- Lived ca. 1320s to 1384 (died of stroke)
- Studied, taught at Oxford (then wooden buildings, with priests as teachers, no university salaries) until he was finally forced out in 1381. From Yorkshire, so he belonged to the northern student group at Oxford (boreales).
- He lived during the Babylonian Captivity where the Pope lived in France and was a puppet of the king of France. From 1305 on the papacy was at Avignon, and from 1378 there were actually two competing popes.
- During the 100 Years War between England and France, no doubt further creating resistance among the English toward papal leadership
- Corruption of the Church obvious to everyone. Simony, nepotism, if positions were left open, the salary was still paid to the Pope, false accusations to seize property... Some popes earlier and later wanted to reform but couldn't pull it off.
- He was Roman Catholic. There was no other option in western Europe. No thought of starting a new church, only the thought of opposing the leadership of the Church and pushing for reform.
- John had the support of the throne (especially Richard of Gaunt, the king's uncle) because he argued against monasteries having control of property. Secular authorities should decide matters relating to possessions. This position no doubt had a lot to do with Wycliffe's sense of corruption in the use of material possessions by the Church.
- Wycliffe was protected by Gaunt from the Church most of his life... until he supported a peasants' revolt in 1381. Then he was finally forced to leave Oxford.
- At Oxford, one of the biggest debates was over the nominalism of Occam versus the realism of earlier days. Occam had been at Oxford not too long before Wycliffe. Wycliffe took the realist side--there was a reality to things that was indestructible and went beyond the thing you can see. See Olson on this subject.
- This led him to oppose transubstantiation, which got him into trouble since it had become the primary position of the Church since 1215. To him, bread and wine couldn't be destroyed and taken over by Christ's body and blood. Rather, he espoused something like the "real presence" view Luther would later follow. The presence of Christ is really there, but it doesn't replace or remove the bread and wine.
- Thomas Bradwardine had briefly been Archbishop of Canterbury in 1349 but died of the plague within 40 days of taking the position. He wrote a book against the Pelagians that revived Augustine--especially the notion of predestination.
- The way this idea functioned is to allow people like Wycliffe to make a distinction between the visible church and the true, invisible church. So even the Pope (especially the French one after the Great Western Schism), might not be part of the true church. This allowed Wycliffe to suppose that the corrupt leaders of the church in England and elsewhere were not part of the true church.
- Wycliffe would pioneer turning to the Bible to undermine the corruption of the Church. It provided a means of authority by which to critique the way the Church and the leaders of the church were behaving. For example, if the Church was orienting itself around wealth, he could show the value of poverty in Scripture.
- He supervised the translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate, probably as part of his drive to reform the Church. Exposing the people to the Bible empowered them in his mind against the corruption of the Church and may have moved England toward greater literacy. The NT was done in 1380, the OT in 1382. The first edition was so literal a second edition had to be made in 1388 for it to be readable in the Middle English of the day.
- The Council of Constance condemned him in 1415 along with Jan Hus. Hus was burned at the stake alive. Wycliffe's remains were dug up, burned, and scattered in the River Swift.
- He is often called the "Morning Star of the Reformation" and we see later reformers drawing on his rhetoric. His followers were called Lollards, a put-down that means mumblers.
- There is a tradition that Queen Elisabeth I was presented with a copy of Wycliffe's Bible when she became queen in 1558 after the death of Bloody Mary.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
John Wycliffe (1320s-1384)
Just wrote a short piece on Wycliffe. Here are some quick reminders:
Black Holes and Gravitational Waves (chaps 7-10)
The next installment of The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity. The book just came out this year but, amazingly, chapter 10 is already outdated!
Here are my earlier posts:
Chapter 1: Einstein in 1907
Chapter 2: The General Theory of Relativity Born
Chapters 3-6 Expanding Universes, Collapsing Stars, Cuckoo Einstein, and Steady States
Chapter 7: Wheelerisms
The namesake of this chapter is John Wheeler, who was known for turns of phrase like, "mass without mass" and "charge without charge." He's the one who popularized the term "black hole." He came up with the notion of a "wormhole" that bypasses space and time.
One of his main contributions to relativity was the way in which he helped rejuvenated interest in it. In the 1950s, physics was far more interested in quantum matters than general relativity. You could experiment with the quantum. General relativity was more a matter of distant space. Wheeler's support helped get some conferences on relativity going.
So there was the Institute of Field Physics, funded by a couple rich guys who were interested in gravity. Wheeler supported them and their appointment of Bryce DeWitt and his wife as the first employees. They set up meetings on gravitation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the late 50s.
When Richard Feynman (quantum man extraordinaire and former student of Wheeler) arrived for the first conference in Chapel Hill not knowing directions, he helped the taxi driver figure out where it was by suggesting there would have been other attendees in the back of the taxi saying "gee mu nu, gee mu nu" (
). In the words of Ferreira (author of the book), "The driver knew where to go" (109).
Another meeting of this sort came out of oil money and the University of Texas at Austin. The result was the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, first held in 1963 in Dallas, just after Kennedy was shot. One of the things discussed at this symposium were "quasi-stellar radio sources" that were being detected by people like Maarten Schmidt. After the conference, they would be called quasars. They were super-massive objects that emitted lots of energy.
Chapter 8: Singularities
The 60s were the "Golden Age of General Relativity," according to Kip Thorne, one of Wheeler's students. Roger Penrose was a player in the decade. He showed that the collapse of stars after they burned out always ended in singularities or black holes, as they would come to be called.
This was also the decade where the background radiation of the universe was discovered. It showed that the steady state theory was false. The universe had a beginning. Stephen Hawking emerged at this time, showing that the universe would not only end with singularities but had also begun with one.
This was also the decade where pulsars were discovered, "pulsating radio stars." These are neutron stars, stars made up almost completely of neutrons. I'm getting a better picture now of what some of the earlier chapters were talking about. There are white dwarfs that Eddington knew of. These are smaller suns that burn out but they are not massive enough to become singularities from which light cannot escape.
There are black holes. These are the super-massive stars that, when they burn out, collapse into a relativistic nightmare from which nothing can ever escape. From our perspective, they become frozen in time. Neutron stars, of which pulsars are an example, are somewhere in between in mass, more massive than white dwarfs but not so massive as a black hole.
Chapter 9: Unification Woes
Relativity and quantum mechanics have always been difficult to fit together. Einstein couldn't do it. Paul Dirac couldn't do it, although he did it with the electron. The Dirac equation had been a landmark in the history of physics. It had predicted the existence of antiparticles, for example.
This chapter takes a bit of a detour into quantum physics, since it is on the continued attempts to fit quantum physics with relativity and gravitation in particular. The 50s and 60s saw the putting together of quantum electrodynamics (QED) and what is now called the "standard model" of physics.
Dirac, like Einstein, never accepted some aspects of quantum physics. He accepted more than Einstein. For example, he showed that the approaches of Heisenberg and Schroedinger really said the same thing in two different ways. In his later career, like Einstein, Dirac became somewhat of a recluse, a celebrated landmark who refused to stay with where the program had gone. In the summer of 1983, while at Boy's State, I touched his office door at Florida State, the year before he died. He had withdrawn from the mainstream and had become a shadowy figure from the past.
In particular, QED leads to a lot of infinities that are ignored. So even though the equations point to an infinite mass for an electron, QED "normalizes" the mass of an electron by substituting the actual measured value for the infinity. Frankly, this bothers me too and surely speaks to some inadequacy in the theory, says the guy who doesn't have a degree in physics.
Hawking did some work to show some additional places where quantum physics and general relativity might come together. Hawking showed that black holes slowly evaporate, "black hole radiation."
Chapter 10: Seeing Gravity
It is amazing to me that this book is already needing to be updated. I bought this book on March 1, 2014 at the IU Memorial Union Bookstore in Bloomington. It just came out in early February of this year. By March 17, chapter 10 was out of date. That was the date that it was announced that gravitational waves had been observed.
Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime, as early as 1916. Eddington rejected the idea, and Einstein himself backed off on the idea in 1936. But Hermann Bondi made a compelling case for them at the watershed 1957 meeting at Chapel Hill. Feynman agreed.
A guy named Weber was also there and would spend the rest of his life trying to prove it experimentally. Unfortunately, he saw them everywhere. Eventually he was marginalized by the scientific community and died a bitter man in 2000. He used very imprecise measuring tools, compared with the laser interferometry that is currently used.
The idea that large objects might give off "gravitational radiation," however, was supported indirectly in 1978. Taylor and Hulse used the very equations Einstein created and whose results he then later rejected to examine two neutron stars orbiting each other. The chapter ends with LIGO in North America trying to find gravitational waves using laser interferometry. Unfortunately for them, they do not seem to be the ones that discovered them.
A final feature of interest in this chapter is the rise of "numerical relativity." For decades, attempts to solve Einstein's field equations in relation to colliding black holes, using computers, would break down the computers. The computer power just wasn't powerful enough yet. Frans Pretorius cracked that one in 2005. He solved Einstein's equations for two colliding black holes on a computer without the process shutting down--90 years after Einstein set them out.
As a side note, the drive to do numerical relativity and the need for more computing power apparently played a role in the implementation of the internet, so that multiple computers across distances could collaborate together. That was in the mid-80s when Larry Smarr was convincing the US government to fund a network of supercomputing centers.
It's quite clear that some of these discoveries would not have happened without a willingness on the part of the government to fund scientific research without immediate results. Such funding seems essential to the long term ability of the US to stay ahead of the curve. The problem is that it will not always pay off and, even when it does pay off, it can be a long time later. We just have to have the foresight to commit to scientific research without immediate results.
Here are my earlier posts:
Chapter 1: Einstein in 1907
Chapter 2: The General Theory of Relativity Born
Chapters 3-6 Expanding Universes, Collapsing Stars, Cuckoo Einstein, and Steady States
Chapter 7: Wheelerisms
The namesake of this chapter is John Wheeler, who was known for turns of phrase like, "mass without mass" and "charge without charge." He's the one who popularized the term "black hole." He came up with the notion of a "wormhole" that bypasses space and time.
One of his main contributions to relativity was the way in which he helped rejuvenated interest in it. In the 1950s, physics was far more interested in quantum matters than general relativity. You could experiment with the quantum. General relativity was more a matter of distant space. Wheeler's support helped get some conferences on relativity going.
So there was the Institute of Field Physics, funded by a couple rich guys who were interested in gravity. Wheeler supported them and their appointment of Bryce DeWitt and his wife as the first employees. They set up meetings on gravitation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the late 50s.
When Richard Feynman (quantum man extraordinaire and former student of Wheeler) arrived for the first conference in Chapel Hill not knowing directions, he helped the taxi driver figure out where it was by suggesting there would have been other attendees in the back of the taxi saying "gee mu nu, gee mu nu" (
). In the words of Ferreira (author of the book), "The driver knew where to go" (109). Another meeting of this sort came out of oil money and the University of Texas at Austin. The result was the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, first held in 1963 in Dallas, just after Kennedy was shot. One of the things discussed at this symposium were "quasi-stellar radio sources" that were being detected by people like Maarten Schmidt. After the conference, they would be called quasars. They were super-massive objects that emitted lots of energy.
Chapter 8: Singularities
The 60s were the "Golden Age of General Relativity," according to Kip Thorne, one of Wheeler's students. Roger Penrose was a player in the decade. He showed that the collapse of stars after they burned out always ended in singularities or black holes, as they would come to be called.
This was also the decade where the background radiation of the universe was discovered. It showed that the steady state theory was false. The universe had a beginning. Stephen Hawking emerged at this time, showing that the universe would not only end with singularities but had also begun with one.
This was also the decade where pulsars were discovered, "pulsating radio stars." These are neutron stars, stars made up almost completely of neutrons. I'm getting a better picture now of what some of the earlier chapters were talking about. There are white dwarfs that Eddington knew of. These are smaller suns that burn out but they are not massive enough to become singularities from which light cannot escape.
There are black holes. These are the super-massive stars that, when they burn out, collapse into a relativistic nightmare from which nothing can ever escape. From our perspective, they become frozen in time. Neutron stars, of which pulsars are an example, are somewhere in between in mass, more massive than white dwarfs but not so massive as a black hole.
Chapter 9: Unification Woes
Relativity and quantum mechanics have always been difficult to fit together. Einstein couldn't do it. Paul Dirac couldn't do it, although he did it with the electron. The Dirac equation had been a landmark in the history of physics. It had predicted the existence of antiparticles, for example.
This chapter takes a bit of a detour into quantum physics, since it is on the continued attempts to fit quantum physics with relativity and gravitation in particular. The 50s and 60s saw the putting together of quantum electrodynamics (QED) and what is now called the "standard model" of physics.
Dirac, like Einstein, never accepted some aspects of quantum physics. He accepted more than Einstein. For example, he showed that the approaches of Heisenberg and Schroedinger really said the same thing in two different ways. In his later career, like Einstein, Dirac became somewhat of a recluse, a celebrated landmark who refused to stay with where the program had gone. In the summer of 1983, while at Boy's State, I touched his office door at Florida State, the year before he died. He had withdrawn from the mainstream and had become a shadowy figure from the past.
In particular, QED leads to a lot of infinities that are ignored. So even though the equations point to an infinite mass for an electron, QED "normalizes" the mass of an electron by substituting the actual measured value for the infinity. Frankly, this bothers me too and surely speaks to some inadequacy in the theory, says the guy who doesn't have a degree in physics.
Hawking did some work to show some additional places where quantum physics and general relativity might come together. Hawking showed that black holes slowly evaporate, "black hole radiation."
Chapter 10: Seeing Gravity
It is amazing to me that this book is already needing to be updated. I bought this book on March 1, 2014 at the IU Memorial Union Bookstore in Bloomington. It just came out in early February of this year. By March 17, chapter 10 was out of date. That was the date that it was announced that gravitational waves had been observed.
Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime, as early as 1916. Eddington rejected the idea, and Einstein himself backed off on the idea in 1936. But Hermann Bondi made a compelling case for them at the watershed 1957 meeting at Chapel Hill. Feynman agreed.
A guy named Weber was also there and would spend the rest of his life trying to prove it experimentally. Unfortunately, he saw them everywhere. Eventually he was marginalized by the scientific community and died a bitter man in 2000. He used very imprecise measuring tools, compared with the laser interferometry that is currently used.
The idea that large objects might give off "gravitational radiation," however, was supported indirectly in 1978. Taylor and Hulse used the very equations Einstein created and whose results he then later rejected to examine two neutron stars orbiting each other. The chapter ends with LIGO in North America trying to find gravitational waves using laser interferometry. Unfortunately for them, they do not seem to be the ones that discovered them.
A final feature of interest in this chapter is the rise of "numerical relativity." For decades, attempts to solve Einstein's field equations in relation to colliding black holes, using computers, would break down the computers. The computer power just wasn't powerful enough yet. Frans Pretorius cracked that one in 2005. He solved Einstein's equations for two colliding black holes on a computer without the process shutting down--90 years after Einstein set them out.
As a side note, the drive to do numerical relativity and the need for more computing power apparently played a role in the implementation of the internet, so that multiple computers across distances could collaborate together. That was in the mid-80s when Larry Smarr was convincing the US government to fund a network of supercomputing centers.
It's quite clear that some of these discoveries would not have happened without a willingness on the part of the government to fund scientific research without immediate results. Such funding seems essential to the long term ability of the US to stay ahead of the curve. The problem is that it will not always pay off and, even when it does pay off, it can be a long time later. We just have to have the foresight to commit to scientific research without immediate results.
Friday, April 11, 2014
#40daybible Day 35 (John 13-21)
So with just a week to go, we finish today the Gospel of John, John 13-21.
Some observations:
Some observations:
- The next chapters, from John 13-17, give the lead up to Jesus' arrest.
- Last Supper - John 13 never says it is a Passover meal, unlike the other Gospels. In fact, John seems to give us the image of Jesus going to the cross as the Passover lambs were being slaughtered to be eaten later that evening. John seems to picture Jesus dying on the morning before Passover (remembering that the new Jewish day began at sundown). There is mention of a garden, but we do not have Jesus' prayer of anguish and the Garden of Gethsemane is not mentioned. John uniquely has foot washing at the supper.
- John 14-17 is Jesus' Farewell Discourse, unique to John. While the Synoptics mostly give us Jesus' teaching in parables, there is not a single Synoptic style parable in John. Rather, we have this more poetic discourse, "the Message version" of Jesus. John also has no exorcisms, unlike the Synoptics.
- Going to Heaven: N. T. Wright is correct that most of the New Testament looks to the kingdom being on a renewed earth. I'm not sure if he's right about John. John more seems to picture a future where we go to heaven.
- Holy Spirit: Very important teaching on the Holy Spirit in John. First, a masculine, personal pronoun is used of him, giving us the sense that the Spirit is a person. The Spirit dwells in y'all (plural). He is the Spirit of truth who leads us into truth. He helped Jesus disciples remember what he had taught, which the Gospels preserve. He will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. After the resurrection, Jesus breathes the Spirit on the disciples, perhaps John's version of Pentecost.
- Two last "I am" statements: I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to God apart from Christ. I am the vine; you are the branches.
- High priestly prayer: In this prayer, presumably in front of his disciples, Jesus prays not only for them but for us (technically, this statement is probably meant for John's own community as a prayer for its unity). A key Wesleyan verse is when Jesus prays for God to "sanctify" them, to set them apart from the world and keep them pure.
- This section of John is sometimes called the "Book of Glory," in contrast to the first half, which is sometimes called the "Book of Signs."
- Private questioning: John's presentation of Jesus' "trial" is more private, with the high priest. It is striking to think of a full Sanhedrin in the middle of the night.
- Jesus Victorious: John shows us less of the struggle. They fall over when they come for Jesus to arrest him. Jesus gives last will and testament instructions from the cross.
- Beloved Disciple: The Gospel of John has a mysterious "disciple whom Jesus loved." Who is it? The NIV introduction is a little overconfident that it was John the Son of Zebedee. [Ben Witherington thinks it was Lazarus] He was an eyewitness at the cross and went on to take care of Mary, Jesus' mother. He runs to the tomb with Peter. He is the source of the information in the Gospel of John, although it was probably put in its final form by someone else, perhaps a Gentile.
- Mary Magdalene: In John, Mary is the first one to whom the resurrected Jesus appears.
- Doubting Thomas: He confesses Jesus as Lord and God. We can wonder if Matthew 28:17 might allude to him.
- Purpose of John: Why was the Gospel of John written? So that John's audience would believe in Jesus. By the way, notice from this verse and throughout John how much differently it uses the word "signs." The Gospel of John just skims the surface of what Jesus did on earth.
- Epilogue: John uniquely has this post-resurrection scene beside the Sea of Galilee. It addresses a rumor that the beloved disciple would live till Jesus returned and this chapter may have been added after his death.
Personal take-away:
- Greater love has no one than to lay down their life. God demonstrates his love for us in that when we were sinners, Christ died for us.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
#40daybible Day 34 (John 7-12)
Today's reading is John 7-12.
Some thoughts:
Some thoughts:
- Deception? John 7:8-10 may be a bit puzzling. In many translations, it sounds like Jesus deceives his brothers.
- Holy Spirit: In 7:37-39, we have a great prediction that the Spirit will come after Jesus' glorification.
- Woman caught in adultery: Although it comes as somewhat of a disappointment, the earliest manuscripts don't have the story of the woman caught in adultery. The earliest manuscript to have it is from the late 400s. It is not likely to have been in the original John.
- Light of the world: In 8:12, we have the second "I am" statement--"I am the light of the world." It's surely no coincidence that in John 9, Jesus heals a blind man.
- Jesus is God: 8:58 is the biggest "I AM" statement of all. "Before Abraham was, I AM." Jesus equates himself with Yahweh at the burning bush.
- Sin make sickness? The man was not blind because he sinned or his parents. (sixth sign, Jesus' healing the blind man)
- Out of the synagogue: It is often wondered if the potential of being kicked out of the synagogue is a comment on John's context. It seems quite possible that it became more and more likely as the century went by that a Jew would be ousted from synagogues if one believed Jesus was Messiah.
- Good shepherd: Unlike the "bad shepherds" that were the leaders of Jerusalem, Jesus is the gate for the sheep and the Good Shepherd.
- Hanukkah: Jesus observes Hanukkah in John 10:22.
- The Resurrection: In John 11, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead and pronounces that he is the resurrection. This is the seventh sign in John.
- Resolve: John presents the end resolve of Jesus to face the cup before him. Notice the contrast in tone with Mark.
- With Jesus, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free (8:31-32).
- If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (8:36).
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
#40daybible Day 33 (John 1-6)
Day 33 starts the Gospel of John with chapters 1-6.
Some notes:
Some notes:
- The "prologue" of John is a magnificent hymn to the Logos or "Word," which is not the Bible, but Jesus. John 1:14 makes it clear that the Word come down from heaven is Christ. In theology terms, we call the event when Jesus took on human flesh the "incarnation."
- This language of God's "word" had a history in Jewish thinking. John 1:1-3 is exactly the kind of thing that Jewish thinkers like Philo said about God's word, his will in action.
- John uniquely among the Gospels emphasizes that Jesus existed before he came to earth. John doesn't mention the virgin birth and the others don't mention his pre-existence.
- The Gospel of John seems to downplay the role of John the Baptist a little. For example, while Matthew tells us that JB was the "Elijah" of prophecy, JB denies it in John. John doesn't even tell his audience, perhaps at Ephesus, that JB baptized Jesus, and Jesus' disciples uniquely baptize in John at the same time as JB.
- In short, John makes it very clear that JB's role ends as soon as Jesus arrives on the scene. He must increase, I must decrease. It's easy to wonder whether Ephesus had a lot of "incomplete" followers of John the Baptist, and that John has paraphrased the story in such a way as to make it clear that people like Apollos had been need to go the whole way and follow Jesus.
- John highlights some different disciples than the other gospels. For example, there's Philip and Nathaniel, Andrew, and Thomas.
- John uniquely tells about Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana, the first of seven "signs" Jesus does in the first half of John. Some think that John has moved Jesus' action in the temple to contrast the old purification with the new. In the other Gospels, Jesus overturns the tables in the final week before his resurrection.
- John 3 has Jesus' secret interaction with a Pharisee named Nicodemus, including John 3:16. Jesus is back in Jerusalem. Another unique feature of John's Gospel is how often Jesus goes down to Jerusalem. Jesus attends three Passovers in John, which is where we get the idea that his ministry lasted three years.
- John 4 has Jesus' interaction with a Samaritan woman. The temple is already destroyed as John writes, and he makes it clear that the temple is not necessary to worship God. God is a Spirit.
- In healing a royal official's son, he does his second of John's seven signs (although he has done other signs between the first and second in this series).
- John implicitly shows that Jesus has replaced various Jewish institutions. In John 5, Jesus shows that he can work on the Sabbath.
- Jesus makes himself equal to God in John to a degree he doesn't in the other Gospels (which are sometimes called the "Synoptic" Gospels because they give a similar presentation that can be distinguished from John's presentation). Nevertheless, Jesus still in John does not act without the Father's initiation.
- The miracle of feeding the 5000 is the only miracle all four Gospels share in common (aside of course from the resurrection...)
- John 6 has the first of Jesus' "I am" statements, unique to John: "I am the bread of life." Probably it's no coincidence that John places this saying next to Jesus' feeding of the 5000, where he multiplies bread.
- The Gospel of John was probably written as Gnosticism was on the rise. Gnosticism believed that matter was evil and thus that Jesus couldn't have taken on flesh. Not only John 1:14 but these verses especially combat that point of view. Disciples leave him as a result, perhaps an allusion to the split that had taken place in John's community over Jesus' flesh.
- John 3:8 has always been meaningful to me. The Spirit blows where he wills. God has a freedom to do what he wills.
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
#40daybible Day 32 (2 Peter, Jude)
For Day 32, we read 2 Peter and Jude.
Thoughts on 2 Peter
Thoughts on 2 Peter
- Contrary to the NIV introduction, 2 Peter simply says that it is addressed to "those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours" (1:1). In other words, 2 Peter is for all Christians, not to the same audience as 1 Peter (I realize 3:1 says it is a second letter to someone).
- 1:10 urges Christians to make their calling and election sure, which implies that our election is conditional on our faithfulness, not unconditionally predestined or eternally secure.
- 1:16-18 refers to the Transfiguration.
- 1:20-21 is a classic text on prophecy, indicating that the prophecies of Scripture were inspired by the Holy Spirit. They were not just the prophet's own ideas. Experts disagree on whether OT prophecies or NT prophecies of Christ's return are primarily in view (in other words, whether this statement connects to doubt about Christ's return in chapter 3).
- 2 Peter 2 seems to have largely been borrowed from Jude or a common source with Jude. The examples of false teaching are roughly in the same order but in a less specific and more generic form (e.g., 2 Peter 2's version doesn't engage apocalyptic literature so directly).
- The primary purpose of 2 Peter would seem to be to encourage those who are distressed because Jesus has not yet returned. These verses have the well known reminder that "a day is like a thousand years" with God.
- There are differing interpretations of the "fathers" (NIV, ancestors) in 3:4. The NIV has translated it to sound like it means the OT fathers. Others think it refers to the earliest Christian fathers. In other words, some will eventually say, "It's been years since Peter and the early Christian prophets have died, yet Jesus hasn't come back yet."
- 3:10-13 speaks of the destruction of the world by fire and then the creation of a new heaven and new earth.
- 3:15-16 speak of Paul's letters as Scriptures. I would argue that Paul's letters have even been loosed from their contexts. If 2 Peter is for all Christians, then Paul's letters now address "you," all Christians, and not just the Romans, Corinthians, Thessalonians, etc. This is a striking step in the development of the early canon.
- We need to be found spotless and blameless as we face the judgment.
- Written by another one of Jesus' earthly brothers
- Written to all Christians
- Warns against false teaching and largely consists of a list of false teachers from the past
- 1:6 refers to the fallen angels of 1 Enoch just as 1 Peter 3 probably does.
- This argument between the archangel Michael and the Devil seems to refer to a story in a lost Jewish work called the Assumption of Moses.
- 1:12 probably refers to the way the early church did communion--as a love feast, like a modern pot luck or pitch in dinner.
- Here Jude quotes 1 Enoch 1.9.
- What a great closing benediction Jude has! God is able to keep us from falling (which of course implies that we can fall). God wants to present us in the kingdom without fault.
Monday, April 07, 2014
#40daybible Day 31 (1 Peter)
We enter the final two weeks of the 40 Day Bible experience with 1 Peter.
Some highlights:
Some highlights:
- I like what Scot McKnight says about 1 Peter, that its teaching was a defensive strategy in a time of persecution. The introduction to the reading above highlights perhaps the key verse for understanding the letter: "Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us" (1 Pet. 2:12).
- It is written to Christians scattered throughout Asia Minor. It is written from Rome, which is called Babylon in 5:13. As Babylon had destroyed Jerusalem in 586BC, so Rome would destroy Jerusalem in AD70. Silas, Paul's missionary partner, would seem to have played a significant role in the composition of 1 Peter, which would explain its somewhat Pauline flavor.
- The audience is primarily Gentile. Once they were not part of God's people, but now they are (2:10).
- "Be holy for I am holy" (1:15-16). Christians cannot give in to evil desires.
- The idea of the priesthood of all believers comes from 1 Peter, although the way Luther took the phrase isn't exactly what 1 Peter meant. 1 Peter doesn't call the audience "priests" as an argument against temple priests.
- At the core of the defensive strategy is to submit to the structures of society as aliens and strangers just passing through. So slaves should submit to masters, wives to unbelieving husbands. If believers are to be criticized, may it be that they can only be criticized unfairly.
- We should be careful not to take the instructions here to slaves and wives as God's ideal for all time but as the way to "live good lives among the pagans" in the context of 1 Peter's situation.
- 3:15 is the great apologetics verse, but it is not about proving Christian beliefs with logical argument but about confessing Jesus as Lord when you are brought before secular authorities.
- This bizarre set of verses (3:19-20) probably alludes to the fallen angels of 1 Enoch who sinned in the days before the Flood.
- 4:6 may refer to the possibility for OT saints to be freed from death, now that Christ's sacrifice is now accomplished.
- Some great memory verses in 1 Peter. Here are three: "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings" (5:6-8)
Sunday, April 06, 2014
G6. Dios conoce todas las cosas reales que saber.
Mis disculpas, la traducción inicial para este capítulo provienen de Google Translate. El original en Inglés está aquí. Estos capítulos son reflexiones sobre la teología cristiana de la Wesleyan-arminiana.
__________________________
Dios no sólo conoce cada cosa posible conocer. Dios conoce todas las cosas reales que saber. Dios es "omnisciente" o "todo lo sabe".
El último artículo señalaba que si Dios hizo todo de la nada, entonces él sabe todos los entresijos del universo porque él las diseñó. Él conoce todas las posibilidades del universo. Él por lo menos tiene conocimiento medio, ya que estamos definirlo. Él conoce cada universo posible.
En este artículo, queremos ir un paso más allá y sugiere que Dios no sólo conoce cada futuro posible. Él conoce el futuro real. Es cierto, estamos profundizando en temas que sabemos relativamente nada. ¿Puede haber múltiples universos que Dios creó? ¿Podría cada universo jugará un conjunto diferente de opciones y eventos? No tenemos forma de saber en este momento. En este artículo, nos limitaremos a trabajar fuera de la suposición de que el universo puede ser considerado independientemente de los otros universos que Dios ha creado.
Una de las cuestiones que tenemos que enfrentar es el hecho de que la Biblia no dice exactamente que Dios lo sabe todo sobre el futuro. Cierto, 1 Juan 3:20 dice que Dios lo sabe todo, pero el contexto es acerca de Dios sabiendo el estado de nuestro corazón en el presente. Juan no está haciendo una declaración filosófica intemporal sino un comentario sobre el conocimiento completo de Dios de nosotros en el presente.
Mucho teología en el pasado se ha basado en la rasgadura de versos como este fuera de contexto. Se toma una frase bíblica de su párrafo, de su libro, salir de la situación en la que fue escrita y artificialmente lo tratan como una afirmación absoluta, filosófico. Dichas prácticas pueden ver verdades en las palabras, pero ellos tienen esas palabras mucho más allá de los límites de lo que en realidad querían decir. Por ejemplo, el Salmo 147:5 dice que el entendimiento de Dios no tiene límites: "no hay un número para su entendimiento." Si bien esta afirmación apunta a la comprensión increíble de parte de Dios, no es una declaración filosófica o proposicional. Se encuentra en un poema, donde las declaraciones figurativas e incluso hiperbólicas son la naturaleza del juego.
Del mismo modo, mientras que gran parte de la Escritura deja claro que Dios puede predecir el futuro, no hay ninguna declaración bíblica que dice que Dios lo sabe todo sobre el futuro. Incluso Isaías 46:10, que dice que Dios puede decir las cosas por venir, no está haciendo una afirmación filosófica absoluta. Y una vez más, nos damos cuenta de que esta declaración se presenta en forma poética.
Mi punto no es en absoluto para argumentar contra el conocimiento del futuro real de Dios. Yo creo que Dios conoce cada detalle preciso del futuro. Mi punto es indicar cómo estamos en deuda con la historia de la iglesia para sistematizar y completar los detalles de la fe bíblica. Ortodoxa fe cristiana comienza con la Biblia, pero no termina ahí. Le debemos mucho al Espíritu en la iglesia primitiva para la elaboración de muchos de los detalles que ahora vemos con mayor claridad en la Escritura de lo que eran originalmente. Estamos jugando juegos hermenéuticos con nosotros mismos si pretendemos nos encontraremos con la fe ortodoxa completamente maduro en los significados originales de los libros de la Biblia.
Abrir el teísmo es un movimiento relativamente reciente que ha surgido principalmente por razones filosóficas, pero que ha llamado nuestra atención sobre los muchos lugares en la Biblia donde Dios no parece saber todo sobre el futuro. Teístas abiertos creen que Dios ha suspendido su conocimiento preciso del futuro para que podamos tener la libertad de tomar decisiones morales. Su pensamiento es que si Dios sabía de antemano si nos volveríamos a elegir para hacer algo, entonces no podríamos posiblemente hacer otra cosa. Nuestra acción se determinaría, lo que socavaría cualquier sentido significativo que somos criaturas morales. En consecuencia, suponer que Dios tiene por su propia voluntad decidió no saber qué decisiones precisas vamos a hacer, así que vamos a tener libertad para tomar verdaderas decisiones morales de los que somos verdaderamente responsables.
De hecho, existen muchos pasajes de la Biblia en el que al menos suena como Dios no conoce ciertos aspectos del futuro. Génesis no retrata a Dios como omnisciente, para lamentarse Dios ha creado a la humanidad (Génesis 06:06) - algo que no puedes hacer, literalmente, si supieras plenamente el hombre iba a hacer lo que hicieron. En Génesis 22:12, Dios prueba a Abraham para ver cómo va a responder, y sólo después de la prueba de lo que Dios dice, "Ahora sé que temes a Dios."
La mayoría, si no todo el Antiguo Testamento habla de Dios en términos similares. Es posible que los autores del Antiguo Testamento en sí aún no habían entendido la omnisciencia de Dios. Sin embargo, debemos hacer lo que la mayoría de los cristianos a lo largo de los siglos y tomar el lenguaje como antropomórfica. [1] Esto es una imagen de Dios en categorías humanas, en las categorías que podemos entender y al que nos podemos relacionar. Pero Dios no sería Dios si tales descripciones eran descripciones literales. Él no sería más que un chico muy eficiente y de gran alcance. Incluso teísmo abierto, teniendo tales imágenes más literalmente, aún lo interpreta desde dentro de un marco filosófico.
Volvamos a la cuestión filosófica que subyace a la unidad para abrir el teísmo. ¿Tiene "presciencia" de Dios del futuro implica el determinismo? La escuela de la teología cristiana conocida como Calvinismo diría: "Sí". Calvinismo diría que Dios tanto conoce el futuro y lo determina. De hecho, ellos dirían que Dios conoce el futuro, precisamente porque ha determinado que. El teísta abierto diría que Dios no conoce el futuro exacto porque él no quiere para determinarla.
Pero al final, esto parecería ser una polémica tonta. El razonamiento aquí sólo tiene sentido para la gente, ya que limitan a Dios que el mismo flujo del espacio-tiempo que experimentamos, donde el futuro viene, inevitablemente, después de la actual. Relatividad ha llamado nuestra atención sobre el hecho de que el espacio-tiempo no es un marco de absoluta. De hecho, el tiempo puede moverse más rápido para una parte del universo que se mueve para otro, y puede ser posible que el espacio-tiempo se curve tal que, en efecto, siquiera podemos mirar al pasado.
¿Y si Dios es "tiempo fuera", una noción que puede haberse convertido completamente desarrollado en la teología medieval, pero que encaja muy bien con el sentido fuerte de la creación de la nada que sólo ha llegado a ser posible en el siglo XX? Si Dios ya ha observado el futuro, entonces su conocimiento de que ahora no lo preceden sucediendo, pero se produce después de que esto ocurra. Ha observado, no se ha determinado que, como alguien que ve la grabación de un partido en el que estuvieron presentes. Ellos saben lo que sucederá en la grabación porque ya han visto y no se determinar de ninguna manera.
La esencia de Dios no se encuentra dentro de nuestro continuo espacio-tiempo. Es cierto que el Espíritu de Dios guía a través de la historia con nosotros desde el pasado al presente y al futuro. Es cierto que Jesús, el Hijo de Dios, entró en la historia con nosotros y suspendió su conocimiento previo en la tierra (por ejemplo, Marcos 13:32). Pero, ¿qué mortal podría decir cómo es que Dios conoce todas las cosas, o "cuando" él los conoce?
Lo que podemos decir con razonable certeza es que los argumentos cristianos más de lo que "debe" ser el caso de la relación entre el conocimiento previo y el determinismo parece una tontería, ya que, incluso desde un punto de vista humano, parecen asumir que Dios se limita a la creación. Pero Dios existió antes de que hubiera una creación. Él es, por tanto, en su esencia, "fuera" del universo.
Entonces, ¿qué de la emoción? ¿Dios tiene emociones? Por supuesto, podemos llegar a ser emocional debido a la interacción de los productos químicos en nuestros cuerpos. Podemos asumir que Dios no tiene emociones de ese tipo. En términos más generales, las emociones son nuestras reacciones a experiencias. Pero recordamos desde el último artículo que no hay distinción en Dios entre conocimiento intelectual y el conocimiento experiencial. Él conoce todas las cosas completamente en todos los puntos de su existencia.
Él responde, pero no puede, literalmente, ser sorprendido. Un hecho no puede "volver a casa" para él. Él no puede, literalmente, se recordó a una experiencia pasada. Seguramente imágenes bíblicas de Dios enojarse, estar triste, se sorprendieron, lamentando, y así sucesivamente son todos antropomorfismos en cierta medida, el propósito de ayudarnos a entender en términos que podamos entender. Una vez más, no nos sorprende encontrar que el Antiguo Testamento, que tiene un conocimiento menos preciso de Dios que el nuevo, tiene más imágenes intensas de este tipo.
Jesús, por supuesto, tenía el rango normal de las emociones humanas. Dios el Hijo suspendió su omnisciencia, mientras estuvo en la tierra. Para Jesús, había una distinción entre el conocimiento experiencial y cognitivo. No estamos en condiciones de saber si Dios el Espíritu también suspendió su pleno conocimiento del futuro que caminar a través de la historia con nosotros. Uno sólo puede especular sobre si las imágenes bíblicas de las emociones de Dios podrían relacionarse más a Dios como el que habita este universo (Dios en su "inmanencia") que a Dios tal como existe fuera de este universo (Dios en su "trascendencia").
Pero podemos estar seguros de que Dios no sólo conoce cada cosa posible que podría suceder en el universo. Él sabe los detalles precisos de cada cosa real que va a pasar a partir de ahora por toda la eternidad.
Capítulo siguiente: G7. Dios puede hacer lo que quiera.
[1] O más exactamente, anthropopathic. Un antropomorfismo es un retrato de Dios en forma humana. Antropopatismo es el retrato de Dios con la emoción humana.
__________________________
Dios no sólo conoce cada cosa posible conocer. Dios conoce todas las cosas reales que saber. Dios es "omnisciente" o "todo lo sabe".
El último artículo señalaba que si Dios hizo todo de la nada, entonces él sabe todos los entresijos del universo porque él las diseñó. Él conoce todas las posibilidades del universo. Él por lo menos tiene conocimiento medio, ya que estamos definirlo. Él conoce cada universo posible.
En este artículo, queremos ir un paso más allá y sugiere que Dios no sólo conoce cada futuro posible. Él conoce el futuro real. Es cierto, estamos profundizando en temas que sabemos relativamente nada. ¿Puede haber múltiples universos que Dios creó? ¿Podría cada universo jugará un conjunto diferente de opciones y eventos? No tenemos forma de saber en este momento. En este artículo, nos limitaremos a trabajar fuera de la suposición de que el universo puede ser considerado independientemente de los otros universos que Dios ha creado.
Una de las cuestiones que tenemos que enfrentar es el hecho de que la Biblia no dice exactamente que Dios lo sabe todo sobre el futuro. Cierto, 1 Juan 3:20 dice que Dios lo sabe todo, pero el contexto es acerca de Dios sabiendo el estado de nuestro corazón en el presente. Juan no está haciendo una declaración filosófica intemporal sino un comentario sobre el conocimiento completo de Dios de nosotros en el presente.
Mucho teología en el pasado se ha basado en la rasgadura de versos como este fuera de contexto. Se toma una frase bíblica de su párrafo, de su libro, salir de la situación en la que fue escrita y artificialmente lo tratan como una afirmación absoluta, filosófico. Dichas prácticas pueden ver verdades en las palabras, pero ellos tienen esas palabras mucho más allá de los límites de lo que en realidad querían decir. Por ejemplo, el Salmo 147:5 dice que el entendimiento de Dios no tiene límites: "no hay un número para su entendimiento." Si bien esta afirmación apunta a la comprensión increíble de parte de Dios, no es una declaración filosófica o proposicional. Se encuentra en un poema, donde las declaraciones figurativas e incluso hiperbólicas son la naturaleza del juego.
Del mismo modo, mientras que gran parte de la Escritura deja claro que Dios puede predecir el futuro, no hay ninguna declaración bíblica que dice que Dios lo sabe todo sobre el futuro. Incluso Isaías 46:10, que dice que Dios puede decir las cosas por venir, no está haciendo una afirmación filosófica absoluta. Y una vez más, nos damos cuenta de que esta declaración se presenta en forma poética.
Mi punto no es en absoluto para argumentar contra el conocimiento del futuro real de Dios. Yo creo que Dios conoce cada detalle preciso del futuro. Mi punto es indicar cómo estamos en deuda con la historia de la iglesia para sistematizar y completar los detalles de la fe bíblica. Ortodoxa fe cristiana comienza con la Biblia, pero no termina ahí. Le debemos mucho al Espíritu en la iglesia primitiva para la elaboración de muchos de los detalles que ahora vemos con mayor claridad en la Escritura de lo que eran originalmente. Estamos jugando juegos hermenéuticos con nosotros mismos si pretendemos nos encontraremos con la fe ortodoxa completamente maduro en los significados originales de los libros de la Biblia.
Abrir el teísmo es un movimiento relativamente reciente que ha surgido principalmente por razones filosóficas, pero que ha llamado nuestra atención sobre los muchos lugares en la Biblia donde Dios no parece saber todo sobre el futuro. Teístas abiertos creen que Dios ha suspendido su conocimiento preciso del futuro para que podamos tener la libertad de tomar decisiones morales. Su pensamiento es que si Dios sabía de antemano si nos volveríamos a elegir para hacer algo, entonces no podríamos posiblemente hacer otra cosa. Nuestra acción se determinaría, lo que socavaría cualquier sentido significativo que somos criaturas morales. En consecuencia, suponer que Dios tiene por su propia voluntad decidió no saber qué decisiones precisas vamos a hacer, así que vamos a tener libertad para tomar verdaderas decisiones morales de los que somos verdaderamente responsables.
De hecho, existen muchos pasajes de la Biblia en el que al menos suena como Dios no conoce ciertos aspectos del futuro. Génesis no retrata a Dios como omnisciente, para lamentarse Dios ha creado a la humanidad (Génesis 06:06) - algo que no puedes hacer, literalmente, si supieras plenamente el hombre iba a hacer lo que hicieron. En Génesis 22:12, Dios prueba a Abraham para ver cómo va a responder, y sólo después de la prueba de lo que Dios dice, "Ahora sé que temes a Dios."
La mayoría, si no todo el Antiguo Testamento habla de Dios en términos similares. Es posible que los autores del Antiguo Testamento en sí aún no habían entendido la omnisciencia de Dios. Sin embargo, debemos hacer lo que la mayoría de los cristianos a lo largo de los siglos y tomar el lenguaje como antropomórfica. [1] Esto es una imagen de Dios en categorías humanas, en las categorías que podemos entender y al que nos podemos relacionar. Pero Dios no sería Dios si tales descripciones eran descripciones literales. Él no sería más que un chico muy eficiente y de gran alcance. Incluso teísmo abierto, teniendo tales imágenes más literalmente, aún lo interpreta desde dentro de un marco filosófico.
Volvamos a la cuestión filosófica que subyace a la unidad para abrir el teísmo. ¿Tiene "presciencia" de Dios del futuro implica el determinismo? La escuela de la teología cristiana conocida como Calvinismo diría: "Sí". Calvinismo diría que Dios tanto conoce el futuro y lo determina. De hecho, ellos dirían que Dios conoce el futuro, precisamente porque ha determinado que. El teísta abierto diría que Dios no conoce el futuro exacto porque él no quiere para determinarla.
Pero al final, esto parecería ser una polémica tonta. El razonamiento aquí sólo tiene sentido para la gente, ya que limitan a Dios que el mismo flujo del espacio-tiempo que experimentamos, donde el futuro viene, inevitablemente, después de la actual. Relatividad ha llamado nuestra atención sobre el hecho de que el espacio-tiempo no es un marco de absoluta. De hecho, el tiempo puede moverse más rápido para una parte del universo que se mueve para otro, y puede ser posible que el espacio-tiempo se curve tal que, en efecto, siquiera podemos mirar al pasado.
¿Y si Dios es "tiempo fuera", una noción que puede haberse convertido completamente desarrollado en la teología medieval, pero que encaja muy bien con el sentido fuerte de la creación de la nada que sólo ha llegado a ser posible en el siglo XX? Si Dios ya ha observado el futuro, entonces su conocimiento de que ahora no lo preceden sucediendo, pero se produce después de que esto ocurra. Ha observado, no se ha determinado que, como alguien que ve la grabación de un partido en el que estuvieron presentes. Ellos saben lo que sucederá en la grabación porque ya han visto y no se determinar de ninguna manera.
La esencia de Dios no se encuentra dentro de nuestro continuo espacio-tiempo. Es cierto que el Espíritu de Dios guía a través de la historia con nosotros desde el pasado al presente y al futuro. Es cierto que Jesús, el Hijo de Dios, entró en la historia con nosotros y suspendió su conocimiento previo en la tierra (por ejemplo, Marcos 13:32). Pero, ¿qué mortal podría decir cómo es que Dios conoce todas las cosas, o "cuando" él los conoce?
Lo que podemos decir con razonable certeza es que los argumentos cristianos más de lo que "debe" ser el caso de la relación entre el conocimiento previo y el determinismo parece una tontería, ya que, incluso desde un punto de vista humano, parecen asumir que Dios se limita a la creación. Pero Dios existió antes de que hubiera una creación. Él es, por tanto, en su esencia, "fuera" del universo.
Entonces, ¿qué de la emoción? ¿Dios tiene emociones? Por supuesto, podemos llegar a ser emocional debido a la interacción de los productos químicos en nuestros cuerpos. Podemos asumir que Dios no tiene emociones de ese tipo. En términos más generales, las emociones son nuestras reacciones a experiencias. Pero recordamos desde el último artículo que no hay distinción en Dios entre conocimiento intelectual y el conocimiento experiencial. Él conoce todas las cosas completamente en todos los puntos de su existencia.
Él responde, pero no puede, literalmente, ser sorprendido. Un hecho no puede "volver a casa" para él. Él no puede, literalmente, se recordó a una experiencia pasada. Seguramente imágenes bíblicas de Dios enojarse, estar triste, se sorprendieron, lamentando, y así sucesivamente son todos antropomorfismos en cierta medida, el propósito de ayudarnos a entender en términos que podamos entender. Una vez más, no nos sorprende encontrar que el Antiguo Testamento, que tiene un conocimiento menos preciso de Dios que el nuevo, tiene más imágenes intensas de este tipo.
Jesús, por supuesto, tenía el rango normal de las emociones humanas. Dios el Hijo suspendió su omnisciencia, mientras estuvo en la tierra. Para Jesús, había una distinción entre el conocimiento experiencial y cognitivo. No estamos en condiciones de saber si Dios el Espíritu también suspendió su pleno conocimiento del futuro que caminar a través de la historia con nosotros. Uno sólo puede especular sobre si las imágenes bíblicas de las emociones de Dios podrían relacionarse más a Dios como el que habita este universo (Dios en su "inmanencia") que a Dios tal como existe fuera de este universo (Dios en su "trascendencia").
Pero podemos estar seguros de que Dios no sólo conoce cada cosa posible que podría suceder en el universo. Él sabe los detalles precisos de cada cosa real que va a pasar a partir de ahora por toda la eternidad.
Capítulo siguiente: G7. Dios puede hacer lo que quiera.
[1] O más exactamente, anthropopathic. Un antropomorfismo es un retrato de Dios en forma humana. Antropopatismo es el retrato de Dios con la emoción humana.
G6. God knows every actual thing to know.
My continued walk through Christian theology in bullet points.
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God not only knows every possible thing to know. God knows every actual thing to know. God is "omniscient" or "all-knowing."
The last article pointed out that if God made everything out of nothing, then he knows all the inner workings of the universe because he designed them. He knows all the possibilities of the universe. He at least has middle knowledge, as we're defining it. He knows every possible universe.
In this article, we want to go a step further and suggest that God not only knows every possible future. He knows the actual future. Admittedly, we are delving into matters we know relatively nothing about. Could there be multiple universes that God created? Could each universe play out a different set of choices and events? We have no way of knowing at this time. In this article, we will simply work off the assumption that this universe can be considered independently of any other universes God has created.
One issue we need to face is the fact that the Bible does not exactly say that God knows everything about the future. True, 1 John 3:20 says that God knows everything, but the context is about God knowing the state of our heart in the present. John is not making a timeless philosophical statement but a comment about God's complete knowledge of us in the present.
Much theology in the past has been based on ripping verses like this one out of context. You take a biblical sentence out of its paragraph, out of its book, out of the situation in which it was written and artificially treat it as an absolute, philosophical statement. Such practices may see truths in the words, but they take those words well beyond the limits of what they actually meant. For example, Psalm 147:5 says that God's understanding has no limit: "there is no number to his understanding." While this statement points to incredible understanding on God's part, it is not a philosophical or propositional statement. It is in a poem, where figurative and even hyperbolic statements are the nature of the game.
Similarly, while much of Scripture makes it clear that God can predict the future, there is no biblical statement that says God knows everything about the future. Even Isaiah 46:10, which says that God can tell things yet to come, is not making an absolute philosophical statement. And once again, we notice that this declaration comes in poetic form.
My point is not at all to argue against God's knowledge of the actual future. I believe that God knows every precise detail of the future. My point is to indicate how indebted we are to church history for systematizing and filling in the details of biblical faith. Orthodox Christian faith begins with the Bible, but it did not end there. We owe much to the Spirit in the early church for working out many of the details that we now see more clearly in Scripture than they originally were. We are playing hermeneutical games with ourselves if we pretend we will find fully mature orthodox faith in the original meanings of the books of the Bible.
Open theism is a fairly recent movement that has arisen primarily for philosophical reasons but that has drawn our attention to the many places in the Bible where God does not seem to know everything about the future. Open theists believe that God has suspended his precise knowledge of the future so that we can be free to make moral choices. Their thinking is that if God knew beforehand whether we would choose to do something, then we couldn't possibly do anything else. Our action would be determined, which would undermine any meaningful sense that we are moral creatures. Accordingly, they suppose that God has by his own free will decided not to know what precise decisions we will make, so that we will be free to make true moral choices for which we are truly accountable.
There are indeed many passages in the Bible where it at least sounds like God does not know certain aspects of the future. Genesis does not picture God as omniscient, for God regrets he has created humanity (Gen. 6:6)--something you can't literally do if you fully knew humanity would do what they did. In Genesis 22:12, God tests Abraham to see how he will respond, and only after the test does God say, "Now I know that you fear God."
Most if not all of the Old Testament speaks of God in similar terms. It is possible that the Old Testament authors themselves did not yet understand God's omniscience. Nevertheless, we should do as most Christians throughout the centuries and take such language as anthropomorphic. [1] It is picturing God in human categories, in categories we can understand and to which we can relate. But God would not be God if such descriptions were literal descriptions. He would just be a really knowledgeable and powerful Guy. Even open theism, while taking such imagery more literally, still interprets it from within a philosophical framework.
Let us return to the philosophical issue that underlies the drive to open theism. Does God's "foreknowledge" of the future imply determinism? The school of Christian theology known as Calvinism would say, "Yes." Calvinism would say that God both knows the future and determines it. Indeed, they would say that God knows the future precisely because he has determined it. The open theist would say that God does not know the precise future because he does not want to determine it.
But in the end, this would seem to be a silly controversy. The reasoning here only makes sense to people because they limit God to the same flow of spacetime that we experience, where the future inevitably comes after the present. Relativity has drawn our attention to the fact that spacetime is not an absolute framework. Indeed, time can move faster for one part of the universe than it moves for another, and it may be possible for spacetime to bend such that we in effect can even look at the past.
What if God is "outside time," a notion that may have become fully grown in medieval theology but that fits well with the robust sense of creation out of nothing that has only become possible in the twentieth century? If God has already observed the future, then his knowledge of it now does not precede it happening but comes after it happening. He has observed it, not determined it, like someone who watches the recording of a game at which they were present. They know what will happen in the recording because they have already seen it and are not determining it in any way.
The essence of God is not located within our spacetime continuum. True, God's Spirit walks through history with us from past to present to future. True, Jesus, God the Son, entered history with us and suspended his foreknowledge while on earth (e.g., Mark 13:32). But what mortal could say how it is that God knows all things or "when" he knows them?
What we can say with reasonable certainty is that Christian arguments over what "must" be the case about the relationship between foreknowledge and determinism appear foolish because, even from a human standpoint, they seem to assume that God is confined to the creation. But God existed before there was a creation. He is thus, in his essence, "outside" of the universe.
What then of emotion? Does God have emotions? We can of course become emotional because of the interaction of chemicals in our bodies. We can assume that God has no emotions of that sort. More generally, emotions are our reactions to experiences. But we remember from the last article that there is no distinction in God between head knowledge and experiential knowledge. He knows all things entirely at all points of his existence.
He responds but cannot literally be surprised. A fact cannot "come home" to him. He cannot literally be reminded of a past experience. Surely biblical pictures of God getting angry, being sad, being surprised, regretting, and so forth are all anthropomorphisms to some degree, meant to help us understand him in terms we can grasp. Again, we are not surprised to find that the Old Testament, which has a less precise understanding of God than the New, has more intense imagery of this sort.
Jesus, of course, had the normal range of human emotions. God the Son suspended his omniscience while he was on earth. For Jesus, there was a distinction between experiential and cognitive knowledge. We are not in a position to know whether God the Spirit also suspended his full knowledge of the future to walk through history with us. One can only speculate whether the biblical pictures of God's emotions might relate more to God as he inhabits this universe (God in his "immanence") than to God as he exists outside this universe (God in his "transcendence").
But we can be certain that God not only knows every possible thing that might happen in the universe. He knows the precise details of every actual thing that will happen from now to all eternity.
Next Sunday, G7. God can do anything he wants.
[1] Or more accurately, anthropopathic. An anthropomorphism is a portrayal of God in human form. Anthropopathism is portrayal of God with human emotion.
____________________
God not only knows every possible thing to know. God knows every actual thing to know. God is "omniscient" or "all-knowing."
The last article pointed out that if God made everything out of nothing, then he knows all the inner workings of the universe because he designed them. He knows all the possibilities of the universe. He at least has middle knowledge, as we're defining it. He knows every possible universe.
In this article, we want to go a step further and suggest that God not only knows every possible future. He knows the actual future. Admittedly, we are delving into matters we know relatively nothing about. Could there be multiple universes that God created? Could each universe play out a different set of choices and events? We have no way of knowing at this time. In this article, we will simply work off the assumption that this universe can be considered independently of any other universes God has created.
One issue we need to face is the fact that the Bible does not exactly say that God knows everything about the future. True, 1 John 3:20 says that God knows everything, but the context is about God knowing the state of our heart in the present. John is not making a timeless philosophical statement but a comment about God's complete knowledge of us in the present.
Much theology in the past has been based on ripping verses like this one out of context. You take a biblical sentence out of its paragraph, out of its book, out of the situation in which it was written and artificially treat it as an absolute, philosophical statement. Such practices may see truths in the words, but they take those words well beyond the limits of what they actually meant. For example, Psalm 147:5 says that God's understanding has no limit: "there is no number to his understanding." While this statement points to incredible understanding on God's part, it is not a philosophical or propositional statement. It is in a poem, where figurative and even hyperbolic statements are the nature of the game.
Similarly, while much of Scripture makes it clear that God can predict the future, there is no biblical statement that says God knows everything about the future. Even Isaiah 46:10, which says that God can tell things yet to come, is not making an absolute philosophical statement. And once again, we notice that this declaration comes in poetic form.
My point is not at all to argue against God's knowledge of the actual future. I believe that God knows every precise detail of the future. My point is to indicate how indebted we are to church history for systematizing and filling in the details of biblical faith. Orthodox Christian faith begins with the Bible, but it did not end there. We owe much to the Spirit in the early church for working out many of the details that we now see more clearly in Scripture than they originally were. We are playing hermeneutical games with ourselves if we pretend we will find fully mature orthodox faith in the original meanings of the books of the Bible.
Open theism is a fairly recent movement that has arisen primarily for philosophical reasons but that has drawn our attention to the many places in the Bible where God does not seem to know everything about the future. Open theists believe that God has suspended his precise knowledge of the future so that we can be free to make moral choices. Their thinking is that if God knew beforehand whether we would choose to do something, then we couldn't possibly do anything else. Our action would be determined, which would undermine any meaningful sense that we are moral creatures. Accordingly, they suppose that God has by his own free will decided not to know what precise decisions we will make, so that we will be free to make true moral choices for which we are truly accountable.
There are indeed many passages in the Bible where it at least sounds like God does not know certain aspects of the future. Genesis does not picture God as omniscient, for God regrets he has created humanity (Gen. 6:6)--something you can't literally do if you fully knew humanity would do what they did. In Genesis 22:12, God tests Abraham to see how he will respond, and only after the test does God say, "Now I know that you fear God."
Most if not all of the Old Testament speaks of God in similar terms. It is possible that the Old Testament authors themselves did not yet understand God's omniscience. Nevertheless, we should do as most Christians throughout the centuries and take such language as anthropomorphic. [1] It is picturing God in human categories, in categories we can understand and to which we can relate. But God would not be God if such descriptions were literal descriptions. He would just be a really knowledgeable and powerful Guy. Even open theism, while taking such imagery more literally, still interprets it from within a philosophical framework.
Let us return to the philosophical issue that underlies the drive to open theism. Does God's "foreknowledge" of the future imply determinism? The school of Christian theology known as Calvinism would say, "Yes." Calvinism would say that God both knows the future and determines it. Indeed, they would say that God knows the future precisely because he has determined it. The open theist would say that God does not know the precise future because he does not want to determine it.
But in the end, this would seem to be a silly controversy. The reasoning here only makes sense to people because they limit God to the same flow of spacetime that we experience, where the future inevitably comes after the present. Relativity has drawn our attention to the fact that spacetime is not an absolute framework. Indeed, time can move faster for one part of the universe than it moves for another, and it may be possible for spacetime to bend such that we in effect can even look at the past.
What if God is "outside time," a notion that may have become fully grown in medieval theology but that fits well with the robust sense of creation out of nothing that has only become possible in the twentieth century? If God has already observed the future, then his knowledge of it now does not precede it happening but comes after it happening. He has observed it, not determined it, like someone who watches the recording of a game at which they were present. They know what will happen in the recording because they have already seen it and are not determining it in any way.
The essence of God is not located within our spacetime continuum. True, God's Spirit walks through history with us from past to present to future. True, Jesus, God the Son, entered history with us and suspended his foreknowledge while on earth (e.g., Mark 13:32). But what mortal could say how it is that God knows all things or "when" he knows them?
What we can say with reasonable certainty is that Christian arguments over what "must" be the case about the relationship between foreknowledge and determinism appear foolish because, even from a human standpoint, they seem to assume that God is confined to the creation. But God existed before there was a creation. He is thus, in his essence, "outside" of the universe.
What then of emotion? Does God have emotions? We can of course become emotional because of the interaction of chemicals in our bodies. We can assume that God has no emotions of that sort. More generally, emotions are our reactions to experiences. But we remember from the last article that there is no distinction in God between head knowledge and experiential knowledge. He knows all things entirely at all points of his existence.
He responds but cannot literally be surprised. A fact cannot "come home" to him. He cannot literally be reminded of a past experience. Surely biblical pictures of God getting angry, being sad, being surprised, regretting, and so forth are all anthropomorphisms to some degree, meant to help us understand him in terms we can grasp. Again, we are not surprised to find that the Old Testament, which has a less precise understanding of God than the New, has more intense imagery of this sort.
Jesus, of course, had the normal range of human emotions. God the Son suspended his omniscience while he was on earth. For Jesus, there was a distinction between experiential and cognitive knowledge. We are not in a position to know whether God the Spirit also suspended his full knowledge of the future to walk through history with us. One can only speculate whether the biblical pictures of God's emotions might relate more to God as he inhabits this universe (God in his "immanence") than to God as he exists outside this universe (God in his "transcendence").
But we can be certain that God not only knows every possible thing that might happen in the universe. He knows the precise details of every actual thing that will happen from now to all eternity.
Next Sunday, G7. God can do anything he wants.
[1] Or more accurately, anthropopathic. An anthropomorphism is a portrayal of God in human form. Anthropopathism is portrayal of God with human emotion.
Saturday, April 05, 2014
Review: God's Not Dead
Spoiler Alert: While my youngest two were at Fusion and my wife was visiting the oldest two, I snuck off to see the movie God's Not Dead last night.
1. I love the Newsboys' song, God's not Dead. What a great song to culminate the movie with! Love it. Big spoiler (skip to the next paragraph). It's really moving when everyone texts from the concert that "God's not dead," and the characters who aren't at the concert read it. It's moving enough to feel a tear coming on. To me, there was especially a lot of power to that text coming to the (now formerly) atheist's cell phone, given the irony of where he's at when the text comes. I'll leave it at that.
2. I like the humility of the main character throughout most of the movie. He got a little cocky to me in the final confrontation with the philosophy professor, but that was a deviation from his character most of the movie. In most of the movie, he takes the position that 1) it comes down to choosing faith, since God is not ultimately a matter of proof and 2) there are moral people who just don't believe.
3. However, a critique I have is that, although the movie tells us such things, it doesn't show us. IMO, the overall tone of the movie is one of "the evidence demands a verdict" and "all atheists are sleazebags." And let's face it, a lot of people are going to enjoy this movie because they like seeing intellectuals and liberals get stuffed by Duck Dynasty. The calm qualifications are overridden by the overall tone.
4. Back to the good. Most Christians are portrayed as incredibly humble and loving in the movie. Let's ask God to make us actually be like that. :-) Most real churches are probably more like the church of Corinth in the New Testament than like the perfect believers in this film.
There was of course one Christian who wasn't portrayed in dreamy perfection--that nasty feminist girlfriend who obviously didn't get the memo that the man is the head in the relationship. (sarcasm intended)
5. Ultimately, most of the characters in this movie, both Christian and non, are "flat" characters. They are predictable caricatures rather than real people. The philosophy professor is a straw man rather than a real debate partner. I'm sure there are professors like that out there, but they are not good professors and certainly not good philosophy teachers. Philosophy is not about indoctrination but about examining assumptions.
To help illustrate what I mean by flat and straw man characters, there are some movies where Christians are portrayed negatively in a similar way to the way the professors are portrayed in this movie. There's a movie called Easy A where Amanda Bynes plays a Christian character who is infuriatingly flat and unreal. The way she acts, the way her circle prays, is an absurd representation of what Christians are like. That is exactly how this movie's philosophy professor will feel to real philosophy professors and non-believers. (John Hawthorne, did you catch the dig at sociologists ;-)
6. Josh presents two positive arguments for God and one defensive argument. The first is the argument that the world had a beginning, the cosmological argument. He gets Aristotle wrong. Aristotle actually argued that there must have been a first mover. Thomas Aquinas actually made the same basic argument Josh makes in the movie by building off of Aristotle's argument.
Josh mentions Lemaître, whom I mentioned last week as a twentieth century cosmologist who argued that the universe must have had a beginning. I may be stupid but I would at least agree with the tone of the movie toward Dawkins and Hawking, both of whom I consider cocky imbeciles when it comes to the question of God. Nevertheless, I find some of the dialog about them generally unbelievable, both in terms of how lame the philosophy professor is and in how Josh gets a little too "boo-yah" ish.
So yes, I think the cosmological argument makes it reasonable to believe in God. It doesn't prove God. It certainly doesn't prove the Christian God. It simply suggests that it is reasonable to believe in a Creator, given that the universe seems to have had a beginning.
7. The question of evolution and the problem of evil are big topics. For example, the "free will" explanation for why God allows evil is one of best, but there are other ideas and there are counter-ideas. It's really not believable that Josh could convince the whole class with as little as he presents (or that the professor would have so little to say in response).
We need to be humble as Christians about these sorts of arguments. A lot of them make basic sense but they are far from slam dunks. They do not "demand" our verdict. As Josh also says, however, arguments to the contrary do not disprove God either.
8. Josh is right that a lot of the angriest atheists are former believers. Josh is also right that some people say they don't believe in God because they are angry with God. It's hard to believe that a real college philosophy professor would be as stupid as this one comes off, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who say they don't believe in God because they are trying to get back at him.
9. So I left thinking that I might take my kids to see it. I didn't think I would want to, going in. I'll be honest, the characters in this movie are so far-fetched that the whole movie drove me crazy, just like secular portrayals of Christians often do. But I liked the ending, for the most part. The moment with the mother was striking too, I thought. Well played.
P.S. The quote, "God is dead," comes from Nietzsche, who said it almost as a prophecy of the moral chaos that would dominate parts of the twentieth century. Agreeing with Dostoevsky, Nietzsche thought that if people didn't believe in God, then anything would become morally permissible to them. The context of this statement in Nietzsche's writing is a madmen who tells people celebrating God's death that they don't know what they have done by killing him off.
1. I love the Newsboys' song, God's not Dead. What a great song to culminate the movie with! Love it. Big spoiler (skip to the next paragraph). It's really moving when everyone texts from the concert that "God's not dead," and the characters who aren't at the concert read it. It's moving enough to feel a tear coming on. To me, there was especially a lot of power to that text coming to the (now formerly) atheist's cell phone, given the irony of where he's at when the text comes. I'll leave it at that.
2. I like the humility of the main character throughout most of the movie. He got a little cocky to me in the final confrontation with the philosophy professor, but that was a deviation from his character most of the movie. In most of the movie, he takes the position that 1) it comes down to choosing faith, since God is not ultimately a matter of proof and 2) there are moral people who just don't believe.
3. However, a critique I have is that, although the movie tells us such things, it doesn't show us. IMO, the overall tone of the movie is one of "the evidence demands a verdict" and "all atheists are sleazebags." And let's face it, a lot of people are going to enjoy this movie because they like seeing intellectuals and liberals get stuffed by Duck Dynasty. The calm qualifications are overridden by the overall tone.
4. Back to the good. Most Christians are portrayed as incredibly humble and loving in the movie. Let's ask God to make us actually be like that. :-) Most real churches are probably more like the church of Corinth in the New Testament than like the perfect believers in this film.
There was of course one Christian who wasn't portrayed in dreamy perfection--that nasty feminist girlfriend who obviously didn't get the memo that the man is the head in the relationship. (sarcasm intended)
5. Ultimately, most of the characters in this movie, both Christian and non, are "flat" characters. They are predictable caricatures rather than real people. The philosophy professor is a straw man rather than a real debate partner. I'm sure there are professors like that out there, but they are not good professors and certainly not good philosophy teachers. Philosophy is not about indoctrination but about examining assumptions.
To help illustrate what I mean by flat and straw man characters, there are some movies where Christians are portrayed negatively in a similar way to the way the professors are portrayed in this movie. There's a movie called Easy A where Amanda Bynes plays a Christian character who is infuriatingly flat and unreal. The way she acts, the way her circle prays, is an absurd representation of what Christians are like. That is exactly how this movie's philosophy professor will feel to real philosophy professors and non-believers. (John Hawthorne, did you catch the dig at sociologists ;-)
6. Josh presents two positive arguments for God and one defensive argument. The first is the argument that the world had a beginning, the cosmological argument. He gets Aristotle wrong. Aristotle actually argued that there must have been a first mover. Thomas Aquinas actually made the same basic argument Josh makes in the movie by building off of Aristotle's argument.
Josh mentions Lemaître, whom I mentioned last week as a twentieth century cosmologist who argued that the universe must have had a beginning. I may be stupid but I would at least agree with the tone of the movie toward Dawkins and Hawking, both of whom I consider cocky imbeciles when it comes to the question of God. Nevertheless, I find some of the dialog about them generally unbelievable, both in terms of how lame the philosophy professor is and in how Josh gets a little too "boo-yah" ish.
So yes, I think the cosmological argument makes it reasonable to believe in God. It doesn't prove God. It certainly doesn't prove the Christian God. It simply suggests that it is reasonable to believe in a Creator, given that the universe seems to have had a beginning.
7. The question of evolution and the problem of evil are big topics. For example, the "free will" explanation for why God allows evil is one of best, but there are other ideas and there are counter-ideas. It's really not believable that Josh could convince the whole class with as little as he presents (or that the professor would have so little to say in response).
We need to be humble as Christians about these sorts of arguments. A lot of them make basic sense but they are far from slam dunks. They do not "demand" our verdict. As Josh also says, however, arguments to the contrary do not disprove God either.
8. Josh is right that a lot of the angriest atheists are former believers. Josh is also right that some people say they don't believe in God because they are angry with God. It's hard to believe that a real college philosophy professor would be as stupid as this one comes off, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who say they don't believe in God because they are trying to get back at him.
9. So I left thinking that I might take my kids to see it. I didn't think I would want to, going in. I'll be honest, the characters in this movie are so far-fetched that the whole movie drove me crazy, just like secular portrayals of Christians often do. But I liked the ending, for the most part. The moment with the mother was striking too, I thought. Well played.
P.S. The quote, "God is dead," comes from Nietzsche, who said it almost as a prophecy of the moral chaos that would dominate parts of the twentieth century. Agreeing with Dostoevsky, Nietzsche thought that if people didn't believe in God, then anything would become morally permissible to them. The context of this statement in Nietzsche's writing is a madmen who tells people celebrating God's death that they don't know what they have done by killing him off.
Friday, April 04, 2014
#40daybible Day 30 (Mark 8:31-16:8)
Day 30 ends up Week 6 by finishing the Gospel of Mark.
Some observations:
Some observations:
- Mark 8:31 is the turning point of Mark's Gospel. Up till Peter's confession, Jesus' ministry has been very positive and public. Now the tone will become more foreboding. Jesus sets his face toward the cross and focuses more privately on his disciples.
- Two more times after this Jesus will predict his death. Each time he predicts his death, the disciples do something that indicates they don't understand what's coming. The first time, Peter corrects Jesus about him going to die. The second time, the disciples have been arguing about who will be the greatest in the kingdom. The third time, James and John are angling to have the places of prominence in the coming kingdom.
- The Transfiguration happens after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ. This is the enigmatic moment when Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus on a high mountain.
- Some think that Mark's Passion Story predated the Gospel. I frankly don't know how you would go about proving that.
- Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly on Sunday.
- In Mark, on Monday he overthrows tables in the temple.
- On Tuesday he has debates.
- In Mark 13 Jesus predicts the coming destruction of the temple in AD70.
- In Mark 14, Jesus has a Last Supper with the disciples, prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, gets arrested, gets denied, and appears before the Sanhedrin.
- In Mark 15, Jesus appears before Pilate and is crucified.
- Mark 16:1-8 is probably the ending of Mark that we have, giving us Jesus' resurrection. 16:9-20 were probably an early attempt to make up for what seemed an incomplete ending. There is another shorter ending among the manuscripts too. I suspect the original ending was lost at a very early date.
- Mark 10:45 is very significant in Mark: "The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."
Thursday, April 03, 2014
God Concepts meets Leadership Styles
I remember being wowed in Wayne Goodwin's "Servant as Leader" class at Asbury at a typology of five leadership styles he presented. (When you get excited about Greek, simplistic practical things wow you). I'm trying to remember the five. I think it was something like this:
1. Autocratic leadership style
If I remember correctly, Goodwin called this style, "charismatic" leadership. In Max Weber's version of charismatic leadership, this style connected more to personal charisma. But as I remember Goodwin's treatment, he thought of a pastor whose approach is basically, "my way or the highway" (e.g., Theory X). Think transactional leader. Think slave driver.
2. Collaborative leadership style
I can't remember if he called one of the five "democratic" or "collaborative," but I'm sure he had a category for a leader that tends to work together with the team toward decisions. This is the person who leans toward the team making decisions, someone who regularly consults the team on decisions, looking for consensus or a clear majority direction (like Theory Y).
3. Laissez-faire leadership style
This approach basically is a non-leadership style. People under the leader basically do whatever they want without any direction, positive or negative, from the leader.
4. Sugar-daddy leadership style
I'm missing one of Goodwin's categories, but I'm going to throw in here a "people pleaser" or "country club" style leader, an extreme form of servant leadership that is completely non-directive and basically is a slave to the employees. Whatever the team wants, the team gets.
5. Balanced leader
Goodwin had "systems" leader here but that didn't quite seem to get at it. It seems to me that a good leader is sometimes directive, sometimes collaborative, sometimes hands off, and often a servant. Being a good leader is precisely knowing when to be which (situational).
Now let's see if this correlates to God-concepts. I couldn't find the old "Five God Concepts" video on YouTube. But here's what I remember in my own words:
1. The Cowboy God
"Every move you make, every step you take, I'll be watching you."
2. The Party God
You want something, you got it.
3. The Busy God
I'm way too busy to get involved with you.
4. The Fix-It God
He's a mechanic who's here to fix your problems.
5. The Prodigal God
The Father in the story of the Prodigal Son
You can see these line up quite a bit. Now, in what way does God serve as a model for pastoral leadership... or does he?
1. Autocratic leadership style
If I remember correctly, Goodwin called this style, "charismatic" leadership. In Max Weber's version of charismatic leadership, this style connected more to personal charisma. But as I remember Goodwin's treatment, he thought of a pastor whose approach is basically, "my way or the highway" (e.g., Theory X). Think transactional leader. Think slave driver.
2. Collaborative leadership style
I can't remember if he called one of the five "democratic" or "collaborative," but I'm sure he had a category for a leader that tends to work together with the team toward decisions. This is the person who leans toward the team making decisions, someone who regularly consults the team on decisions, looking for consensus or a clear majority direction (like Theory Y).
3. Laissez-faire leadership style
This approach basically is a non-leadership style. People under the leader basically do whatever they want without any direction, positive or negative, from the leader.
4. Sugar-daddy leadership style
I'm missing one of Goodwin's categories, but I'm going to throw in here a "people pleaser" or "country club" style leader, an extreme form of servant leadership that is completely non-directive and basically is a slave to the employees. Whatever the team wants, the team gets.
5. Balanced leader
Goodwin had "systems" leader here but that didn't quite seem to get at it. It seems to me that a good leader is sometimes directive, sometimes collaborative, sometimes hands off, and often a servant. Being a good leader is precisely knowing when to be which (situational).
Now let's see if this correlates to God-concepts. I couldn't find the old "Five God Concepts" video on YouTube. But here's what I remember in my own words:
1. The Cowboy God
"Every move you make, every step you take, I'll be watching you."
2. The Party God
You want something, you got it.
3. The Busy God
I'm way too busy to get involved with you.
4. The Fix-It God
He's a mechanic who's here to fix your problems.
5. The Prodigal God
The Father in the story of the Prodigal Son
You can see these line up quite a bit. Now, in what way does God serve as a model for pastoral leadership... or does he?
#40daybible Day 29 (Mark 1:1-8:30)
Today's reading covers the first half of the Gospel of Mark, Mark 1:1-8:30.
Some thoughts:
Some thoughts:
- I thought the introduction to this section was driven by tradition rather than induction. The comment to the reader of Mark in Mark 13:14 possibly suggests that Mark was written no earlier than the early stages of the Jewish War, which started around AD66.
- Mark hits the ground running with the baptism of John the Baptist.
- 1:14-15 gives us Jesus primary message while he ministered on earth: the kingdom of God is coming. Repent and believe in this good news.
- Mark doesn't seem to put most of the events in order. But he gives us a good sampling of the kinds of things that Jesus did in his proclamation of the good news that the kingdom of God was arriving.
- Jesus healed people.
- Jesus cast out demons.
- He showed power over nature.
- Jesus called and trained followers.
- Jesus tried to redeem the lost.
- He got into conflict with religious leaders.
- He taught in parables.
- The turning point of Mark is when Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ.
- Mark 7 has been fairly significant for my theology for some time now. Evil is a matter of the heart. It is something on the inside that comes out. It is not, technically, a matter of the things we do on the outside. Our actions embody our intentions.
- I might also add that 7:3 (and 7:19) indicate that the audience of Mark was Gentile.
Wednesday, April 02, 2014
#40daybible Day 28 (James)
Wednesday's reading is the book of James.
- James is full of wisdom, truly the Proverbs of the New Testament.
- It starts with words relating to trials and temptations. For example, remember that trials have a positive benefit. They help us develop patience. And God is more than willing to give us wisdom to face our trials if we are really interested in his help.
- But don't chalk up temptations to God. God doesn't try to get people to do evil. People sin when they give in to their own sinful desires.
- The rest of James 1 and 2 have to do with being "doers" and not just believers. James has no time for people who believe all the right things but don't help others in need. Faith without works is dead.
- Here's the text that made Luther hesitant to translate James into German: "A person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone."
- Most of James 3 is amazingly powerful stuff on the tongue, "a restless evil," "full of deadly poison"!
- Throughout James, we have earthly wisdom contrasted with the wisdom from above.
- James is somewhat harsh on the wealthy he has in mind. They are the ones dragging believers into court. They oppress those who work for them while they live lavishly. They make plans without bringing God into the equation. By implication, they are friends with the world who are going to be destroyed while on their business trips.
- So those oppressed and those suffering need to be patient until the Lord returns. All need to submit to God and resist the Devil.
- James 5:19-20: "My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins."
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
#40daybible Day 27 (Hebrews 4:14-13:25)
Today's reading finishes out the sermon we call Hebrews in the New Testament.
- Hebrews 4:14-16 and 10:19-23 are pivots in the sermon that bracket its central teaching. This includes the fact that we have direct access to the heavenly throne of God through Jesus' blood and that, therefore, we must hold fast to our profession of faith.
- Also, tucked in this central section is the main exhortation of the sermon in 5:11-6:12. The basic point is similar to what the author said in chapters 3-4. If the audience does not persist in faith, they will not make it to the Promised Land. Indeed, these verses suggest that, at least for the audience of Hebrews, they will never be able to get back to Christ if they abandon him.
- There are two other passages in Hebrews that warn the same thing. 10:26-29 say that there is a point where the Spirit of grace is so insulted by faithlessness that the grace runs out. Then 12:16-17 give the warning of Esau, who sold his birthright and then couldn't bring himself to repentance, even though he wanted to! All these warning passages are telling the audience that abandoning faith in Christ is very serious business, and there is no promise that you will ever be able to return if you leave him.
- Hebrews 7:1-10:18 are the high priestly nucleus of the sermon. Hebrews 7 tells the audience that Christ is not only qualified to be a priest but that he is from a superior priestly line to that of the Levitical priests. He is in the priestly order of Melchizedek.
- Hebrews 8-10 deal with the question of sanctuary. Hebrews 7 has shown that Jesus is a priest. So in what sanctuary did he offer his superior sacrifice? Hebrews 9 shows that Jesus presented his offering in the true, superior sanctuary of heaven.
- When you put the superior priest with the superior sacrifice in the superior sanctuary, you have a superior covenant, as Hebrews 8 said at the beginning of this section and Hebrews 10:1-18 say at the end of this section.
- Hebrews 10:19-12:29 give the practical warm-down from this intense argument. The audience needs to endure like they did in an earlier persecution. Hebrews 11 gives them the hall of faith, a cloud of faithful witnesses cheering them on from the stands as they run the race to the end.
- The climax of the sermon portion is 12:18-29 where the author warns them not to reject the one speaking to them from heaven, for God is about to shake the heavens and the earth.
- Hebrews 13 then gives a kind of letter conclusion to the sermon.
Personal favorite of the day:
- 10:14 With one sacrifice, it's all over. The cleansing of sins/perfection of our conscience is a done deal. TKO
Monday, March 31, 2014
Christians at the Movies
I did a quick thought on the Wesley Seminary blog about the flood of movies of interest to Christians that are out right now: http://wesleyconnectonline.com/christians-at-the-movies/
My three warnings are:
My three warnings are:
- Avoid "three wise men" syndrome.
- Value Truth more than tradition.
- Remember the mission.
- It seems to be built out of a fictional urban legend regularly forwarded as email spam that I have heard repeatedly throughout my life.
- The philosophy professor has all the makings of a straw man. Any atheist professor of this sort should be fired from any respectable secular university. Although I can believe there are professors like this who exist out there, they would be mocked and considered incompetent by other atheist philosophy professors. Philosophy is about asking questions, not about indoctrination.
- It assumes a debatable model of faith, where faith is a matter of proof. It is a very popular apologetic but one that can be questioned. For me, the best model is one in which God comes to us rather than us trying to rationally come to God.
#40daybible Day 26 (Hebrews 1:1-4:13)
Week 6 begins with Hebrews. Today's reading is Hebrews 1:1-4:13.
Some thoughts on Hebrews:
Some thoughts on Hebrews:
- It seems likely that Hebrews was a sermon that the author sent to the church, perhaps in Rome.
- We don't know who the author was. It wasn't likely Paul, not least because it's hard to see Paul writing this verse, which places the author at a further distance from Jesus than Paul saw himself.
- I'm not sure that the assumptions of the introduction to the reading are as obvious as the writer seems to think. For example, the beginning teachings of Hebrews 5:11-6:2 do not read like the kinds of first teachings a Jew would need to learn.
- Similarly, if Hebrews were written before the destruction of the temple, we can wonder why the author does not just come out and say not to rely on the temple. Why speak so obliquely and theoretically about the wilderness tabernacle and make allusions to having no remaining city here and being wanderers on the earth?
- Hebrews 1 starts off the sermon with a celebratory hymn of sorts. It is a poetic celebration of Christ's enthronement at God's right hand. It's hard, IMO, for us to read these verses without post-Nicaean glasses on. But all the verses can be read in relation to Jesus being enthroned as Son of God as he was enthroned king at God's right hand.
- Hebrews 2 gives us the human problem and Christ's solution. God created humanity to have glory in the creation but we do not have this glory because of sin and death. So Jesus has partaken of human flesh so that he can finally lead many sons and daughters to glory.
- Hebrews 3-4 warns the audience to keep going in faith. They, like Israel, have left Egypt. They have started the journey of faith. But if they do not continue in faith all the way to the end, their corpses will fall in the desert like the Israelites did. We have the opportunity of entering God's rest. We had better do so.
- Significant to realize that the word of God in 4:12 is not the Bible. There is a history here in Jewish wisdom speculation. The word of God is the will of God in action. Here is an interesting parallel.
- Hebrews 4:13 says that the whole creation is laid bare before God's eyes, whose word is for us. God sees. God knows. Do we live as if he does?
Sunday, March 30, 2014
G5. Dios sabe todo lo posible para saber.
Mis disculpas, la traducción inicial para este capítulo provienen de Google Translate. El original en Inglés está aquí. Estos capítulos son reflexiones sobre la teología cristiana de la Wesleyan-arminiana.
_______________________
Dios sabe todo lo posible para saber. Él sabe todo lo que podría pasarle en este universo.
Que no acaba de nosotros llegar a "todo lo sabe" todavía. Ese es el próximo artículo. "Omnisciencia" de Dios es la creencia cristiana de que Dios lo sabe todo, posible y real.
Sabemos que Dios sabe todo lo que es posible porque él creó el mundo de la nada. Crear el mundo de la nada - incluido el vacío - no es como cuando usted o yo hacemos algo en la cocina o cuando algún arquitecto diseña cosas. No sólo hemos heredado los materiales a partir de la creación, sino que hemos heredado las leyes de la física y la química que establece los límites de lo que podemos crear y cómo los materiales de interactuar unos con otros.
No es así para Dios. Cuando Dios creó el universo de la nada, creó las leyes de la física y la química. Él creó los límites de lo que los materiales que puede y no puede hacer. No hay nada de lo que existe en este universo que Dios no diseñó total y absolutamente. Por lo tanto, sabe todo lo que es posible conocer y aún más.
A menudo, cuando pensamos en Dios, por error suponer que su conocimiento es similar a la forma en que conocemos las cosas. Por ejemplo, para nosotros, hay una diferencia entre conocer las cosas con la cabeza y conocer las cosas por experiencia. Pero desde que Dios creó el universo de la nada, creó ninguna experiencia que pueda tener.
Este es un punto significativo. Dios creó experiencias incluso como el sufrimiento y el pecado. La humanidad de Jesús aprendió la obediencia y el sufrimiento en la cruz (Heb. 5:8), pero Dios el Padre y Dios el Espíritu no se aprendió nada en la cruz. Dios creó la posibilidad de experimentar el sufrimiento. Dios creó la posibilidad de aprender la obediencia.
Del mismo modo, Dios creó a Satanás y los ángeles caídos del cielo. Dios creó la posibilidad de que Satanás caería. Dios creó la posibilidad de que Adán pecara. Más tarde, vamos a ver en la cuestión de cómo un Dios bueno podría crear la posibilidad del mal. Por ahora, sin embargo, tenemos que señalar que Dios tiene que saber lo que se siente al pecado porque Dios creó a esta posibilidad de la nada. Él diseñó el universo para tener esta experiencia posible en el mismo.
Si una persona cree que Dios ha construido una cierta libertad en la creación, lo que hago, entonces las causas y los efectos del universo puedo jugar a sí mismos en más de una manera posible. No se convierten, por así decirlo, múltiples "universos posibles". Yo creo que Dios ha hecho posible que los seres humanos para hacer más de una opción posible, a pesar de las causas que trabajan en ellos. Incluso puede ser posible en el nivel subatómico que Dios ha puesto algo de indeterminación en la creación misma. [1]
Debido a que Dios creó el universo, por lo menos, sabe todas las eventualidades posibles. Él sabe cómo el universo puede doblar porque él creó todas esas posibilidades. Este conocimiento es a veces llamado el "conocimiento del medio." [2] Él conoce todos los mundos posibles que podrían existir en función de las elecciones que hacen.
Existen otras dos formas de conocimiento de Dios que se discuten a veces. Ciertamente, Dios sabe cómo va a actuar con libertad en este mundo, su "conocimiento libre". Sin embargo, es importante darse cuenta de que lo que a veces se llaman "verdades necesarias" (por ejemplo, 2 + 2 = 4) son también productos de la creación de Dios. Algunos filósofos cristianos inadvertidamente desdibujan Dios con la creación, por olvidar que, cuando creó el universo de la nada, creó libremente todas las posibles axiomas, postulados y consiguientes teoremas de matemáticas y otros de los llamados verdades necesarias. Por tanto, las verdades necesarias existen como un acto de libre voluntad de Dios al igual que todas las otras verdades.
Un argumento a favor de la existencia de Dios que se ajuste con su conocimiento del mundo es el llamado "argumento del diseño" o argumento "teleológica" de la existencia de Dios. La idea es que la complejidad del universo, su diseño, sugiere que tuvo un diseñador inteligente.
El argumento fue creada clásicamente expone en la década de 1700 por William Paley lo largo de las líneas de un relojero. [3] La idea es que cuando se encuentra un reloj, usted asume hubo un relojero que lo hizo. Así Paley argumentó que algo tan complejo como el universo debe haber tenido un creador del universo.
La teoría de la evolución, por lo menos lo hizo más difícil hacer este argumento. Sin embargo, hay más en el diseño del universo de la complejidad específica de la vida. Hay las reglas del universo mismo, las leyes de la física y la química, por ejemplo. [4] Si usted encuentra este argumento convincente o no como prueba, los cristianos no tienen problemas para ver el orden y la complejidad del universo como un reflejo de la omnisciencia de Dios.
Capítulo siguiente: G6. Dios conoce todas las cosas reales que saber.
[1] El consenso actual en el campo de la física cuántica es que hay una indeterminación fundamental para el universo en el nivel subatómico. Los inicios de esta trayectoria en el rastro de la física de vuelta al "principio de incertidumbre" de Werner Heisenberg estableció por primera vez en 1927.
[2] La idea de conocimiento medio puede encajar tanto con aquellos que creen que Dios determina todas las decisiones humanas y los que creen que Dios da a los humanos una cierta libertad en sus opciones.
[3] En una obra llamada, la teología natural.
[4] Richard Swinburne ha hecho este argumento en la existencia de Dios, 2ª ed. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004).
_______________________
Dios sabe todo lo posible para saber. Él sabe todo lo que podría pasarle en este universo.
Que no acaba de nosotros llegar a "todo lo sabe" todavía. Ese es el próximo artículo. "Omnisciencia" de Dios es la creencia cristiana de que Dios lo sabe todo, posible y real.
Sabemos que Dios sabe todo lo que es posible porque él creó el mundo de la nada. Crear el mundo de la nada - incluido el vacío - no es como cuando usted o yo hacemos algo en la cocina o cuando algún arquitecto diseña cosas. No sólo hemos heredado los materiales a partir de la creación, sino que hemos heredado las leyes de la física y la química que establece los límites de lo que podemos crear y cómo los materiales de interactuar unos con otros.
No es así para Dios. Cuando Dios creó el universo de la nada, creó las leyes de la física y la química. Él creó los límites de lo que los materiales que puede y no puede hacer. No hay nada de lo que existe en este universo que Dios no diseñó total y absolutamente. Por lo tanto, sabe todo lo que es posible conocer y aún más.
A menudo, cuando pensamos en Dios, por error suponer que su conocimiento es similar a la forma en que conocemos las cosas. Por ejemplo, para nosotros, hay una diferencia entre conocer las cosas con la cabeza y conocer las cosas por experiencia. Pero desde que Dios creó el universo de la nada, creó ninguna experiencia que pueda tener.
Este es un punto significativo. Dios creó experiencias incluso como el sufrimiento y el pecado. La humanidad de Jesús aprendió la obediencia y el sufrimiento en la cruz (Heb. 5:8), pero Dios el Padre y Dios el Espíritu no se aprendió nada en la cruz. Dios creó la posibilidad de experimentar el sufrimiento. Dios creó la posibilidad de aprender la obediencia.
Del mismo modo, Dios creó a Satanás y los ángeles caídos del cielo. Dios creó la posibilidad de que Satanás caería. Dios creó la posibilidad de que Adán pecara. Más tarde, vamos a ver en la cuestión de cómo un Dios bueno podría crear la posibilidad del mal. Por ahora, sin embargo, tenemos que señalar que Dios tiene que saber lo que se siente al pecado porque Dios creó a esta posibilidad de la nada. Él diseñó el universo para tener esta experiencia posible en el mismo.
Si una persona cree que Dios ha construido una cierta libertad en la creación, lo que hago, entonces las causas y los efectos del universo puedo jugar a sí mismos en más de una manera posible. No se convierten, por así decirlo, múltiples "universos posibles". Yo creo que Dios ha hecho posible que los seres humanos para hacer más de una opción posible, a pesar de las causas que trabajan en ellos. Incluso puede ser posible en el nivel subatómico que Dios ha puesto algo de indeterminación en la creación misma. [1]
Debido a que Dios creó el universo, por lo menos, sabe todas las eventualidades posibles. Él sabe cómo el universo puede doblar porque él creó todas esas posibilidades. Este conocimiento es a veces llamado el "conocimiento del medio." [2] Él conoce todos los mundos posibles que podrían existir en función de las elecciones que hacen.
Existen otras dos formas de conocimiento de Dios que se discuten a veces. Ciertamente, Dios sabe cómo va a actuar con libertad en este mundo, su "conocimiento libre". Sin embargo, es importante darse cuenta de que lo que a veces se llaman "verdades necesarias" (por ejemplo, 2 + 2 = 4) son también productos de la creación de Dios. Algunos filósofos cristianos inadvertidamente desdibujan Dios con la creación, por olvidar que, cuando creó el universo de la nada, creó libremente todas las posibles axiomas, postulados y consiguientes teoremas de matemáticas y otros de los llamados verdades necesarias. Por tanto, las verdades necesarias existen como un acto de libre voluntad de Dios al igual que todas las otras verdades.
Un argumento a favor de la existencia de Dios que se ajuste con su conocimiento del mundo es el llamado "argumento del diseño" o argumento "teleológica" de la existencia de Dios. La idea es que la complejidad del universo, su diseño, sugiere que tuvo un diseñador inteligente.
El argumento fue creada clásicamente expone en la década de 1700 por William Paley lo largo de las líneas de un relojero. [3] La idea es que cuando se encuentra un reloj, usted asume hubo un relojero que lo hizo. Así Paley argumentó que algo tan complejo como el universo debe haber tenido un creador del universo.
La teoría de la evolución, por lo menos lo hizo más difícil hacer este argumento. Sin embargo, hay más en el diseño del universo de la complejidad específica de la vida. Hay las reglas del universo mismo, las leyes de la física y la química, por ejemplo. [4] Si usted encuentra este argumento convincente o no como prueba, los cristianos no tienen problemas para ver el orden y la complejidad del universo como un reflejo de la omnisciencia de Dios.
Capítulo siguiente: G6. Dios conoce todas las cosas reales que saber.
[1] El consenso actual en el campo de la física cuántica es que hay una indeterminación fundamental para el universo en el nivel subatómico. Los inicios de esta trayectoria en el rastro de la física de vuelta al "principio de incertidumbre" de Werner Heisenberg estableció por primera vez en 1927.
[2] La idea de conocimiento medio puede encajar tanto con aquellos que creen que Dios determina todas las decisiones humanas y los que creen que Dios da a los humanos una cierta libertad en sus opciones.
[3] En una obra llamada, la teología natural.
[4] Richard Swinburne ha hecho este argumento en la existencia de Dios, 2ª ed. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004).
G5. God knows every possible thing to know.
Last week was about God's omnipotence. This week we move on to omniscience. Here's the developing map.
____________________
God knows every possible thing to know. He knows every possible thing that could happen in this universe.
That doesn't quite get us to "all knowing" yet. That's the next article. God's "omniscience" is the Christian belief that God knows everything, both possible and actual.
We know that God knows everything that is possible because he created the world out of nothing. Creating the world out of nothing--including the emptiness--is not like when you or I make something in the kitchen or when some architect designs things. We not only have inherited the materials from the creation but we have inherited the laws of physics and chemistry that set the boundaries for what we can create and how materials interact with one another.
Not so for God. When God created the universe out of nothing, he created the laws of physics and chemistry. He created the boundaries for what materials can and cannot do. There is nothing that exists in this universe that God did not completely and utterly design. He therefore knows everything it is possible to know and even more.
Often when we think about God, we mistakenly assume that his knowledge is similar to the way we know things. For example, for us, there is a difference between knowing things with your head and knowing things experientially. But since God created the universe out of nothing, he created any experience you could possibly have.
This is a significant point. God created even experiences like suffering and sinning. The humanity of Jesus learned obedience and suffering on the cross (Heb. 5:8), but God the Father and God the Spirit did not learn anything on the cross. God created the possibility of experiencing suffering. God created the possibility of learning obedience.
Similarly, God created Satan and the angels who fell from heaven. God created the possibility that Satan would fall. God created the possibility that Adam would sin. Later, we will look at the question of how a good God could create the possibility of evil. For now, however, we need to point out that God must know what it feels like to sin because God created this possibility out of nothing. He designed the universe to have this possible experience in it.
If a person believes that God has built some freedom into the creation, which I do, then the causes and effects of the universe can play themselves out in more than one possible way. There become, as it were, multiple "possible universes." I believe that God has made it possible for human beings to make more than one possible choice, despite the causes working on them. It may even be possible on the subatomic level that God has put some indeterminacy into the creation itself. [1]
Because God created the universe, he at the very least knows every possible eventuality. He knows how the universe can bend because he created all those possibilities. This knowledge is sometimes called "middle knowledge." [2] He knows every possible world that could exist depending on the choices people make.
There are two other forms of God's knowledge that are sometimes discussed. Certainly God knows how he will freely act in this world, his "free knowledge." However, it is important to realize that what are sometimes called "necessary truths" (e.g., 2 + 2 = 4) are also products of God's creation. Some Christian philosophers inadvertently blur God with the creation by forgetting that, when he created the universe out of nothing, he freely created all the possible axioms, postulates, and consequent theorems of math and other so called necessary truths. Necessary truths thus exist as an act of God's free will just like all other truths.
An argument for the existence of God that fits with his knowledge of the world is the so called "argument from design" or "teleological" argument for God's existence. The idea is that the complexity of the universe, its design, suggests that it had an intelligent designer.
The argument was classically set forth in the 1700s by William Paley along in the lines of a clockmaker. [3] The idea is that when you find a clock, you assume there was a clockmaker that made it. So Paley argued that something as complex as the universe must have had a universe maker.
The theory of evolution at the very least made it more difficult to make this argument. Nevertheless, there is more to the design of the universe than the specific complexity of life. There are the rules of the universe itself, the laws of physics and chemistry, for example. [4] Whether you find this argument convincing or not as a proof, Christians have no problem seeing the order and complexity of the universe as a reflection of God's omniscience.
Next Sunday, G6. God knows every actual thing to know.
[1] The current consensus in the field of quantum physics is that there is a fundamental indeterminacy to the universe on the subatomic level. The beginnings of this trajectory in physics trace back to the "uncertainty principle" of Werner Heisenberg first set out in 1927.
[2] The idea of middle knowledge can fit both with those who believe God determines all human choices and those who believe God gives humans some freedom in their choices.
[3] In a work called, Natural Theology.
[4] Richard Swinburne has made this argument in The Existence of God, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004).
____________________
God knows every possible thing to know. He knows every possible thing that could happen in this universe.
That doesn't quite get us to "all knowing" yet. That's the next article. God's "omniscience" is the Christian belief that God knows everything, both possible and actual.
We know that God knows everything that is possible because he created the world out of nothing. Creating the world out of nothing--including the emptiness--is not like when you or I make something in the kitchen or when some architect designs things. We not only have inherited the materials from the creation but we have inherited the laws of physics and chemistry that set the boundaries for what we can create and how materials interact with one another.
Not so for God. When God created the universe out of nothing, he created the laws of physics and chemistry. He created the boundaries for what materials can and cannot do. There is nothing that exists in this universe that God did not completely and utterly design. He therefore knows everything it is possible to know and even more.
Often when we think about God, we mistakenly assume that his knowledge is similar to the way we know things. For example, for us, there is a difference between knowing things with your head and knowing things experientially. But since God created the universe out of nothing, he created any experience you could possibly have.
This is a significant point. God created even experiences like suffering and sinning. The humanity of Jesus learned obedience and suffering on the cross (Heb. 5:8), but God the Father and God the Spirit did not learn anything on the cross. God created the possibility of experiencing suffering. God created the possibility of learning obedience.
Similarly, God created Satan and the angels who fell from heaven. God created the possibility that Satan would fall. God created the possibility that Adam would sin. Later, we will look at the question of how a good God could create the possibility of evil. For now, however, we need to point out that God must know what it feels like to sin because God created this possibility out of nothing. He designed the universe to have this possible experience in it.
If a person believes that God has built some freedom into the creation, which I do, then the causes and effects of the universe can play themselves out in more than one possible way. There become, as it were, multiple "possible universes." I believe that God has made it possible for human beings to make more than one possible choice, despite the causes working on them. It may even be possible on the subatomic level that God has put some indeterminacy into the creation itself. [1]
Because God created the universe, he at the very least knows every possible eventuality. He knows how the universe can bend because he created all those possibilities. This knowledge is sometimes called "middle knowledge." [2] He knows every possible world that could exist depending on the choices people make.
There are two other forms of God's knowledge that are sometimes discussed. Certainly God knows how he will freely act in this world, his "free knowledge." However, it is important to realize that what are sometimes called "necessary truths" (e.g., 2 + 2 = 4) are also products of God's creation. Some Christian philosophers inadvertently blur God with the creation by forgetting that, when he created the universe out of nothing, he freely created all the possible axioms, postulates, and consequent theorems of math and other so called necessary truths. Necessary truths thus exist as an act of God's free will just like all other truths.
An argument for the existence of God that fits with his knowledge of the world is the so called "argument from design" or "teleological" argument for God's existence. The idea is that the complexity of the universe, its design, suggests that it had an intelligent designer.
The argument was classically set forth in the 1700s by William Paley along in the lines of a clockmaker. [3] The idea is that when you find a clock, you assume there was a clockmaker that made it. So Paley argued that something as complex as the universe must have had a universe maker.
The theory of evolution at the very least made it more difficult to make this argument. Nevertheless, there is more to the design of the universe than the specific complexity of life. There are the rules of the universe itself, the laws of physics and chemistry, for example. [4] Whether you find this argument convincing or not as a proof, Christians have no problem seeing the order and complexity of the universe as a reflection of God's omniscience.
Next Sunday, G6. God knows every actual thing to know.
[1] The current consensus in the field of quantum physics is that there is a fundamental indeterminacy to the universe on the subatomic level. The beginnings of this trajectory in physics trace back to the "uncertainty principle" of Werner Heisenberg first set out in 1927.
[2] The idea of middle knowledge can fit both with those who believe God determines all human choices and those who believe God gives humans some freedom in their choices.
[3] In a work called, Natural Theology.
[4] Richard Swinburne has made this argument in The Existence of God, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004).
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