Genesis 2:4-3:24

I'm on a path to read a chapter of Genesis a day. Here is the third day, covering Genesis 2:4-3:24. I'm trying out the CEB for a fresh look.

Genesis 2:4-3:24

• Adam and Eve: This is the Adam and Eve story, although the CEB uses "human" for Adam to highlight the fact that 'adam in Hebrew can simply mean a human (אָדָם). 
• Section start: I'm going with those translations that start the next section of Genesis at 2:4 with the phrase, "These are the generations of the skies and the land in their creating, on the day of the LORD God making land and skies" (my translation).
• LORD God: Note the shift to "LORD God" here (יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים) from just "God" in Genesis 1 (אֱלֹהִים). This general way of referring to God will continue through chapter 4.
• Second creation story: Genesis 2-3 are often thought of as a second creation story. If Genesis 1 has six days of creation, Genesis 2 happens on the "day" of creating. 
• Order: In this poetic version of the creation, the man is made first, then plants and trees, then animals, then finally the woman. We should assume that the presentation in Genesis 1 is similarly poetic in nature.
• Soul in Hebrew: Notice the way a human being is conceptualized in an Israelite worldview in 2:7. God takes dust (body). God breathes into the dust (spirit, breath, רוּחַ), and the human becomes a living soul (נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּֽה). "Soul" in Hebrew is not a detachable part of a person like in Greek but a whole living being, both body and breath. Thus in Genesis 1, the living beings in the waters are "living souls" too (e.g., 1:20).
• Tree of Life: Adam and Eve are not created immortal. It is only by eating from the Tree of Life that they might live forever. In that sense, Genesis presents them as created to die naturally.
• Tree of Knowledge: Ironically, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil does not itself bring knowledge of good and evil. Rather, by choosing to eat from it, you come to know evil because you have thereby made an evil decision in your heart.
• Helper: Eve is to be Adam's helper in 2:18. This doesn't put woman below man, since God is our helper. 
• Marriage: 2:24 is the classical text on marriage that Jesus himself quotes. Men and women pair up and start new families. Note that no shame attaches to nakedness at this point. Soon it will not be that way.
• Snake: Genesis never uses the name "Satan," nor does it call the snake Satan. The first known Jewish writing to equate the two is the Life of Adam and Eve, from the first century BC. It is a significant growth point to realize 1) that we and the NT authors often see more in the OT than the original audiences did and 2) that this is ok. 
• Death: Adam and Eve don't die on the 24 hour day they eat the fruit, but the "day" of humanity's death begins. They are thrust out of the Garden. They cannot eat from the Tree of Life, so now they do not have the extra power of the Tree to live forever. They will now eventually die.
• Original meaning: The Adam and Eve story originally expressed several features of human life. It gave the pattern of husband and wife pairing up. It expressed why snakes do not have legs and are a natural enemy of people. It expressed why women have painful childbirths and are subject to their husbands. It expressed why men have to work so hard to get the soil to yield fruit.
• Christian meaning: For Paul in the NT, the Adam and Eve story explains the origins of sin (word not used in Genesis) and death. Because of Adam's sin, the power of Sin reigns on the earth. Because of Adam's sin, the creation is subject to decay.
• Augustine's meaning: We get the idea of "the Fall" (word not used in the Bible) from Augustine in the 400s. To him, humanity became "totally depraved" after Adam's sin, with no good in us whatsoever (Paul does not say this). For him, the original sin was sexual desire and lust. The idea of a sin nature in us from the Fall comes from Augustine. For Paul, we sin because of the cosmic power of Sin over our weak flesh. Augustine thought that we sinned "in Adam" but Paul only thinks that we sin like Adam.
• Other NT readings: 1 Timothy 2:11-15 is a difficult passage, because it seems to perpetuate the subjugation of Eve even though Christ has atoned for the sin of Adam. It should be put in the "unclear" verse category. Romans 16:20 also alludes to Genesis 3:15. Later Christians would take this as a prophecy of Christ crushing Satan, although the Bible itself never interprets the verse in this way.

Previous notes:
Genesis 1:1-2:3

Next planned post--Friday with Genesis 4-5.

Read Genesis with me? (Genesis 1:1-2:3)

It was fun, if it took some time, to walk through the New Testament these last 8 weeks. Why stop? I thought I'd slow the pace down to a chapter a day, and start taking notes on the Old Testament. I thought I'd commit one book at a time.

So anyone interested in reading through Genesis over the next 50 days or so, a chapter a day? I thought I'd start with Genesis 1 today. I won't post every day but mostly when I hit the end of recognizable units.
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Genesis 1:1-2:3

• Genesis 1:1-2:3 might have been written as an introduction to the entire Pentateuch (meaning "five scrolls"). The five scrolls are of course Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
• Genesis is anonymous. It nowhere mentions its author. Later Jewish tradition would assume that Moses wrote it.
• It is debated whether Genesis 1:1-3 in Hebrew speaks of the creation of the waters or whether the chaotic waters were pictured as already there when God began to create. Here is an alternative translation.
• Probably the first thing an ancient would have noticed about Genesis 1 is the complete absence of other gods. In the Babylonian creation story, in the Greek creation story, creation is full of conflict between the gods. In Genesis 1, God speaks and it is done. That is all.
• The creation is very orderly. Creatures are created according to certain kinds. The structure of the creation mirrors the Israelite week with six days and a Sabbath. People debate whether this is a more or less literal presentation, whether the days represent ages, whether it is more or less a poetic presentation of a Levitical worldview, etc...
• The final picture of Genesis 1 seems to look something like below, which shouldn't surprise us, since God revealed himself in Scripture in the categories of those to which he was first speaking:

• The climax of creation is the creation of humanity. Christians have long seen in the "Let us make humanity" a mirror of the Trinity. Obviously no Israelite would have taken it in that way--it took centuries even for Christians to agree on the Trinity. In its historical context, the Israelites would have more likely thought of God among the "gods" of Deuteronomy 32:8 or Psalm 82. But I personally have no problem at all with us reading Genesis 1 theologically in reference to the Trinity--God may have tucked away this possible reading for New Testament times, even though it seems quite certain that no one before the Christian era read it in that way.
• The image of God in Genesis 1:27-28 in context seems to refer to the fact that man and woman are placed as rulers of the creation (governmental image), much as the state of humanity for which Psalm 8 thanks God. Later Christians would of course see in these words many other ways in which we mirror God. For example, we are like God in our ability to tell the difference between good and evil (moral image) and our ability to think (rational image). There's no evidence in Genesis 1 that it had such things in mind, but they are certainly true--good theological readings of the text.
• God's creation is entirely good. There was nothing evil to what God had made.

The target for the next post is Wednesday on Genesis 2-3.

G8. Dios ama a todo lo que ha creado.

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.
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Dios ama a todo lo que ha creado.

Esto no quiere decir que Dios ama a todo lo que hacemos, o incluso que la creación es el "mejor de los mundos posibles". [1] Una de las maneras en que Dios mostró su amor por la creación fue dándole un grado de libertad y creatividad. Él creó un mundo en el que es mejor amar a alguien libremente que amar por obligación, y por lo tanto creó un mundo en el que podamos elegir a amarlo u optar por ignorarlo.

Como parte de esta libertad, la creación y la humanidad ha pasado a menudo por el camino equivocado. Pero Dios todavía ama a su creación, incluso cuando los pecados o yerra. "Dios es amor", Juan el anciano dijo a su congregación (1 Juan 4:8). Como un padre que ama a un niño que se ha extraviado, Dios ama al mundo. En efecto, "Dios muestra su amor para con nosotros, en que siendo aún pecadores, Cristo murió por nosotros" (Romanos 5:8). "Porque tanto amó Dios al mundo que dio a su Hijo unigénito, para que todo aquel que en él cree no se pierda, mas tenga vida eterna" (Juan 3:16).

Esto no es un amor simplemente por los que ha decidido regresar a él, como el calvinista podría decir. Se trata de un amor, incluso para la persona que nunca volverá. Cuando Jesús dice a sus seguidores a amar a sus enemigos, él usa a Dios como el modelo, que "hace salir su sol sobre malos y buenos, y que hace llover sobre justos e injustos" (Mateo 5:45). Así también, "Por tanto, así como su Padre celestial es completa en mostrar el amor a todo el mundo, por lo que también tiene que ser completa" (5:48, CEB).

¿Qué es el amor? Jesús lo define muy práctica, "en todo traten ustedes a los demás tal como quieren que ellos los traten a ustedes, porque esto es la ley y los profetas" (Mateo 7:12). Pablo lo dice de esta manera: "El amor no hace mal al prójimo. Luego el amor es el cumplimiento de la ley" (Rom. 13:10). Cuando decimos que Dios es amor, queremos decir que él quiere es bueno para nosotros - quiere bueno para todos. Dios nos quiere ayudar. Si Dios nos permite experimentar el dolor, que es para un bien mayor. Si Dios permite que el mal prospere durante un tiempo, es porque el beneficio general es mayor.

Bueno, no es lo mismo que el placer. El amor de Dios por nosotros nos puede traer el dolor por un tiempo para que podamos experimentar una felicidad más duradera. Y el amor de Dios por las muchas veces pueden estar por sobre el dolor de un individuo. Su amor es sólo imprudente cuando se lleva bien, no cuando se entrega a nuestro egoísmo o trae dolor a los demás con el fin de que tengamos el placer.

La mejor imagen bíblica de la clase de "pródigo" el amor de Dios tiene es en la parábola del hijo pródigo en Lucas 15. El padre permite que su hijo se vaya. El padre permite que su hijo falle. El padre quiere que el hijo vuelva, pero reconoce que el hijo tiene que tomar esta decisión por sí mismo, pues así es como Dios ha hecho el mundo. El padre habría dejado al hijo mueren en el país lejano.

Pero el padre da la bienvenida al hijo sin que nadie tener que pagar. No tiene sentido que la justicia debe ser satisfecha. El padre tiene la autoridad para perdonar al hijo de plano, y lo hace con entusiasmo que sí. Él está buscando para el regreso del hijo. Y así la justicia de Dios se inscribe en el contexto general de su amor, en lugar de su amor ajuste en el contexto de su justicia. "la misericordia triunfa sobre el juicio" (Santiago 2:13).

Por lo tanto, no va a hacer para jugar con el significado de la palabra amor. A algunos les gustaría definir la palabra circularmente, "Puesto que Dios es la definición del amor, cualquier cosa que Dios no es amor." Este es un truco para tratar de hacer una foto sin amor de Dios encaja con la verdad de que Dios es amor.

Pero no va a funcionar. Cuando la Biblia dice que Dios es amor, se usa la palabra amor en su sentido ordinario. Por lo tanto, debe haber una explicación de los pasajes de la Biblia, donde la imagen de Dios no parece encajar con el sentido corriente de la palabra. A veces, nuestra comprensión del amor puede tener anemia. El amor a veces trae el dolor, ya que conduce a un bien mayor. Justicia no contradice el amor, a pesar de que hay una manera amorosa a ser justo, como vamos a discutir en el próximo artículo.

Pasajes o versículos donde Dios parece falto de amor pueden ser poco claros. O pueden implicar cultural o el antropomorfismo en su representación de Dios. A veces, la comprensión de Dios es imprecisa o menos completa que tarde en la Escritura. A veces la retórica puede estar involucrado para hacer un punto muy diferente. En estos casos hay que seguir el ejemplo de Cristo y de Pablo de no dejar que los detalles poco claros oscurecen el punto central de la revelación clara.

Aquí tenemos en cuenta que las primeras partes del Antiguo Testamento no distinguen entre Dios y Satanás como tentador como tentador. Trabajo y 1 Crónicas, podría decirse que ambos escritos después del exilio babilónico de Israel, introducen el papel de Satanás como tentador en situaciones en las partes anteriores del Antiguo Testamento mostrados y hacer el tentador Dios. [2] Dios tiene el control. Dios se despide de lo que hace Satanás. Dios lo permite, pero no causa directamente el mal. [3]

Esta distancia entre los actos específicos del mal y Dios, que permite, pero no ordena directamente que, nos ayuda a entender cómo Dios puede ser amoroso y sin embargo permite que el mal ocurra. No servirá de nada, simplemente decir, como algunas tradiciones, que nos merecemos cualquier mal que nos sucede, como si esto sería suficiente explicar a Dios tomando la vista gorda a la atrocidad. Un ser verdaderamente amoroso no le gusta el sufrimiento y el mal, incluso cuando el objeto de sufrimiento merece.

Por supuesto, el mayor ejemplo de amor divino es la encarnación y la expiación a Dios siempre por hacerse humano y morir en la cruz por el mundo. Vamos a argumentar que Dios pudo habernos perdonado por su propia autoridad. Podría haber milagrosamente sanado nosotros con su poder divino. Sin embargo, se ajuste mejor a la orden del mundo que creó y fue más potente para nosotros que él sufre a sí mismo como sufrimos.

Por lo tanto, Dios ha elegido para sufrir y morir en la cruz. Jesús en su humanidad escogió sufrir y morir en la cruz. Jesús murió por todos, no sólo un cierto número limitado. Jesús murió por los que me volvería a alojar a sus enemigos para siempre, no sólo para aquellos que Dios sabía que acudiría a él. En cierto sentido, Jesús no perdió voluntariamente algo de su sangre en los que Dios sabía que nunca responda.

Dios ama a todo lo que ha creado, incluso aquellos que nunca elegirá a él servirás.

Capítulo siguiente: G9. La justicia de Dios se inscribe en el contexto de su amor.

[1] Como pensó Gottfried Leibniz, un filósofo cristiano de la década de 1600,.

[2] Comparar 1 Crónicas 21:01 con 2 Samuel 24:1. Job puede imaginar una situación patriarcal, pero esto de ninguna manera significa que Job fue escrito durante la época de los patriarcas, un hecho que el hebreo de Job militar en contra. Así, en la que 1 Samuel 18:10-11 habla de un espíritu maligno que viene de Dios y conduce a Saúl para arrojar una lanza a David, deberíamos aprovechar esta lengua como muy impreciso que sólo entiende de manera imprecisa agencia divina en relación con el mal. Dios permitió que un espíritu maligno para conducir Saulo para tirar la lanza.

[3] El caso de Dios "endurecimiento de corazón", como el faraón de debe tomarse en un sentido muy general. Ciertamente Dios usa el mal para siempre. Dios a veces vuelve a dirigir la dirección del mal. Dios puede abandonar a alguien para el mal, donde su mal se amplifica o Satanás acentúa el mal. Pero Dios no hace Faraón mal en el primer lugar.

G8. God loves everything he has created.

Here is the next installment of my theology in bullet points.
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G8. God loves everything he has created.

That is not to say that God loves everything we do or even that the creation is the "best possible world." [1] One of the ways that God showed his love for the creation was by giving it a degree of freedom and creativity. He created a world where it is better to love someone freely than to love under compulsion, and thus he created a world where we might choose to love him or choose to ignore him.

As part of this freedom, the creation and humanity has often gone the wrong way. But God still loves his creation, even when it sins or errs. "God is love," John the elder told his congregation (1 John 4:8). Like a parent that loves a child who has strayed, God loves the world. Indeed, "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

This is not a love merely for those he has chosen to return to him, as the Calvinist might say. This is a love even for the person who will never return. When Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies, he uses God as the model, who "causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matt. 5:45). So also, "Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete" (5:48, CEB).

What is love? Jesus defines it very practically, "in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 7:12). Paul put it in this way, "Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law" (Rom. 13:10). When we say God is love, we mean that he wants good for us--wants good for everyone. God wants to help us. If God allows us to experience pain, it is for some greater good. If God allows the evil to prosper for a time, it is because the overall benefit is greater.

Good is not the same as pleasure. God's love for us may bring us pain for a season so that we can experience a more lasting happiness. And God's love for the many may sometimes trump the pain of an individual. His love is only reckless when it brings good, not when it indulges our selfishness or brings pain to others in order for us to have pleasure.

The best biblical picture of the kind of "prodigal" love God has is in the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. The father allows his son to leave. The father allows his son to fail. The father wants the son to come back but recognizes that the son must make this decision for himself, for that is how God has made the world. The father would have let the son die in the far away country.

But the father welcomes the son without anyone needing to pay. There is no sense that justice must be satisfied. The father has the authority to forgive the son outright, and he eagerly does so. He is looking for the son's return. And so God's justice fits within the overall context of his love, rather than his love fitting within the context of his justice. "Mercy triumphs over judgment" (Jas. 2:13).

It thus will not do to play games with the meaning of the word love. Some would like to define the word circularly, "Since God is the definition of love, anything God does is loving." This is a clever trick to try to make an unloving picture of God fit with the truth that God is love.

But it just won't work. When the Bible says God is love, it uses the word love in its ordinary sense. There must therefore be an explanation for any passages in the Bible where the picture of God does not seem to fit with the ordinary meaning of the word. At times, our understanding of love can be anemic. Love sometimes brings pain because it leads to a greater good. Justice does not contradict love, although there is a loving way to be just, as we will argue in the next article.

Passages or verses where God seems unloving may be unclear. Or they may involve cultural or anthropomorphism in their portrayal of God. At times the understanding of God is imprecise or less complete than later in Scripture. At times rhetoric may be involved to make a quite different point. In such cases we must follow the lead of Christ and Paul not to let the unclear details obscure the clear center point of revelation.

Here we remember that the earliest parts of the Old Testament do not distinguish between God as tempter and Satan as tempter. Job and 1 Chronicles, arguably both written after the Babylonian exile of Israel, introduce the role of Satan as tempter in situations where the earlier parts of the Old Testament pictured God doing the tempting. [2] God is in control. God signs off on what Satan does. God allows it but does not directly cause evil. [3]

This distance between specific acts of evil and God, who allows but does not directly command it, helps us understand how God can be loving and yet allow evil to take place. It will not do simply to say, as some traditions, that we deserve any evil that befalls us, as if this would sufficiently explain God taking a blind eye to atrocity. A truly loving being does not enjoy suffering and evil even when the object of suffering deserves it.

Of course the greatest instance of divine love is the incarnation and atonement God provided by becoming human and dying on the cross for the world. We will argue that God could have forgiven us on his own authority. He could have miraculously healed us by his divine power. Yet it better fit the order of the world he created and it was more powerful for us that he suffer himself as we suffer.

God therefore chose to suffer and die on the cross. Jesus in his humanity chose to suffer and die on the cross. Jesus died for everyone, not just a certain limited number. Jesus died for those who would stay his enemies forever, not just for those God knew would turn to him. In a sense, Jesus willingly wasted some of his blood on those whom God knew would never respond.

God loves everything he has created, even those who will never choose to serve him.

Next week: G9. God's justice fits within the context of his love.

[1] As Gottfried Leibniz, a Christian philosopher of the 1600s, thought.

[2] Compare 1 Chronicles 21:1 with 2 Samuel 24:1. Job may picture a patriarchal situation, but this in no way means that Job was written during the time of the patriarchs, a fact that the Hebrew of Job would militate against. Thus where 1 Samuel 18:10-11 speaks of an evil spirit coming from God and driving Saul to throw a spear at David, we should take this as very imprecise language that only imprecisely understands divine agency in relation to evil. God allowed an evil spirit to drive Saul to throw the spear.

[3] The case of God "hardening a heart" such as Pharoah's must be taken in a very general sense. God certainly uses evil for good. God sometimes redirects the direction of evil. God may abandon someone to evil to where their evil is amplified or Satan accentuates evil. But God does not make Pharaoh evil in the first place.

He Arose!

Lo in the grave he lay,
Jesus, my Savior,
Waiting the coming day,
Jesus, my Lord.

Up from the grave, he arose,
With a mighty triumph o'er his foes.
He arose a victor from the dark domain,
And he lives forever with his saints to reign.

He arose!
He arose!
Hallelujah!  Christ arose!

Vainly, they watch his bed,
Jesus, my Savior.
Vainly, they seal the dead,
Jesus, my Lord.

Death cannot keep its prey,
Jesus, my Savior.
He tore the bars away,
Jesus, my Lord.

Up from the grave, he arose,
With a mighty triumph o'er his foes.
He arose a victor from the dark domain,
And he lives forever with his saints to reign.

He arose!
He arose!
Hallelujah!  Christ arose!

Christ has died. Christ has risen! Christ will come again!

Grudem 16a: God's Providence 1 - Preservation

Nowhere perhaps is Wesleyan-Arminian theology more distinct from Calvinist than in the subject matter of this chapter.  I hope to review this chapter in three installments: 1) today's on Grudem's treatment of God's preservation of the universe, ) a second one on God's "cooperation" with the creation, including whether God causes evil, and 3) a third where Grudem argues against the Arminian position.

For previous summaries and evaluations of Grudem's theology, see here.

Chapter 16: God's Providence
Summary
Wayne Grudem defines God's providence in this way: "God is continually involved with all created things in such a way that he 1) keeps them existing and maintaining the properties with which he created them; 2) cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do; and 3) directs them to fulfill his purposes" (315). He treats each of these areas under a distinct heading: 1) preservation, 2) concurrence, and 3) government.

A. Preservation
Summary
God does not continuously create new atoms and molecules, but God preserves what has already been created. "God has made and continues to sustain a universe that acts in predictable ways" (317). Grudem references verses like Hebrews 1:3 and Colossians 1:17, which speak of God upholding the universe by his word or holding things together. Nehemiah 9:6 says that God preserves the heaven, the earth, and the hosts within them.

Evaluation
One of the biggest weaknesses of Grudem's use of Scripture is his failure to read verses in their full contexts. He more or less takes verses as straightforward propositions. But God spoke to the audiences of Scriptures largely in their worldviews, including their paradigms of the cosmos. This means that language such as that found in the verses Grudem references cannot be assumed to be straightforwardly literal, much less the basis for a firm perspective on a doctrine. In this case, see how few verses he is even able to produce on this subject--a reflection of the fact that we are trying to address questions that were not the questions of the biblical authors themselves.

In Nehemiah's worldview, for example, the hosts that worship God may include stars. In Nehemiah's day, they sometimes thought of stars as heavenly beings, angelic beings of a sort, while we now think of them as burning suns. Hebrews 1:3 and Colossians 1:7 may draw on Jewish traditions about the Logos, which Philo also says glues the world together (e.g., Heir 188). In such cases we are better to take biblical language as more poetic than literal. The imagery is drawn from ancient worldview.

In short, we have no way of knowing exactly how God sustains the universe. The universe would not exist apart from God and it only continues to exist by God's direct will. But does God actively go around making sure gravity always works according to Newton and Einstein's laws? Is God holding my rear end down right now so that I don't fly up and hit the ceiling? Does God specifically make sure the second law of thermodynamics is in play (or is it the result of sin?)? This is certainly the way Christians before the scientific age would have viewed it.

But there is surely nothing heretical to suggest that we may now be able to speculate more precisely than was relevant for Christians before the 1600s and the biblical writers themselves. What if God created the universe as a machine that more or less runs on its own? What if a miracle is God interrupting the normal working of the machine? The key doctrines are maintained. God is still in ultimate control. God is still active in the world according to his will.

However, contrary to Grudem's approach, it was not the sense that God is predictable in his sustaining of events in the universe that gave rise to modern science. Rather, science exploded because thinkers in the 1500s and 1600s believed God had created the universe to run on its own by certain natural laws that inhere in nature itself. Indeed, the view that everything that happens in the world is the action of God or some other spiritual being was an obstacle to the rise of science. It is no coincidence that the Arminian point of view, which argues for free will and which Grudem argues against, rose at the same time as the rise of modern science.

In the end, we have no way of knowing exactly how it works. Does God go around directly making sure electromagnetic forces follow the laws of physics? No one can disprove that he does, because natural laws would look exactly the same. Did God create the universe largely as a machine that runs according to the laws he created as part of it? The fact that the "scientific" paradigms of the biblical authors were a function of their ancient contexts does not argue against this position, since the Bible was revealed in categories its original audiences could understand.

But science has not advanced on the supposition that God flips every switch and yanks every chain. It advances on the assumption that there are regular laws to the way the universe operates and that we best understand those rules by experimentation and the collection of evidence. Grudem's approach thus more pulls against science and the discoveries whose benefits are undeniable and all around us.

A Grief Observed

At 3pm on Friday, April 10, AD30, Jesus died on a Roman cross. His head knew that he had obeyed God's will. He knew that God loved him. His head knew he would rise again.

What he felt was, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Here is a reminder for anyone who wonders where God is when they are in a time of deepest anguish. Jesus has been there too and feels their pain.

Passion Week

In a number of previous years (e.g., 2007 and 2008 especially), I walked through Passion Week with Jesus and the disciples. Here are some of those posts:

Palm Sunday
Monday: Jesus in the Temple
Tuesday Debates
Wednesday Plotting
Thursday: Getting Ready for Passover
Good Friday
Saturday: Low in the Grave


"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole." (Gal. 3:13)

Dark Matter, String Theory, and the End of Spacetime (chaps 11-14)

I suppose we all wish we could live several lives. In one of them, I would teach physics.

I finished the last few chapters of The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity and enjoyed it immensely. There's rarely a book that holds my attention, but this one pulled me on like a novel. I envy the brilliance of the characters in this story and wish I could even catch a glimpse of their thoughts.

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
Chapters 7-10: Black Holes and Gravitational Waves

Chapter 11: The Dark Universe
This chapter is dominated by the rise of the notion that the universe is full of dark matter, as well as the rise of the idea of dark energy. The key figure of the chapter is Jim Peebles of Princeton, who is still living at almost 80. He retired in 2000.

Peebles devoted most of his career to trying to figure out how the galaxies of the universe hang together. What role do galaxies play in Einstein's relativity? Basically, he explored the middle part, from the Big Bang to what they look like now. He was scooped trying to find background radiation from the Big Bang but he was a key predictor of it.

Throughout his career, he followed the dictum of his mentor, Bob Dicke--good observations trump mediocre theories. This would lead him and others to conclude that something they eventually called dark matter existed. Space should curve quickly but it is relatively smooth. Why does the universe lean Euclidean rather than non-Euclidean? The "cold dark matter" model or CDM suggested that 96% of the universe's stuff isn't seen because it doesn't interact with light.

Hard not to think of the ether that Einstein disproved... or did he?

At the same time, dark matter doesn't account for why the universe doesn't expand even more quickly. Since Einstein abandoned his constant (lambda), the idea that there might be a number in his equation to keep the universe from expanding had been considered an embarrassment. Einstein invented the possibility of a constant in his equations to keep the universe from expanding and he did it because he didn't like the idea of an expanding universe. It was a classic example of fiddling with the data because you didn't like the conclusion.

But by 1996, at a meeting meant to celebrate Peebles 60th birthday by a series of debates, the constant was brought up again as a possible explanation for why the universe wasn't flying apart. Michael Turner from the University of Chicago argued for it. Reluctantly, many cosmologists have finally accepted it.

Or have they? We are witnessing the rise of speculation about another dark entity--dark energy.

Chapter 12: The End of Spacetime
I've never had the slightest interest in string theory. It's a bizarre thing but the very idea that fundamental reality is a bunch of vibrating strings is really annoying to me. Quite irrational, I know. I side with Leslie Winkle in Big Bang Theory, an episode mentioned in this chapter. :-) As Einstein once said of pure math, I find string theory "superfluous erudition" that is pointless because it's untestable, narcissistic, and self-feeding.

I have a similar reaction to Stephen Hawking too. I admire his genius, of course. From what I can tell, he seems a lot smarter than Einstein ever was. His main contribution seems to be his finding that black holes radiate and ultimately evaporate, that they satisfy the second law of thermodynamics and have a temperature.

He's made and lost other bets. Most recently, he bet against the Higgs boson, which seems to have been discovered. Hawking would rather see confirmation of M-theory with its strings and membranes, multiverses and things popping in and out of nothing. Another book on my shelf is Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics, which seems to be part of a wave of "fed-up-ness" with string theory, a theory that has produced nothing of any tangible benefit for physics. I'm thinking it's a colossal waste of two decades.

Smolin is one of the founders of Leslie Winkle's "loop quantum gravity." The notion here is in part that space itself is quantized, that if you get down far enough, space doesn't exist on the quantum level. Now there's a more attractive theory.

Bryce DeWitt summarized the two main approaches to gravity in 1967. The covariant approach is that of the string theories. Gravity is just another force carried by a particle, dubbed the graviton. I'm not sure why I find this approach so annoying, maybe because it was a departure from classical general relativity. The canonical approach sees gravity as a function of the geometry of spacetime. It just seems so much more profound than some dinky particle or vibrating strings.

Chapter 13: A Spectacular Extrapolation
In this chapter Ferreira looks at the minority report, various alternative theories of quantum gravity that simply have not won the day or have been overlooked. The title of the chapter comes from Peebles' sense that while Einstein's general relativity has done well to describe the motion of planets within our solar system, it is quite spectacular to suggest it applies on the level of the universe.

Just as Newtonian physics broke down when things approached the speed of light or the subatomic level, so relativity breaks down on the quantum level and in the farthest reaches of space. Are we really to think that 96% of the universe is "dark matter" or is this as silly a suggestion as the ether was at the end of the 1800s? In Ferreira's words, general relativity is due for a fresh look (211). What about Dirac's work near the end of his life? Was Sakharov right to suggest that gravity emerges from the quantum nature of matter? (214) What of the discarded proposals of Milgrom and Bekenstein?

I wish I were smart enough to grasp all the nuances. I have a strong hunch is that we are in such deep waters here that a lot of the theorists don't even understand each other's proposals. Who will be the new Einstein and Hawking, the person who looks at these questions in completely fresh and different way, one that goes against all our sensibilities?

Chapter 14: Something is Going to Happen
So Ferreira hopes. Meanwhile, the US is falling behind because we aren't willing to spend the kind of money it takes to do this sort of research. We can't even get to the space station now without the help of the Russians--who by the way aren't helping us get there right now. Congress has cut funding to LISA (for measuring gravity waves). But at least the EU is still funding this sort of research.

Meanwhile, we're afraid CERN is going to cause a black hole to swallow up the earth because we saw Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.

New Testament Reading Plan (40 Day Bible)

If you ever want to read through the Bible in 40 days (technically 39), here is a reading plan, based on the 40 Day plan that Biblica arranged with the Wesleyan Church in the Spring of 2014, in the days leading up to Easter. The version used is the NIV2011:

Week 1
Day 1 (Luke 1:1-4:13)
Day 2 (Luke 4:14-9:50)
Day 3 (Luke 9:51-13:21)
Day 4 (Luke 13:22-19:27)
Day 5 (Luke 19:28-24:53)

Week 2
Day 6 (Acts 1:1-6:7)
Day 7 (Acts 6:8-12:24)
Day 8 (Acts 12:25-19:20)
Day 9 (Acts 19:21-28:31)
Day 10 (1 and 2 Thessalonians)

Week 3
Day 11 (1 Corinthians 1-7)
Day 12 (1 Corinthians 8-16)
Day 13 (2 Corinthians)
Day 14 (Galatians)
Day 15 (Romans 1-8)

Week 4
Day 16 (Romans 9-16)
Day 17 (Colossians)
Day 18 (Ephesians and Philemon)
Day 19 (Philippians and 1 Timothy)
Day 20 (Titus and 2 Timothy)

Week 5
Day 21 (Matthew 1-7)
Day 22 (Matthew 8:1-13:52)
Day 23 (Matthew 13:53-18:35)
Day 24 (Matthew 19-25)
Day 25 (Matthew 26-28)

Week 6
Day 26 (Hebrews 1:1-4:13)
Day 27 (Hebrews 4:14-13:25)
Day 28 (James)
Day 29 (Mark 1:1-8:30)
Day 30 (Mark 8:31-16:8)

Week 7
Day 31 (1 Peter)
Day 32 (2 Peter and Jude)
Day 33 (John 1-6)
Day 34 (John 7-12)
Day 35 (John 13-21)

Week 8
Day 36 (1, 2, and 3 John)
Day 37 (Revelation 1-3)
Day 38 (Revelation 4-16)
Day 39 (Revelation 17-20)

#40daybible Day 39 (Rev. 17-22)

And so we come to the final reading of our 40 day Bible experience, Revelation 17-22.

Some notes:

• The woman in Revelation 17 is a different woman than the one in Revelation 12. The woman in Revelation 12 gives birth to the Messiah and may be true Israel. But this woman is "Babylon," a code name for Rome.
• It's very hard not to conclude that the symbol of the beast is built off of the emperors of Rome. Surely the churches of Revelation would have thought of Rome when they heard of seven hills. And how easy it would be to think of Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Caligula, and Nero when Revelation mentions 5 kings who have fallen. There was a year with three emperors that probably doesn't count (69). Vespasian would then be the sixth king and Titus the seventh. The eighth would then be Domitian, traditionally the emperor when Revelation was written or at least finished.
• Revelation 18 seems to look to the fall of Rome, in the first instance, perhaps a foreshadowing of some future foe?
• Revelation 19 is once again the final battle between Christ and the forces of evil. Jesus wins.
• Revelation 20 gives us the millennium, not an exact number I suspect. Christ will reign on earth. Revelation does not picture eternity in heaven but on a new earth.
• But Satan will ultimately be judged, as will all the dead, cast into the lake of fire.
• Then there is a new heaven and a new earth in Revelation 21. A new Jerusalem descends from heaven but there will be no temple in the new city.
• Revelation 22 closes the apocalypse, the letter, and the prophecy. No one must add to or take away from the words of Revelation ("this book of prophecy").

Some words to end on:

• Then he told me, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this scroll, because the time is near. Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy." (Rev. 22:10-11)

Here endeth the reading.

#40daybible Day 38 (Rev. 4-16)

Today's reading covers the middle chapters of Revelation (4-16).

Some notes:

• With Revelation 4, the apocalyptic section of the book launches in earnest in the throne room of heaven. I've always liked the KJV of 4:11.  "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty."

Seven Seals

• From Revelation 5-8, we have a series of seven seals. I don't think that these are sequential or exact pictures, but fantastical apocalyptic images. 
• Before the seals can be opened, there must be someone worthy to break them. Only the Lamb can do so. Hard to compete with Handel on Revelation 5:12!
• A key to Revelation is that, no matter how much might be about the end of history, it is written most directly to the churches of Asia. These churches were suffering. When 6:9-11 talks of those slain for the word of God and its testimony, John surely primarily had in mind those who were being persecuted at that time.
• The 144,000 of Revelation 7 symbolizes those in Israel who will finally be saved.
• The great throng of those in white robes probably represents all of those who will be saved who are not of Israel--those of every nation, tribe, people, and language who had believed. They have come out of great tribulation (not the Great Tribulation, there's no "the" there in the Greek).
• Perhaps we should think of the end of time blurred with the situation of John's day. Nothing here speaks of another special tribulation at the end of time. Revelation surely has primarily in view the tribulation of John's day.

Seven Trumpets

• The seventh seal starts seven trumpets in chapter 8-11. With the redeemed removed from the earth, the judgment of the world now begins. Again, I don't think we should read this as sequential or exactly literal.
• The fifth trumpet starts three woes--again, not chronological, not exactly how it will happen. 
• When the seventh trumpet sounds, the Hallelujah chorus begins!

The Cosmic Battle

• We've seen the redeemed. We've seen the damned. Now in Revelation 12 we see the scene from another angle, the cosmic one. It is another symbolic presentation of the same struggle all over again.
• The dragon is Satan. I think the woman represents (true) Israel, believing Israel. She has twelve stars on her head, which sounds like Israel. The son is obviously Christ.
• The beast probably relates to the Roman Empire. The descriptions of the beast could easily be read in terms of Nero, who committed suicide in 68.  If you take the letters "Caesar Nero" and treat them as numbers, they add up to 666.
• The 144,000 probably refers again to the saved in Israel.

Seven Last Plagues

• Again, we shouldn't think of these plagues as exactly chronological. We're back to the judgment of the earth in Revelation 15.
• The seven last plagues come from seven bowls of wrath. And the final earthly battle is the battle of Armageddon. 

Favorite of the day:

• Not the prettiest verse, but I love the Battle Hymn of the Republic: "The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia" (Rev. 14:19-20).

What would an on-campus, competency based class look like?

The rumblings of competency based credit is out there and seeming to grow. Think Western Governor's University. The problem with WGU is that it's pretty much on the basis of self-motivation. I hear there's a really poor completion rate (unconfirmed).

What if you paid for a "class" or better, a certification, by the week? If you achieved the competency of the class in a week, maybe because of your prior learning or experience, you got the credit in a week. If it took 6 weeks, you paid for 6 weeks. If it took a year... But you would do it in an onsite class environment, with people around you to motivate and a professor who would approach a mentor/tutor...

Just a thought as I listen to our VPAA at IWU, Don Sprowl, talk about assessment and changing times...

#40daybible Day 37 (Revelation 1-3)

We start the final book of the New Testament with Revelation 1-3:

• Revelation mixes three genres. It is, first, a prophecy. Most of these chapters are, in addition, a letter to seven churches. 
• It is also an apocalypse. An apocalypse was a type of literature in which a heavenly being appears to a key earthly figure with a revelation about events soon to come.
• The author is John of Patmos, perhaps John the son of Zebedee. 

Church at Ephesus

• positive words about the past, admonition to return to their first love

Entrance to marketplace at Ephesus

Church at Symrna

Ruins of Smyrna, in the middle of modern Izmir

• nothing negative to say, they reject the synagogue of Satan

Church at Pergamum

Theater at Pergamum

• they have remained true, but they are tolerating some who hold to false teaching

Church at Thyatira

Ruins at Thyatira

• they're doing more than ever, but they tolerate a false prophetess or a false church

Church at Sardis

• The church is dead although there are some there alive.

Gymnasium at Sardis

Church at Philadelphia

Little left at Philadelphia

• only positive words to say about this church... God will make the synagogue of Satan acknowledge they are wrong

Church at Laodicea

• the lukewarm church

Reconstructing Laodicea, with Hierapolis in distance

Personal favorite verse:

• "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me." Rev. 3:20

#40daybible Day 36 (1-2-3 John)

We enter the final week of the 40 Day Bible experience with 1, 2, and 3 John.

Some notes:

• The author of these three writings does not identify himself but there are some thematic and stylistic features that seem to bind 1 John to both 2 and 3 John, on the one hand, and the Gospel of John, on the other.
• 2 and 3 John are both written by "the elder," so we can suppose that 1 John was also and that this "elder" is also the eyewitness source of the Gospel of John. 
• Papias, writing perhaps within 20-30 years of the Gospel of John, mentions a John the elder (see chapter 39). So it is possible that John the presbyter stands behind these four documents rather than John the son of Zebedee (see Hengel).
• 2 John is a letter written, not to a woman, but to a local church ("lady"). John warns the church about Gnostics who deny that Jesus came in the flesh. Such individuals are antichrists. 
• 2 John encourages this church to evaluate traveling teachers in relation to this understanding of Christ. It could be the first of all these writings (the order of 1-2-3 John is based on length).
• 3 John is a letter written to a Gaius. It serves as a letter of recommendation and encourages him to receive a traveling teacher named Demetrius that John is sending their way. One of the elders of the church, Diotrephes, was refusing John and his teachers. Hengel wonders if this was the first or second writing in the series of John's letters and Gospel, before the split.
• 1 John seems a little like Hebrews in that it does not have an opening greeting and, unlike Hebrews, does not even have a closing greeting. It looks, in other words, like a word of exhortation or mini-sermon.
• 1 John was written after the Gnostic split in John's community, perhaps at Ephesus.
• So the denials of these antichrists likely had to do with a denial that Jesus had come in the flesh. The early Gnostic group usually associated with this teaching was the Docetists, who believed that Jesus only seemed human. 
• The audience needed to use such criteria to "test the spirits" of prophets who might come to them.
• Perhaps some of these individuals had more economic resources than most in John's community, but they refused to help those in need. 
• This is one of the concrete referents behind John's repeated instructions for believers to love each other. God is love--God helps others. So the true children of God love one another. They do not love the world.
• Those who hate their brothers (in a concrete way) are not in the light. They're on the other team, the Devil's, in the darkness.
• Jesus showed them what love was when he laid down his life for their sins. God showed his love for us by sending his Son.
• The body and blood of Jesus is essential to the equation. Those who say they don't need his blood are deceiving themselves. In effect they are saying they do not have sin in need of cleansing by Jesus' blood.
• Sin is wrongdoing, and John implies that the law to love is the fundamental standard. John is so bold as to say that his teaching makes it clear what God's commandment is. True believers have the Spirit.
• John is writing in hope that the community will not sin in the concrete ways he has been mentioning. Indeed, once a person has Christ's seed in him or her, he should not be able to continue sinning in these ways.
• John encourages the community not to fear of their state before God.
• Pray for God to forgive those whose sin is less severe so that God may restore them. Some have sinned a "sin to death" and are severed from Christ, like those in 2:19. John does not suggest that prayer can help them.

Personal verse for the day:

• 1 John 4:7-8: "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."

G7. Dios puede hacer lo que quiera.

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 puede hacer lo que quiera. Pero él no quiere hacer ciertas cosas.

1. Dios puede hacer lo que quiera.

Dios tiene el poder para hacer lo que quiera en el universo. Dios tiene el conocimiento para hacer lo que quiera en el universo. En este artículo se analiza el hecho de que Dios tiene la libertad y la autoridad para hacer lo que quiera en el universo.

Dios tiene la autoridad para hacer lo que quiera, porque él es el rey. Él es soberano. Llamamos a la autoridad de Dios sobre el universo de su "soberanía". Nada sucede en el universo sin el permiso de Dios.

Sin embargo, los cristianos no están de acuerdo en la medida en que Dios micromanages su creación. ¿Determina Dios todo lo que ocurre al nivel de detalle, de modo que nada podía suceder de otra manera? ¿O es que da a Dios la creación de una amplia libertad a donde muchos escenarios diferentes, posiblemente, podría jugar fuera, dependiendo de nuestras decisiones o incluso las "elecciones" de la creación?

Llamamos a los casos en que Dios ordena la creación de hacer una cosa casos específicos de su "voluntad Directiva." Podemos contrastar estos casos con aquellos en los que se permite a la humanidad o la creación para hacer algo que él no ordenó específicamente - instancias de su "voluntad permisiva". En estos casos, Dios elige no elegir directamente qué pasa.

Algunas tradiciones, como la tradición calvinista, hacen hincapié en la voluntad directiva de Dios. Juan Calvino (1509-1564), por ejemplo, creía que Dios escogió quién sería salvo y que nuestra voluntad humana no jugó ningún papel en la ecuación del todo. "Elección" de Dios de nosotros era incondicional, su gracia irresistible. Si Dios nos ha elegido, sin duda llegar a tener fe, viviríamos una vida más justas que las que él no autoriza, y llegaríamos a la venida del reino.

Algunas formas de hiper-calvinismo irían aún más lejos. Ellos sugieren que Dios quiso que a Satanás caer del cielo y que Adán pecara en el Jardín del Edén, con lo que el pecado a toda la humanidad. Ellos verían a Dios no sólo como la elección de los que serán salvos, pero aquellos que serán condenados, así (doble predestinación). Este enfoque va más allá de Calvino en que Calvino creía que era posible para Adán no hubiera pecado y por lo tanto que la humanidad no podría comenzar lleno de pecado (totalmente depravado).

Los cristianos han creído comúnmente que el primer ser humano, Adán, trajo el pecado al mundo cuando pecó en el Jardín del Edén en Génesis 3 (cf. Rom. 05:12:21). En consecuencia, el estado por defecto de la humanidad desde que es tener una unidad inevitable hacer las cosas mal, una "tendencia a pecar", una "naturaleza de pecado." Para Calvino, Dios no escogió a la mayoría de la humanidad para ser condenados. Fueron condenados ya por causa de Adán (single predestinación). [1]

Otras tradiciones cristianas, como la tradición wesleyana arminiana a la que pertenezco, creen que Dios da poder a la humanidad a tener un mayor grado de libertad en relación con nuestro destino eterno. Si bien nuestro estado por defecto del pecado puede ser el mismo que Calvino creía (totalmente depravado), creemos que Dios en su gracia nos da el poder para ser libre capaz de indicar un deseo de más gracia. Si continuamos en esta trayectoria, Dios dará poder de nuestra voluntad de tener fe, entonces potenciamos que vivamos rectamente, y finalmente darnos poder para entrar en el reino venidero.

Como parte de esta última tradición, creo que Dios nos ha dado la libertad significativa a la creación. Dios entra milagrosamente el continuo espacio tiempo y le da a cada persona en el mundo la oportunidad de avanzar hacia él, una oferta de la gracia que llamamos "gracia preveniente" de Dios, un poder que viene a nosotros antes de que, posiblemente, le podríamos pedir. En efecto, Dios se preocupa por la creación en general sin la creación siempre pidiendo, una gracia que podríamos llamar la "gracia común" de Dios hacia la creación. [2]

En general, el cuidado de Dios para la creación se llama su "providencia". Los cristianos han creído por mucho tiempo que Dios sostiene la creación, de manera que la creación no podría seguir existiendo sin la intervención activa de Dios. Es, sin duda, es difícil saber cómo esta providencia sostenimiento podría funcionar exactamente. Escritura no se refiere realmente a las preguntas planteadas por el surgimiento de una visión científica del mundo en los años 1500 y 1600. ¿Dios creó el universo como una máquina autónoma que corre por las leyes naturales que ha puesto en él, o no Dios dirija activamente el movimiento de cada quark y de Higgs? Estas son preguntas que la Escritura y los primeros padres no piden y por lo tanto no respondió claramente.

Lo que podemos decir es que el universo existe por la voluntad de Dios. No existiría sin la voluntad de Dios. Nada sucede en el universo sin la voluntad de Dios - ya sea por mandato directo o con su permiso. Yo personalmente prefiero creer que Dios creó el universo con un cierto grado de libertad. Sin duda, es distinto de él - su existencia es distinta de su existencia. Parece que seguir las leyes naturales de una manera que no se entendía antes de la era moderna. Y para distinguir su "voluntad" de la voluntad de Dios nos da una explicación más satisfactoria para el sufrimiento en el mundo, como algo más a Dios permite que los comandos directamente. Este enfoque encaja de forma natural dentro de la tradición wesleyana arminiana.

Lo que estamos diciendo, pues, que hay cosas que suceden en el universo como consecuencia de la Directiva la voluntad de Dios, su dominio específico. Otras cosas que suceden en el universo debido a la voluntad permisiva de Dios. Dios permite que sucedan o que él no interviene para impedir que suceda. En algunos casos, es posible que nosotros y la creación dará la libertad para tomar decisiones en donde era posible más de un resultado.

A veces se objeta que Dios no iba a estar a cargo o control si dejaba que un humano le desobedecen. Es decir, Dios no sería soberano si él dio a la humanidad o de libre creación.

Pero esto es una comprensión más bien anémico de la soberanía y un sentido aún más preocupante de la autoridad. No se puede elegir libremente a Dios para que alguien haga un mal a sí mismos elección? Lo que los padres con un vencimiento no quieren que sus hijos desarrollen la capacidad de tomar las decisiones correctas por sí mismos? ¿Qué es mejor, para su cónyuge amarte libremente porque eligen hacerlo o para que sean obligados a estar con vosotros?

No, esto es una comprensión sorprendentemente inmaduros de la autoridad. Esta es la proyección de un padre que no puede manejar la desobediencia a causa de su propia inseguridad. Se trata de alguien cuyo sentido de control se ve amenazada por alguien que no quiere obedecer servilmente. Esta es una imagen de un dios que es débil y amenazada por su creación.

Si Dios está en control, entonces él es libre de dar la libertad a la creación. Si Dios es Dios, que no se ve amenazada por nuestras elecciones. Dios no se ve amenazada cuando desobedecemos más de lo que estoy amenazado por una bala en el patio de mi vecino.

2. Dios puede hacer lo que quiera, pero él no quiere hacer cualquier cosa.

La voluntad de Dios se revela en la Escritura. Su actitud hacia la creación es tan predecible que se puede decir que Dios tiene una cierta "naturaleza" que lo lleva a actuar de manera consistente y sin excepción de una cierta manera. Por ejemplo, sabemos que Dios nunca actuar de una manera que no es amoroso. Por lo tanto, podemos decir que "Dios es amor", o que la naturaleza de Dios es amor. Lo que realmente estamos diciendo es que Dios nunca actuará de una manera carente de amor hacia la creación. Todo lo que Dios hace encaja con una actitud de amor hacia nosotros.

Hay una vieja cuestión filosófica de Platón de que es anterior a la del Nuevo Testamento. Se pregunta, en efecto, "¿Es bueno bueno porque Dios lo dice, o qué dice Dios las cosas son buenas porque son buenos?" [3]

Lo que la pregunta, en efecto, está pidiendo es si Dios está sujeto a las normas que existen por encima de él o no Dios mismo crea las normas? ¿Define Dios lo que es bueno? ¿O es una buena norma con la que pudiéramos medir el mismo Dios?

El ejemplo clásico de la Escritura es que Dios pide a Abraham que sacrificara a Isaac en Génesis 22. Parece una mala cosa que preguntar. ¿Y si tuviera que probar mi hijo pidiéndole que abofetear a su hermana, sólo para ver si me va a obedecer, pero con la intención de detenerlo si lo hace? [4] El pensador cristiano Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) tomó esta historia como un ejemplo de cómo tenemos que renunciar a nuestra razón completamente a Dios y dar un salto de fe ciega en su testamento. [5]

Así que debemos decir que si Dios te dice que asesinar a alguien a sangre fría, que se convierte en una buena cosa que hacer? ¿Existen reglas que Dios tiene que seguir? En términos generales, la idea de que Dios define las reglas se llama "voluntarismo" o "teoría del mandato divino." Es la idea de que el bien es bueno porque Dios lo dice. ¿Qué es el amor? En este enfoque podría ser todo lo que Dios hace, simplemente porque lo hace, si parece amoroso por nuestros definiciones o no.

Usted puede ver que este enfoque parece una burla de las palabras como el bien y el amor. Ellos pueden llegar a significar cualquier cosa.

Sin embargo, al mismo tiempo, hay algo acerca de ungodlike diciendo que hay reglas que Dios tiene que seguir. Incluso a decir: "Dios está siguiendo sólo libremente su propia naturaleza" parece decir que Dios no decidió quién es y no está realmente en control de sí mismo. Por lo menos parece que lo único que decimos que Dios es un tipo grande, sólo una versión más grande de nosotros, alguien que realmente no es completamente libre. Lo hace todo más que universal.

El modelo que hemos seguido de la creación de la nada sugiere otra solución. Podemos pensar en Dios como creador de este universo como un acto de voluntad en el que Dios hizo el universo para ser de cierta manera. Dentro de este universo, Dios se comporta consistentemente, y Dios se ha revelado en las Escrituras exactamente lo que su "naturaleza" se encuentra dentro de este universo. Podemos, para todos los intentos y propósitos, hablar de Dios que tiene una cierta naturaleza con ciertos "atributos" o características. No tenemos ningún punto de referencia para decir cómo es Dios en otros universos o "fuera" de este universo. Tal vez Dios ha, de toda la eternidad pasada, elegido para ser así.

Lo bueno es bueno porque Dios lo dice en este universo. Esto preserva la libertad de Dios, sin sugerir que Dios jamás actuar de una manera que contradice su naturaleza revelada. Pero al mismo tiempo, nos impide ver a Dios más o menos como una más grande que la vida del individuo con una personalidad que en última instancia no determinó y sobre las que no está realmente en control. Este enfoque conviene a Dios antes que a él disminuyendo a algo más parecido a un dios.

El enfoque contrario parece poner a Dios en el interior de un espacio que ya existía, con los límites que él no estableció. De acuerdo con un débil sentido de creación de la nada, parece definitiva para desenfocar a Dios con el reino de lo creado. Esto parece encajar un dios que está en la parte superior de este universo en lugar de un Dios que ha creado el vacío en que el universo existe.

3. Así que Dios puede hacer lo que quiera. Él no quiere actuar de una manera que contradice su naturaleza revelada. Por ejemplo, que no quiere actuar de una manera que no es amoroso hacia la creación.

Dios escogió libremente para crear un universo con ciertas verdades necesarias. Él creó un universo en el que 2 + 2 = 4 en la base 10. Él creó un universo con una ley de la no contradicción. Él creó reglas de la lógica que se aplican en todas partes en este universo sin excepción. Pero es de suponer que él es libre de crear otro universo en el que 2 + 2 = 6 o algo de lógica que no podemos imaginar.

Dios también tiene una voluntad directiva. Hay casos en que Dios ordena el universo para hacer ciertas cosas, en los que su voluntad es específica. Cuando Dios manda a la creación directa de esta manera, su voluntad es irresistible. Su palabra sin falta siempre logra lo que se propone hacer (Isaías 55:11).

En otros casos, Dios no tiene un comando específico. Él nos dejó elegir cualquier gelatina que queremos. Tal vez le permitirá la creación escupió de la nada un par de electrones y positrones sin previo aviso. En tales casos se está permitiendo que el universo por su permiso para hacer lo que quiere.

En algunos casos, Dios colabora con nosotros. Tal vez en algunos casos, se espera a ver si vamos a orar por algo. Tal vez si recibimos o no en estos casos depende enteramente de si se lo pedimos. En otras ocasiones, puede dejarnos luchamos, ayudarnos a crecer para alcanzar la madurez, escuchando, lo que sugiere, a trabajar con nosotros hacia la salvación.

Dios no obliga a nadie para que le sirvan. A veces Dios nos puede abandonar en una espiral fuera de control. Él incluso nos alejamos de él, si eso es realmente lo que elegimos hacer. Y a veces Dios permite el sufrimiento que él obviamente podría haber evitado. Tenemos que tener fe en estos casos que la naturaleza de Dios es todavía el amor y que no hay un panorama más amplio que no estamos en condiciones de entender.

Dios puede hacer lo que quiera, pero él no quiere hacer ciertas cosas.

Capítulo siguiente: G8. Dios ama a todo lo que ha creado.

[1] La teología de Calvino se encuentra más fácilmente en sus Institutos de la Religión Cristiana.

[2] La idea de preveniente (o "impedir") La gracia viene de John Wesley (1703-1791). Una buena visión general del pensamiento de Wesley sobre la salvación que se encuentra en su sermón, "El Camino Bíblico de salvación". La idea de la gracia común proviene de Calvin.

[3] En Euthyprho de Platón.

[4] Es interesante señalar que la tradición posterior judío sugirió que se trataba de otro ejemplo de Dios dejando que Satanás alguien prueba, como en Job 1 (compárese también 1 Cron. 21:01 con 2 Sam. 24:1). Para la referencia, véase Jubileos 17).

[5] En Temor y temblor.

G7. God can do whatever he wants.

The Sunday theology posts continue. You can see a map to the whole concept here.
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God can do whatever he wants. But he doesn't want to do certain things.

1. God can do whatever he wants.

God has the power to do anything he wants in the universe. God has the knowledge to do anything he wants in the universe. In this article, we explore the fact that God has the freedom and authority to do anything he wants in the universe.

God has the authority to do anything he wants because he is king. He is sovereign. We call God's authority over the universe his "sovereignty." Nothing happens in the universe without God's permission.

However, Christians disagree on the extent to which God micromanages his creation. Does God determine everything that happens down to the level of detail, such that nothing could possibly happen any other way? Or does God give the creation extensive freedom to where many different scenarios might possibly play out, depending on our choices or even the "choices" of the creation?

We call those instances where God commands the creation to do a specific thing instances of his "directive will." We can contrast such instances with those where he allows humanity or the creation to do something he did not specifically command--instances of his "permissive will." In such cases, God chooses not to choose directly what happens.

Some traditions, like the Calvinist tradition, emphasize the directive will of God. John Calvin (1509-64), for example, believed that God chose who would be saved and that our human will played no role in the equation at all. God's "election" of us was unconditional, his grace irresistible. If God chose us, we would certainly come to have faith, would live more righteous lives than those he did not empower, and would make it to the coming kingdom.

Some forms of hyper-Calvinism would go even further. They would suggest that God willed that Satan fall from heaven and that Adam would sin in the Garden of Eden, bringing sin onto all humanity. They would see God not only as electing those who will be saved but those who will be damned as well (double predestination). This approach goes beyond Calvin in that Calvin believed it was possible for Adam not to have sinned and thus that humanity would not start off full of sin (totally depraved).

Christians have commonly believed that the first human, Adam, brought sin into the world when he sinned in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 (cf. Rom. 5:12:21). Accordingly, the default state of humanity ever since is to have an inevitable drive to do the wrong thing, a "bent to sinning," a "sin nature." For Calvin, God did not chose the majority of humanity to be damned. They were damned already because of Adam (single predestination). [1]

Other Christian traditions, such as the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition to which I belong, believe that God empowers humanity to have a greater degree of freedom in relation to our eternal destiny. While our default state of sinfulness may be the same as Calvin thought (totally depraved), we believe that God graciously empowers us to freely be able to indicate a desire for more grace. If we continue on this trajectory, God will empower our wills to have faith, then empower us to live righteously, and finally empower us to enter the coming kingdom.

As a part of this latter tradition, I believe that God has given significant freedom to the creation. God miraculously enters the time space continuum and gives every person in the world the opportunity to move toward him, a gracious offer we call God's "prevenient grace," a power that comes to us before we could possibly seek him. Indeed, God cares for the creation in general without the creation ever asking, a grace we might call God's "common grace" toward the creation. [2]

In general, God's care for the creation is called his "providence." Christians have long believed that God sustains the creation, such that the creation could not continue to exist without God's active intervention. It is, admittedly, difficult to know how this sustaining providence might work exactly. Scripture does not really address the questions raised by the rise of a scientific worldview in the 1500s and 1600s. Did God create the universe as a self-standing machine that runs by natural laws he has put into it, or does God actively direct the movement of every quark and boson? These are questions that Scripture and the early fathers did not ask and thus did not clearly answer.

What we can say is that the universe exists by God's will. It would not exist without God's will. Nothing happens in the universe without God's will--either by direct command or with his permission. I personally prefer to believe that God created the universe with some degree of freedom. It is certainly distinct from him--it's existence is distinct from his existence. It seems to follow natural laws in a way that was not understood before the modern era. And to distinguish its "will" from God's will provides us with a more satisfactory explanation for suffering in the world, as something God more allows than directly commands. This approach fits naturally within the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition.

What we are thus saying is that some things happen in the universe as a consequence of God's directive will, his specific command. Other things happen in the universe because of God's permissive will. God allows them to happen or he does not intervene to stop them from happening. In some cases, he may give us and the creation the freedom to make choices where more than one outcome was possible.

It is sometimes objected that God would not be in charge or control if he let a human disobey him. That is to say, God would not be sovereign if he gave humanity or the creation freedom.

But this is a rather anemic understanding of sovereignty and a still more troubling sense of authority. Cannot God freely choose to let someone make a bad choice themselves? What parents with any maturity do not want their children to develop the ability to make the right choices on their own? Which is better, for your spouse to love you freely because they choose to do so or for them to be constrained to be with you?

No, this is an astoundingly immature understanding of authority. This is the projection of a parent who cannot handle disobedience because of his or her own insecurity. This is someone whose sense of control is threatened by someone who will not slavishly obey. This is a picture of a god who is weak and threatened by his creation.

If God is in control, then he is free to give freedom to the creation. If God is God, he is not threatened by our choices. God is not threatened when we disobey any more than I am threatened by a slug in my neighbor's yard.

2. God can do whatever he wants, but he doesn't want to do just anything.

God's will is revealed in Scripture. His attitude toward the creation is so predictable that we can say that God has a certain "nature" that leads him to act consistently and without exception in a certain way. For example, we know that God will never act in a way that is unloving. We can thus say that "God is love" or that God's nature is loving. What we are really saying is that God will never act in an unloving way toward the creation. Everything God does fits with an attitude of love toward us.

There is an old philosophical question in Plato that pre-dates the New Testament. It asks, in effect, "Is good good because God says so, or does God say things are good because they are good?" [3]

What the question in effect is asking is whether God is subject to standards that exist above him or does God himself create the standards? Does God define what is good? Or is good a standard against which we could measure God himself?

The classic example from Scripture is when God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22. It seems like a wicked thing to ask. What if I were to test my son by asking him to slap his sister, just to see if he will obey me but intending to stop him if he does? [4] The Christian thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) took this story as an example of how we have to surrender our reason completely to God and take a blind leap of faith into his will. [5]

So should we say that if God tells you to murder someone in cold blood, that becomes a good thing to do? Are there rules that God has to follow?  Broadly speaking, the notion that God defines the rules is called "voluntarism" or "divine command theory." It is the idea that good is good because God says so. What is love? In this approach it could be whatever God does, simply because he does it, whether it seems loving by our definitions or not.

You can see that this approach seems to make a mockery of words like good and love. They can come to mean anything.

Yet, at the same time, there is something ungodlike about saying that there are rules God has to follow. Even to say, "God is just freely following his own nature" seems to say that God did not decide who he is and is not really in control of himself. It at least looks like we are simply saying God is a big Guy, just a bigger version of us, someone who is really not completely free. It makes him particular rather than universal.

The model we have been following of creation out of nothing suggests another solution. We can think of God creating this universe as an act of will in which God made this universe to be a certain way. Within this universe, God behaves consistently, and God has revealed in Scripture exactly what his "nature" is within this universe. We can, for all intents and purposes, speak of God having a certain nature with certain "attributes" or characteristics. We have no point of reference to say what God is like in other universes or "outside" this universe. Perhaps God has, from all eternity past, chosen to be this way.

Good is good because God says so in this universe. This preserves the freedom of God without suggesting that God will ever act in a way that contradicts his revealed nature. But at the same time, it keeps us from seeing God more or less as a larger than life Guy with a personality he ultimately did not determine and over which he is not really in control. This approach befits GOD rather than diminishing him to something more like a god.

The opposite approach seems to put God inside a space that already existed, with limits he did not establish. In keeping with a weak sense of creation out of nothing, it seems ultimately to blur God with the created realm. It seems to fit a god who is at the top of this universe rather than a God who created the very emptiness in which the universe exists.

3. So God can do whatever he wants. He does not want to act in a way that contradicts his revealed nature. For example, he does not want to act in a way that is unloving toward the creation.

God freely chose to create a universe with certain necessary truths. He created a universe where 2 + 2 = 4 in base 10. He created a universe with a law of non-contradiction. He created rules of logic that apply everywhere in this universe without exception. But presumably he is free to create another universe where 2 + 2 = 6 or some logic we cannot possibly imagine.

God also has a directive will. There are instances where God commands the universe to do certain things, where his will is specific. When God commands the creation directly in this way, his will is irresistible. His word without fail always accomplishes what it sets out to do (Isa. 55:11).

In other instances, God has no specific command. He will let us choose whatever jello we want. Perhaps he will let the creation spit out of nothing an electron and positron pair without warning. In such instances he is allowing the universe by his permission to do whatever it wills.

In some cases, God collaborates with us. Perhaps in some cases, he waits to see if we will pray for something. Perhaps whether we receive or not in such cases is entirely dependent on whether we ask. At other times, he may let us wrestle, helping us grow to reach maturity, listening, suggesting, working with us toward salvation.

God does not force anyone to serve him. At times God may abandon us to spiral out of control. He will even let us walk away from him, if that is truly what we choose to do. And God sometimes allows suffering that he could obviously have prevented. We have to have faith in such instances that God's nature is still love and that there is a bigger picture that we are not in a position to understand.

God can do anything he wants, but he doesn't want to do certain things.

Next Sunday, G4. God is present everywhere in the universe.

[1] Calvin's theology is most easily found in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.

[2] The idea of prevenient (or "preventing") grace comes from John Wesley (1703-91). A good overview of Wesley's thinking on salvation found in his sermon, "The Scripture Way of Salvation." The idea of common grace comes from Calvin.

[3] In Plato's Euthyprho.

[4] Interestingly, later Jewish tradition suggested that this was another example of God letting Satan test someone, as in Job 1 (compare also 1 Chron. 21:1 with 2 Sam. 24:1). For the reference, see Jubilees 17).

[5] In Fear and Trembling.