nothing for understanding God the Spirit as God in this universe and God the Father primarily as a reference to the essence of God outside this universe, remembering that the biblical language was not trying to explain these sorts of things. They were simply pointing to different things the one God did and they used different names to do so without defining them in anything like a philosophical sense. [3]
But these sorts of speculations should make us uncomfortable. They are, after all, the stuff of ecumenical councils and the whole of Christendom. It is also, however, a warning to the current trendiness of Trinity-talk right now among theologians. Theology literature right now is rife with what must surely in the end be wild speculation about how the nature of the Trinity impacts us. In the end, such theologians are probably embarrassing themselves beyond comprehension. Most of this speculation, I suspect, will turn out to be impractical, even if it comes in practical garb.
God the Spirit means that God is with us everywhere, even though we cannot see him. God the Spirit means that we have purity and power at our disposal. God the Spirit means that we have direction and knowledge at our disposal. God the Spirit means that we have God at our disposal.
[1] In Old Testament times, spirit is wind, breath (ruach). The Spirit of God is thus conceptualized as the wind or breath of God.
[2] The Bible does not seem to have any category for anything being outside the cosmos. It seems to operate with the picture of a three-story universe, with heaven being up and Sheol, the realm of the dead, being down.
[3] What I am saying here is that "God the Father" and "God the Spirit" is phenomenological language that refers to God as he appeared to his people and was experienced by them in their thought categories, God in the way he functioned with them. Philosophically and theologically, we might at least in theory give a more precise delineation if we had a more precise understanding of their roles. For example, could some functions that were experienced as being functions of "God the Father" have more precisely been functions of God the Spirit?
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
11. God as Unchanging
Friday, April 19, 2013
Practical Theology 6: God as Eternal
My series on theology that is practical continues...
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as All-Powerful
5. God as All-Knowing
6. God as Eternal
In regard to time, the Bible tells us that God existed before the foundation of the world (e.g., John 17:24) and that he will exist forever (e.g., Psalm 102:27). When we couple this truth with his power, knowledge, goodness, and unchangeability we know we have a God that we can depend on who will be with us forever. As Psalm 102:27 says, "You remain the same, and your years will never end."
God will always be around. He will always be around knowing what to do (all knowing), able to do it (all powerful), and willing to do it (good and active). God acts within time as we know it. He did not create the world and then abandon it. Rather, he is an ever present help in time of trouble (Psalm 46:1). As Hebrews 7 says of Jesus Christ, "because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them" (7:24-25, NIV).
Christian thinkers of the ages have of course asked and attempted to answer many questions that the Bible does not address relating to God and time. For example, if God knows the future, then how can I do anything other than what God knows? Many have therefore wondered if God's "foreknowledge," his knowledge of the future, implies "determinism," that God determines the future.
One solution of the Middle Ages is to suggest that God is "timeless," that God's relation to time is not the same as our relationship to time. Boethius (480-ca.524) famously suggested that God looks at all time at the same time, that God exists in some kind of eternal "now." Accordingly, he does not know the future ahead of time, as it were, but he knows it now. [1]
Let's say that you are present for a football game that is not shown on television until several hours after the game is over. You have a knowledge of what is about to happen in the game on television without determining it. In the same way, God knows now what is going to happen in the future because he sees the future now even though we who exist in time have not yet got there.
Again, it is very important practically to recognize that the Bible simply does not ask nor answer these questions. As we will see later in this series, the Bible makes both statements that imply predeterminism and statements that imply free will. It does not work out the details philosophically. The result is that we as Christians can legitimately disagree on the answers while also continuing to think through these issues in the light of apparent scientific discoveries. There is no one Christian answer.
It does seem to be the case that many Christians think of God as existing within time in the same way we do. Many Christians seem to think that God moves moment by moment as we do, even though he lives so long that a "thousand years is like a day" (e.g., 2 Pet. 3:8). It is understandable that a person would get this impression from the way the Bible describes God, using anthropomorphic language.
However, God would not be God if we take this language too literally. The Bible, using ordinary language, often talks of God in terms that (if taken literally) make him sound like the supreme being within the universe but not the all-powerful, all-knowing Christian creator of the world out of nothing. The Bible points us in this direction, on this trajectory, but it was post-biblical Christian theology that unpacked the full significance of God in these areas.
When we take relativity into account, the picture becomes much more complicated. If God created spacetime out of nothing, then the essence of God indeed does not exist within our spacetime plane. Indeed, relativity tells us that what we call time itself moves differently depending on how fast something is moving. In the twin paradox, one twin ends up younger than the other after he returns from flying in a spaceship near the speed of light. So you could end up older than your grandfather if he took a little trip in a very fast rocket.
God as Spirit thus exists within every inertial frame of reference and experiences time at least in multiple sequences. It is thus not unreasonable to think that God exists outside the sequence of events as we experience them, as Boethius suggested. This suggestion removes the conundrum of foreknowledge and predestination.
Ultimately, we have no point of reference to know whether there might actually be a multiverse with multiple futures based on a practically infinite number of turning points in history. In such a thought experiment, the particular timeline we think of as a singular history could be only one of a nearly infinite futures, all of which God knows and participates in. However, this is merely a thought experiment, meant to show how little we actually know about such things.
[1] I am not meaning to preclude the possibility that God somehow knows the eternal now even without observing it. I am only meaning to show that foreknowledge from our temporal perspective does not in any way require predeterminism from God's perspective.
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
11. God as Unchanging
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as All-Powerful
5. God as All-Knowing
6. God as Eternal
In regard to time, the Bible tells us that God existed before the foundation of the world (e.g., John 17:24) and that he will exist forever (e.g., Psalm 102:27). When we couple this truth with his power, knowledge, goodness, and unchangeability we know we have a God that we can depend on who will be with us forever. As Psalm 102:27 says, "You remain the same, and your years will never end."
God will always be around. He will always be around knowing what to do (all knowing), able to do it (all powerful), and willing to do it (good and active). God acts within time as we know it. He did not create the world and then abandon it. Rather, he is an ever present help in time of trouble (Psalm 46:1). As Hebrews 7 says of Jesus Christ, "because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them" (7:24-25, NIV).
Christian thinkers of the ages have of course asked and attempted to answer many questions that the Bible does not address relating to God and time. For example, if God knows the future, then how can I do anything other than what God knows? Many have therefore wondered if God's "foreknowledge," his knowledge of the future, implies "determinism," that God determines the future.
One solution of the Middle Ages is to suggest that God is "timeless," that God's relation to time is not the same as our relationship to time. Boethius (480-ca.524) famously suggested that God looks at all time at the same time, that God exists in some kind of eternal "now." Accordingly, he does not know the future ahead of time, as it were, but he knows it now. [1]
Let's say that you are present for a football game that is not shown on television until several hours after the game is over. You have a knowledge of what is about to happen in the game on television without determining it. In the same way, God knows now what is going to happen in the future because he sees the future now even though we who exist in time have not yet got there.
Again, it is very important practically to recognize that the Bible simply does not ask nor answer these questions. As we will see later in this series, the Bible makes both statements that imply predeterminism and statements that imply free will. It does not work out the details philosophically. The result is that we as Christians can legitimately disagree on the answers while also continuing to think through these issues in the light of apparent scientific discoveries. There is no one Christian answer.
It does seem to be the case that many Christians think of God as existing within time in the same way we do. Many Christians seem to think that God moves moment by moment as we do, even though he lives so long that a "thousand years is like a day" (e.g., 2 Pet. 3:8). It is understandable that a person would get this impression from the way the Bible describes God, using anthropomorphic language.
However, God would not be God if we take this language too literally. The Bible, using ordinary language, often talks of God in terms that (if taken literally) make him sound like the supreme being within the universe but not the all-powerful, all-knowing Christian creator of the world out of nothing. The Bible points us in this direction, on this trajectory, but it was post-biblical Christian theology that unpacked the full significance of God in these areas.
When we take relativity into account, the picture becomes much more complicated. If God created spacetime out of nothing, then the essence of God indeed does not exist within our spacetime plane. Indeed, relativity tells us that what we call time itself moves differently depending on how fast something is moving. In the twin paradox, one twin ends up younger than the other after he returns from flying in a spaceship near the speed of light. So you could end up older than your grandfather if he took a little trip in a very fast rocket.
God as Spirit thus exists within every inertial frame of reference and experiences time at least in multiple sequences. It is thus not unreasonable to think that God exists outside the sequence of events as we experience them, as Boethius suggested. This suggestion removes the conundrum of foreknowledge and predestination.
Ultimately, we have no point of reference to know whether there might actually be a multiverse with multiple futures based on a practically infinite number of turning points in history. In such a thought experiment, the particular timeline we think of as a singular history could be only one of a nearly infinite futures, all of which God knows and participates in. However, this is merely a thought experiment, meant to show how little we actually know about such things.
[1] I am not meaning to preclude the possibility that God somehow knows the eternal now even without observing it. I am only meaning to show that foreknowledge from our temporal perspective does not in any way require predeterminism from God's perspective.
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
11. God as Unchanging
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Practical Theology 5: God as All-Knowing
My series on theology that is practical continues...
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as All-Powerful
5. God as All-Knowing (omniscient)
The fact that God created the world out of nothing has massive implications in relation to God's knowledge. As human beings in the world, we can accidentally invent or discover things because we did not create the elements of the creation or the rules for how they interact with each other. As human beings, we can know about things in theory from a far but then gain experiential knowledge of them up close.
Suffice it to say, none of these scenarios apply to God, who created the elements and created the rules for how they interact. He created feelings. He created the possibility of sin. He created these out of nothing, meaning that he could have created them completely differently. The law of gravity, the law of the conservation of matter and energy, God does not operate within these rules. He created them.
The implication is that God thoroughly knows everything about this universe, the way it works, and the way it feels. God knows what it feels like to sin because he created, out of nothing, the possibility of sinning. The fact that God created the universe out of nothing implies that he knows every possible eventuality in this universe and that there is no distinction for him between theoretical knowledge and experiential knowledge. God does not learn anything when he becomes human as Jesus nor when he dies on the cross.
Christians throughout the centuries have also believed that God not only knows every possible eventuality in the world but every actual event that will take place in history. Does God only know every possible universe or does he know the actual universe as it will unfold in history? Does this question even make sense or are there multiple universes playing themselves out right now with different eventualities?
A group of Christian thinkers called "open theists" have suggested that God has decided not to know the future so that he can experience it with us and so that we can have free will. They are following a line of thought we will discuss in the next section as well, a line of thought that believes that if God knows the actual future, then that future is determined for us, and we cannot have free will. Those who think this way thus fall into two camps--those who then conclude that God has already decided the future and knows it and those who believe God has not decided the future and thus doesn't know it.
We take the orthodox position of the centuries that God knows the actual future yet does not determine it. It is probably important to point out, however, that the open theists have strong biblical evidence in their favor. That is to say, if you take the Old Testament literally, it often does not present God as knowing everything that is going to happen.
God does not seem to know where Adam is in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:9). God is sorry that he created humanity right before the Flood in Genesis 6:6--something that cannot be literally true if God knew ahead of time that humanity would do what it did. Indeed, emotions are responses to experiential moments, which God does not have if he knows the actual future from eternity past. In that sense, all the presentations of God's emotions in Scriptures, if taken literally, would preclude total omniscience.
While we thus are sympathetic to the desire of open theists to take this biblical imagery literally--after all, the biblical authors themselves probably understood it that way--it is probably better to take this biblical language as more figurative and anthropopathic. It is God speaking to us in terms we can understand. It reminds us of the fact that God is "other" and that even the Bible often does not give us a fully literal picture of him.
Indeed, this is probably another area where parts of the Old Testament do not have as full an understanding of God's knowledge as parts of the New Testament. Psalm 139 only talks about how immense God's knowledge is. It does not say it extends to every single thing, including everything that will happen in the future.
Even further, it took later Christianity to fill out the picture of God's omniscience in philosophical terms. A comment like 1 John 3:20 that God knows all things was made in ordinary language, not the absolute language of philosophy. When you consider the immensity of Scripture and then consider how few comments like 1 John 3:20 there are, you begin to realize how much we are reliant on the church of the centuries in addition to Scripture, even on as central a belief as God's omniscience.
There are serious practical implications to this realization. It gives us a more balanced understanding of Scripture, particularly of how figurative some of its statements are. It gives us a sense of the flow of revelation and how the prophets of the Old Testament did not understand as much as the apostles of the New Testament. No verse of Scripture should be read and applied in isolation from consideration of all the others. It gives us a sense of how important the earliest centuries of Christianity were in refining what we believe as Christians. The failure to realize such things arguably is one of the most significant reasons for the immense disunity of Christian denominationalism today.
The practical implications of God's omniscience are immense. God is not only powerful enough to help us in any situation, he knows exactly what to do. Romans 8:26 tells us that when we pray, the Spirit intercedes for us because we do not have enough knowledge to be able to pray as we should. God's knowledge of all things actual is part of his sovereignty. God not only has the power to be in charge of the universe. He knows exactly what to do in the implementation of that power. It implies that God's will will always be effective.
We are also reminded of how so many Christians--including Christian thinkers--do not realize the full implications of God creating the world out of nothing and God thus being "other." We tend to assume without realizing it that God is part of the universe and that the way of this universe is a given. We ascribe aspects to God's "nature" that are really aspects of this universe. In reality, we have no conception, no point of reference to realize how differently God could have created things in every way--and perhaps has in other universes.
6. God as Eternal
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as All-Powerful
5. God as All-Knowing (omniscient)
The fact that God created the world out of nothing has massive implications in relation to God's knowledge. As human beings in the world, we can accidentally invent or discover things because we did not create the elements of the creation or the rules for how they interact with each other. As human beings, we can know about things in theory from a far but then gain experiential knowledge of them up close.
Suffice it to say, none of these scenarios apply to God, who created the elements and created the rules for how they interact. He created feelings. He created the possibility of sin. He created these out of nothing, meaning that he could have created them completely differently. The law of gravity, the law of the conservation of matter and energy, God does not operate within these rules. He created them.
The implication is that God thoroughly knows everything about this universe, the way it works, and the way it feels. God knows what it feels like to sin because he created, out of nothing, the possibility of sinning. The fact that God created the universe out of nothing implies that he knows every possible eventuality in this universe and that there is no distinction for him between theoretical knowledge and experiential knowledge. God does not learn anything when he becomes human as Jesus nor when he dies on the cross.
Christians throughout the centuries have also believed that God not only knows every possible eventuality in the world but every actual event that will take place in history. Does God only know every possible universe or does he know the actual universe as it will unfold in history? Does this question even make sense or are there multiple universes playing themselves out right now with different eventualities?
A group of Christian thinkers called "open theists" have suggested that God has decided not to know the future so that he can experience it with us and so that we can have free will. They are following a line of thought we will discuss in the next section as well, a line of thought that believes that if God knows the actual future, then that future is determined for us, and we cannot have free will. Those who think this way thus fall into two camps--those who then conclude that God has already decided the future and knows it and those who believe God has not decided the future and thus doesn't know it.
We take the orthodox position of the centuries that God knows the actual future yet does not determine it. It is probably important to point out, however, that the open theists have strong biblical evidence in their favor. That is to say, if you take the Old Testament literally, it often does not present God as knowing everything that is going to happen.
God does not seem to know where Adam is in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:9). God is sorry that he created humanity right before the Flood in Genesis 6:6--something that cannot be literally true if God knew ahead of time that humanity would do what it did. Indeed, emotions are responses to experiential moments, which God does not have if he knows the actual future from eternity past. In that sense, all the presentations of God's emotions in Scriptures, if taken literally, would preclude total omniscience.
While we thus are sympathetic to the desire of open theists to take this biblical imagery literally--after all, the biblical authors themselves probably understood it that way--it is probably better to take this biblical language as more figurative and anthropopathic. It is God speaking to us in terms we can understand. It reminds us of the fact that God is "other" and that even the Bible often does not give us a fully literal picture of him.
Indeed, this is probably another area where parts of the Old Testament do not have as full an understanding of God's knowledge as parts of the New Testament. Psalm 139 only talks about how immense God's knowledge is. It does not say it extends to every single thing, including everything that will happen in the future.
Even further, it took later Christianity to fill out the picture of God's omniscience in philosophical terms. A comment like 1 John 3:20 that God knows all things was made in ordinary language, not the absolute language of philosophy. When you consider the immensity of Scripture and then consider how few comments like 1 John 3:20 there are, you begin to realize how much we are reliant on the church of the centuries in addition to Scripture, even on as central a belief as God's omniscience.
There are serious practical implications to this realization. It gives us a more balanced understanding of Scripture, particularly of how figurative some of its statements are. It gives us a sense of the flow of revelation and how the prophets of the Old Testament did not understand as much as the apostles of the New Testament. No verse of Scripture should be read and applied in isolation from consideration of all the others. It gives us a sense of how important the earliest centuries of Christianity were in refining what we believe as Christians. The failure to realize such things arguably is one of the most significant reasons for the immense disunity of Christian denominationalism today.
The practical implications of God's omniscience are immense. God is not only powerful enough to help us in any situation, he knows exactly what to do. Romans 8:26 tells us that when we pray, the Spirit intercedes for us because we do not have enough knowledge to be able to pray as we should. God's knowledge of all things actual is part of his sovereignty. God not only has the power to be in charge of the universe. He knows exactly what to do in the implementation of that power. It implies that God's will will always be effective.
We are also reminded of how so many Christians--including Christian thinkers--do not realize the full implications of God creating the world out of nothing and God thus being "other." We tend to assume without realizing it that God is part of the universe and that the way of this universe is a given. We ascribe aspects to God's "nature" that are really aspects of this universe. In reality, we have no conception, no point of reference to realize how differently God could have created things in every way--and perhaps has in other universes.
6. God as Eternal
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
Sunday, April 07, 2013
Practical Theology 4: God as All-Powerful
My series on theology that is practical continues...
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as All-Powerful (omniscient)
If God created the world out of nothing, then there is no "power" in this world that he did not create. This goes far beyond being able to lift the biggest possible rock there could be (so, no, it is not possible for God to create a rock so big that he does not have the power to lift it--if it were possible, he would not be all-powerful). It extends to the power to direct the course of history, to perform miracles, to stop holocausts, etc.
It means that God is sovereign. He is ultimately in control. Anything that happens in the world happens either by his "directive" or "permissive" will. He either directly intends for what happens to happen or he allows it to happen for some reason.
It means he is able to help, no matter what my problem or our problem might be. That is not to say that he will always intervene or always intervene in the way we want him to or think he should. But he remains able to help, able to intervene. And by faith we believe he regularly does.
The book of Hebrews says it is impossible for God to lie (Heb. 6:18). This comment leads to several important observations. The first is that the Bible does not present a systematic theology of God's power. This is a practical observation because there is a tendency among some Christians not only to think that the Bible clearly answers every question but to think they have found them when they haven't!
Inevitably, we are the ones who have to work out what the varied statements in the Bible about subjects like God's power meant and how they fit together. The more we try to fit such biblical teaching together on our own, in isolation from other Christians and the Christians of the centuries, the more likely we are to go start a cult or just be odd.
How do we fit together Gabriel's statement in Luke 1:37 that nothing is impossible for God with Hebrews 6:18? The Bible does not tell us--we have to fit them together. This is an incredibly practical insight. We look to the Bible as the starting point for knowing truth about God and God's will, but the Bible does not exhaust God's truth or directly give us the answers to all our questions. We also need the body of Christ, the communion of saints to help us work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
Part of the issue here is the fact that when the Bible makes statements like, "Is anything too hard for the LORD?" (Gen. 18:14), its authors and the speakers in its narratives were not writing theology textbooks. Even when we say things like, "under no circumstances," an annoying philosophy student or fourteen year old could probably come up with an outrageous circumstance to which we would make an exception. The Bible normally speaks in ordinary language, not in the language of tight philosophical propositions.
So what does it mean to say that something is impossible for God? What does it mean to say that it is impossible for God to lie? Doesn't it mean that he just doesn't do it, doesn't choose to do it? I prefer to say that God chooses not to do the things we say are impossible for him to do, like sinning.
Can God make 2 plus 2 equal 5? Many theologians say it is not possible. But here we have switched from the question of power to the question of possibility. Having all power, as with the large rock conundrum, implies that certain negatives are not possible.
But with math and logic, many theologians are comfortable saying that God cannot do what is logically or mathematically impossible. But if he really created the world out of nothing and is truly other, perhaps he could in ways we could not possibly imagine.
5. God as All-Knowing
6. God as Eternal
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as All-Powerful (omniscient)
If God created the world out of nothing, then there is no "power" in this world that he did not create. This goes far beyond being able to lift the biggest possible rock there could be (so, no, it is not possible for God to create a rock so big that he does not have the power to lift it--if it were possible, he would not be all-powerful). It extends to the power to direct the course of history, to perform miracles, to stop holocausts, etc.
It means that God is sovereign. He is ultimately in control. Anything that happens in the world happens either by his "directive" or "permissive" will. He either directly intends for what happens to happen or he allows it to happen for some reason.
It means he is able to help, no matter what my problem or our problem might be. That is not to say that he will always intervene or always intervene in the way we want him to or think he should. But he remains able to help, able to intervene. And by faith we believe he regularly does.
The book of Hebrews says it is impossible for God to lie (Heb. 6:18). This comment leads to several important observations. The first is that the Bible does not present a systematic theology of God's power. This is a practical observation because there is a tendency among some Christians not only to think that the Bible clearly answers every question but to think they have found them when they haven't!
Inevitably, we are the ones who have to work out what the varied statements in the Bible about subjects like God's power meant and how they fit together. The more we try to fit such biblical teaching together on our own, in isolation from other Christians and the Christians of the centuries, the more likely we are to go start a cult or just be odd.
How do we fit together Gabriel's statement in Luke 1:37 that nothing is impossible for God with Hebrews 6:18? The Bible does not tell us--we have to fit them together. This is an incredibly practical insight. We look to the Bible as the starting point for knowing truth about God and God's will, but the Bible does not exhaust God's truth or directly give us the answers to all our questions. We also need the body of Christ, the communion of saints to help us work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
Part of the issue here is the fact that when the Bible makes statements like, "Is anything too hard for the LORD?" (Gen. 18:14), its authors and the speakers in its narratives were not writing theology textbooks. Even when we say things like, "under no circumstances," an annoying philosophy student or fourteen year old could probably come up with an outrageous circumstance to which we would make an exception. The Bible normally speaks in ordinary language, not in the language of tight philosophical propositions.
So what does it mean to say that something is impossible for God? What does it mean to say that it is impossible for God to lie? Doesn't it mean that he just doesn't do it, doesn't choose to do it? I prefer to say that God chooses not to do the things we say are impossible for him to do, like sinning.
Can God make 2 plus 2 equal 5? Many theologians say it is not possible. But here we have switched from the question of power to the question of possibility. Having all power, as with the large rock conundrum, implies that certain negatives are not possible.
But with math and logic, many theologians are comfortable saying that God cannot do what is logically or mathematically impossible. But if he really created the world out of nothing and is truly other, perhaps he could in ways we could not possibly imagine.
5. God as All-Knowing
6. God as Eternal
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Practical Theology 3: God as Other
My series on theology as it relates to practice continues..
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
Since the late 100s AD, Christians and Jews have generally believed that God created the world out of nothing, ex nihilo. We now read this understanding into passages like Genesis 1:1-2 and Hebrews 12:3, although it is not at all clear that these passages had this connotation originally. The doctrine of creation out of nothing arguably was forged in the Christian and Jewish struggles with Gnosticism in the second century, a likelihood we will revisit when we get to the creation.
The last 100 years have brought developments in science and math with potentially fresh insights into the idea of creation out of nothing. The theory of relativity implies that space itself can expand and contract. Since the universe seems to be expanding, there is a new sense that creation was not God filling empty space with material. Creation involved God creating empty space itself. This is not an understanding any Christian had before the twentieth century.
The idea of the empty set itself is a fairly recent idea. The empty set is not zero. It has nothing at all in it, not even zero. It is not even space or emptiness, in other words.
No theologian in history could have fully appreciated what we are saying here until the twentieth century, meaning that any contemporary discussion of creation out of nothing cannot fully derive from any comment in the church fathers and mothers. The books of the Bible were also written in the categories of its original audiences and so would not give us a literal sense of creation out of nothing--or the otherness of God--even if it clearly taught creation out of nothing.
So we start any sense of the otherness of God with the realization that there was a point when the creation did not exist. We cannot say, "there was a time when it did not exist" because time itself is part of the creation, as we discuss in the next section. We simply have no point of reference from which we might say where or when the "before" of God was. God is not literally in the top layer of the skies, a figurative image we find in the Bible.
Since God existed "before" he created anything, he clearly does not need the creation in order to exist. It might make us feel good to hear people say that God created the world because he needed us or was lonely, but these sorts of nice-sounding ideas are "anthropopathisms," portrayals of God that are projections of human feelings. God does not need the creation. "He" is self-sufficient (called his "aseity").
Nor is God literally a "he." He has no genitalia. He primarily revealed himself as a "he" to the patriarchal cultures of the ancient world, but the Bible also uses feminine imagery of God as well (e.g., Numbers 11:12; Isaiah 42:14). All gendered language of God is to help us grasp some sense of him by analogy and is not literal.
It might be worthwhile to get a clear sense of what the word "literal" means in these sorts of discussions. In popular language, the word is sometimes used to mean the same thing as "true" or "real." That is not how theologians or philosophers of language mean the word. If a word is used literally, then it is used in its ordinary sense.
So the ordinary sense of calling someone a "he" is to imply that such a person has male genitalia. To call someone a "he" that does not have male genitalia is to speak of them figuratively as a "he." Since God does not have genitalia of any sort, God is not literally male, only figuratively male. And he is "man enough" to use feminine imagery of himself as well.
The otherness of God implies that almost everything we know about him--including his revelation to us about himself--is by analogy. God can be like a father. God can be like a judge. God can be like a woman in the pains of childbirth (Isaiah 42:14). The things we know about him literally are more often things we know are not true of him. He is not contained by space or time (called apophatic or negative theology).
Practically speaking, we must recognize the extent to which our sense of God is limited. Christians say so many things about God that are projections of ourselves. God does not literally forget sins--he always knows everything. There is no meaningful sense in which God cannot do something. What he does not do, he does not do by choice. The biblical pictures of God are pictures too and normally less literal than the discussion on this page.
For example, what does it mean to say that God is "perfect"? To say that God is the best anything could be in every category is still to measure him by the standards of this creation, meaning that even to call God "perfect" is an inadequate and less than literal description of him. It is still to think of him in this-worldly terms. This insight immediately indicates the limitations of so much theological reflection throughout history.
God is not exactly the "greatest possible being" because God is not another being in this creation. This description once again tries to capture him with this universe as a reference point. What the medieval theologians meant by divine "simplicity"--the idea that God does not have parts--is itself an attempt not to make him like a this-worldly being. So God reduces to a point. It is much easier simply to say that whatever his "essence" or "nature" might be, it is "outside" or "beyond" this universe. We put all these things in quotations because we have no real idea of what they might literally mean for God.
The Bible speaks truly of God, but it does so in the kind of analogous and anthropopathic language we have been talking about. The fundamentalist approach to God is thus a kind of cognitive idolatry in its insistence that we take biblical language of God literally. This is not only misguided. It undermines even an analogous sense of God's true "perfection." It inevitably reduces God. To give God his true supremacy, biblical pictures of God must be recognized as exactly that--pictures to help our vastly finite minds grasp the ineffable and incomprehensible.
One of the best expressions of God's otherness is his holiness. This term should not be tamed by this-worldly categories, as if to say that God's holiness basically means that he is morally pure. Indeed, even for us as humans this is a description of our general intentions and actions, not of something that inheres in us literally.
God has created what is true in this universe. God has determined what is just and good in this universe. They are excellent descriptions of how God acts in this universe. To say a person literally is such things is not to understand the nature of these adjectives, even for a human.
To say God is holy is, most fundamentally, to say that God is God. It is not so much a statement with propositional content as a statement of awe and emotion. God is awesome and fearful in power and magnitude. God is "other" than this creation. If the magnitude of his existence does not cause us to tremble, we have not even caught a glimpse of his awesomeness.
The bottom line is that if we think we have truly understood God, even if we think so because we can quote a bunch of Bible verses, we are most likely making a fool of ourselves without knowing it. We know what God is like. We know how God has chosen to act in this universe. Anything more requires poetry and quotation marks.
4. God as Timeless
5. God the All Powerful
6. God the All Knowing
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
God as Creator
3. God as Other
Since the late 100s AD, Christians and Jews have generally believed that God created the world out of nothing, ex nihilo. We now read this understanding into passages like Genesis 1:1-2 and Hebrews 12:3, although it is not at all clear that these passages had this connotation originally. The doctrine of creation out of nothing arguably was forged in the Christian and Jewish struggles with Gnosticism in the second century, a likelihood we will revisit when we get to the creation.
The last 100 years have brought developments in science and math with potentially fresh insights into the idea of creation out of nothing. The theory of relativity implies that space itself can expand and contract. Since the universe seems to be expanding, there is a new sense that creation was not God filling empty space with material. Creation involved God creating empty space itself. This is not an understanding any Christian had before the twentieth century.
The idea of the empty set itself is a fairly recent idea. The empty set is not zero. It has nothing at all in it, not even zero. It is not even space or emptiness, in other words.
No theologian in history could have fully appreciated what we are saying here until the twentieth century, meaning that any contemporary discussion of creation out of nothing cannot fully derive from any comment in the church fathers and mothers. The books of the Bible were also written in the categories of its original audiences and so would not give us a literal sense of creation out of nothing--or the otherness of God--even if it clearly taught creation out of nothing.
So we start any sense of the otherness of God with the realization that there was a point when the creation did not exist. We cannot say, "there was a time when it did not exist" because time itself is part of the creation, as we discuss in the next section. We simply have no point of reference from which we might say where or when the "before" of God was. God is not literally in the top layer of the skies, a figurative image we find in the Bible.
Since God existed "before" he created anything, he clearly does not need the creation in order to exist. It might make us feel good to hear people say that God created the world because he needed us or was lonely, but these sorts of nice-sounding ideas are "anthropopathisms," portrayals of God that are projections of human feelings. God does not need the creation. "He" is self-sufficient (called his "aseity").
Nor is God literally a "he." He has no genitalia. He primarily revealed himself as a "he" to the patriarchal cultures of the ancient world, but the Bible also uses feminine imagery of God as well (e.g., Numbers 11:12; Isaiah 42:14). All gendered language of God is to help us grasp some sense of him by analogy and is not literal.
It might be worthwhile to get a clear sense of what the word "literal" means in these sorts of discussions. In popular language, the word is sometimes used to mean the same thing as "true" or "real." That is not how theologians or philosophers of language mean the word. If a word is used literally, then it is used in its ordinary sense.
So the ordinary sense of calling someone a "he" is to imply that such a person has male genitalia. To call someone a "he" that does not have male genitalia is to speak of them figuratively as a "he." Since God does not have genitalia of any sort, God is not literally male, only figuratively male. And he is "man enough" to use feminine imagery of himself as well.
The otherness of God implies that almost everything we know about him--including his revelation to us about himself--is by analogy. God can be like a father. God can be like a judge. God can be like a woman in the pains of childbirth (Isaiah 42:14). The things we know about him literally are more often things we know are not true of him. He is not contained by space or time (called apophatic or negative theology).
Practically speaking, we must recognize the extent to which our sense of God is limited. Christians say so many things about God that are projections of ourselves. God does not literally forget sins--he always knows everything. There is no meaningful sense in which God cannot do something. What he does not do, he does not do by choice. The biblical pictures of God are pictures too and normally less literal than the discussion on this page.
For example, what does it mean to say that God is "perfect"? To say that God is the best anything could be in every category is still to measure him by the standards of this creation, meaning that even to call God "perfect" is an inadequate and less than literal description of him. It is still to think of him in this-worldly terms. This insight immediately indicates the limitations of so much theological reflection throughout history.
God is not exactly the "greatest possible being" because God is not another being in this creation. This description once again tries to capture him with this universe as a reference point. What the medieval theologians meant by divine "simplicity"--the idea that God does not have parts--is itself an attempt not to make him like a this-worldly being. So God reduces to a point. It is much easier simply to say that whatever his "essence" or "nature" might be, it is "outside" or "beyond" this universe. We put all these things in quotations because we have no real idea of what they might literally mean for God.
The Bible speaks truly of God, but it does so in the kind of analogous and anthropopathic language we have been talking about. The fundamentalist approach to God is thus a kind of cognitive idolatry in its insistence that we take biblical language of God literally. This is not only misguided. It undermines even an analogous sense of God's true "perfection." It inevitably reduces God. To give God his true supremacy, biblical pictures of God must be recognized as exactly that--pictures to help our vastly finite minds grasp the ineffable and incomprehensible.
One of the best expressions of God's otherness is his holiness. This term should not be tamed by this-worldly categories, as if to say that God's holiness basically means that he is morally pure. Indeed, even for us as humans this is a description of our general intentions and actions, not of something that inheres in us literally.
God has created what is true in this universe. God has determined what is just and good in this universe. They are excellent descriptions of how God acts in this universe. To say a person literally is such things is not to understand the nature of these adjectives, even for a human.
To say God is holy is, most fundamentally, to say that God is God. It is not so much a statement with propositional content as a statement of awe and emotion. God is awesome and fearful in power and magnitude. God is "other" than this creation. If the magnitude of his existence does not cause us to tremble, we have not even caught a glimpse of his awesomeness.
The bottom line is that if we think we have truly understood God, even if we think so because we can quote a bunch of Bible verses, we are most likely making a fool of ourselves without knowing it. We know what God is like. We know how God has chosen to act in this universe. Anything more requires poetry and quotation marks.
4. God as Timeless
5. God the All Powerful
6. God the All Knowing
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Practical Theology 2: Why Believe in God?
The second in my new Sunday series on what the practical implications of theology are.
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
Why should someone believe in God? To word it that way could give the mistaken impression that we really have a choice about whether God really exists or not. In reality, either God really exists outside ourselves or he doesn't. What we want to believe about his existence is irrelevant.
So the best answer to the question is "because he exists." People should believe in God because he is real and he exists.
Unfortunately, God's existence is not as obvious to the people of the world as it used to be. He does not come down to earth to do interviews on the news. He does not do miracles on demand. Most people find belief in God reasonable, but few people are convinced merely by some logical argument.
So it makes sense to say that someone created the universe. The idea that the universe just happens to be here continues to baffle the mind. What caused it to explode into existence when it did?
And there is an order to the universe. Quarks and electrons behave in certain predictable ways. Even evolution and chaos theory follow certain rules. Are those rules just coincidence? Our lives seem to have meaning. The world seems so beautiful. Is the universe really just accidental and coincidence, and my sense of them merely the interactions of chemicals in my brain?
None of these things prove God's existence. The path of the intellectual zealot who feels compelled to prove things is just as likely to hurt faith as to help it. Faith in God is reasonable, but God is more about faith than about proof.
Why believe in God? Because he's calling to you. Some Christians of course only believe that God calls a few privileged ones, the "elect," the "predestined." That is not the spirit of the New Testament. The spirit of the New Testament is 1 Timothy 2:4--God wants all people to be saved.
A more coherent theology believes that God gives light to everyone who comes into the world. At some point, he tugs on the heart of every person. Why believe in God? Because he is tugging at our hearts. When he tugs on your heart, believe.
Future posts...
God the Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as Timeless
5. God the All Powerful
6. God the All Knowing
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
2. Why Believe in God?
Why should someone believe in God? To word it that way could give the mistaken impression that we really have a choice about whether God really exists or not. In reality, either God really exists outside ourselves or he doesn't. What we want to believe about his existence is irrelevant.
So the best answer to the question is "because he exists." People should believe in God because he is real and he exists.
Unfortunately, God's existence is not as obvious to the people of the world as it used to be. He does not come down to earth to do interviews on the news. He does not do miracles on demand. Most people find belief in God reasonable, but few people are convinced merely by some logical argument.
So it makes sense to say that someone created the universe. The idea that the universe just happens to be here continues to baffle the mind. What caused it to explode into existence when it did?
And there is an order to the universe. Quarks and electrons behave in certain predictable ways. Even evolution and chaos theory follow certain rules. Are those rules just coincidence? Our lives seem to have meaning. The world seems so beautiful. Is the universe really just accidental and coincidence, and my sense of them merely the interactions of chemicals in my brain?
None of these things prove God's existence. The path of the intellectual zealot who feels compelled to prove things is just as likely to hurt faith as to help it. Faith in God is reasonable, but God is more about faith than about proof.
Why believe in God? Because he's calling to you. Some Christians of course only believe that God calls a few privileged ones, the "elect," the "predestined." That is not the spirit of the New Testament. The spirit of the New Testament is 1 Timothy 2:4--God wants all people to be saved.
A more coherent theology believes that God gives light to everyone who comes into the world. At some point, he tugs on the heart of every person. Why believe in God? Because he is tugging at our hearts. When he tugs on your heart, believe.
Future posts...
God the Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as Timeless
5. God the All Powerful
6. God the All Knowing
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Practical Theology 1
Anyone who reads this blog knows how it goes with me. I have an idea. I blog for a little while. I lose interest or think I could do better or get tired of attacks or figure other people just aren't interested. My latest idea is to run through theology with a view to its practical implications. It's a play on the phrase, "practical theology," which normally refers to theology as it relates to practical ministry. This would be systematic theology as it relates to practical life.
So we'll see what happens.
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
Theology is the study of God. It doesn't usually strike Christians as being particularly practical. "Can God make a rock so big that he can't lift it?"
Of course a theologian might protest that I have picked an obscure issue. Theology is involved with pretty much every aspect of the Christian life. How should I discipline my children? This question involves assumptions on what Christian discipline is about. Does God discipline us? Why? In what circumstances does God discipline us? Most of us simply do what our parents did--whether they were good "theologians" on such issues or not.
The field of "practical theology" is normally about ministry. What is the theology behind leadership? What is the theology behind mission? In that sense, the title of this series is really a play on words--theology in its practical implications for life, theology as it is practical.
The next series of Sunday posts aim to go through some of the main elements of "systematic theology" with a view to how they impact our lives. What are the practical implications? Systematic theology is the systematic study of theology, studying theology in an orderly way that goes topic by topic.
There are different ways to divide up theology logically. You might start with a theology of Scripture and revelation, for example. Isn't that practical--starting with how we know anything about God? You might start with Christ, since Christ stands at the center of our relationship with God the Father.
I am going to start with God at the beginning, the traditional place to begin. Starting with Scripture often signals a fundamentalist approach that is unable to read the Bible in context. Starting with Christ often imports a particular twentieth century theological flavor. In other words, these approaches are usually driven by specific theories.
I consider the beginning of the story a perfectly practical place to start--when God decided to do something. Yes, there are some assumptions involved here. I'm assuming that common Christianity is true. Somehow it seems too "me-focused" to start with an individual's pilgrimage to know God. That would be very practical, but can we ever deduce things about God entirely without him reaching down to us first?
So we assume Christian orthodoxy as we begin, and we begin with God as creator at the beginning, the classic place to begin.
2. Why Believe in God?
God the Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as Timeless
5. God the All Powerful
6. God the All Knowing
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
So we'll see what happens.
Introduction
1. Is Theology Practical?
Theology is the study of God. It doesn't usually strike Christians as being particularly practical. "Can God make a rock so big that he can't lift it?"
Of course a theologian might protest that I have picked an obscure issue. Theology is involved with pretty much every aspect of the Christian life. How should I discipline my children? This question involves assumptions on what Christian discipline is about. Does God discipline us? Why? In what circumstances does God discipline us? Most of us simply do what our parents did--whether they were good "theologians" on such issues or not.
The field of "practical theology" is normally about ministry. What is the theology behind leadership? What is the theology behind mission? In that sense, the title of this series is really a play on words--theology in its practical implications for life, theology as it is practical.
The next series of Sunday posts aim to go through some of the main elements of "systematic theology" with a view to how they impact our lives. What are the practical implications? Systematic theology is the systematic study of theology, studying theology in an orderly way that goes topic by topic.
There are different ways to divide up theology logically. You might start with a theology of Scripture and revelation, for example. Isn't that practical--starting with how we know anything about God? You might start with Christ, since Christ stands at the center of our relationship with God the Father.
I am going to start with God at the beginning, the traditional place to begin. Starting with Scripture often signals a fundamentalist approach that is unable to read the Bible in context. Starting with Christ often imports a particular twentieth century theological flavor. In other words, these approaches are usually driven by specific theories.
I consider the beginning of the story a perfectly practical place to start--when God decided to do something. Yes, there are some assumptions involved here. I'm assuming that common Christianity is true. Somehow it seems too "me-focused" to start with an individual's pilgrimage to know God. That would be very practical, but can we ever deduce things about God entirely without him reaching down to us first?
So we assume Christian orthodoxy as we begin, and we begin with God as creator at the beginning, the classic place to begin.
2. Why Believe in God?
God the Creator
3. God as Other
4. God as Timeless
5. God the All Powerful
6. God the All Knowing
7. God the Spirit
8. Three in One
9. God as Love
10. God as Just
Friday, March 15, 2013
Practical Theology?
I had a spark, maybe. I think most practical theologies are oriented in ways like "theology of leadership." That's theology oriented around the practice of ministry.
But has anyone ever done a practical theology, that was practice oriented around theology, and not just practice of ministry but Christian living in general?
So what if someone were to go through the great topics of systematic theology--God, creation, sin, redemption, etc--with a view to Christian living and practice? So Christians believe God is omnipotent? Fine. But what does it have to do with Christian practice?
Just an idea...
But has anyone ever done a practical theology, that was practice oriented around theology, and not just practice of ministry but Christian living in general?
So what if someone were to go through the great topics of systematic theology--God, creation, sin, redemption, etc--with a view to Christian living and practice? So Christians believe God is omnipotent? Fine. But what does it have to do with Christian practice?
Just an idea...
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