Philetus,
First of all, I want to say this is one of the most grace-filled posts I have read on this site, and I thank you for submitting yourself to the grace of God, that grace might be what unites us in peace, and that it might call us to uplift and edify one another through Christ. Though we may disagree with one another on certain points, I find that the common ground we share in Christ still unites us. So regardless of our disagreements, peace brother, and may the Lord help us to reconcile our differences.
But now I will respond to what you have written, and I will do it joyfully.
Philetus said:
From what perspective then do you suggest creatures can know anything about God?
For this question, I only look to the scriptures. And though my stance on these verses that are scattered throughout the scriptures is not the final word on them, I still think we ought to submit to these words. Repeatedly in the scriptures it is stated that "No one knows God," or that "no one has ever seen God." So as soon as we are put in our limited point of view, according to the scriptures, we have already committed idolatry in trying to understand God from that point of view. The question I have is simple. Does the Muslim or the Budhist who views God from their own human perspective know God? They have received from a source that claims to be divine, but still, they are idolators. An even more pertinent question would be, is the God that the Jews have turned to in their rejection of Christ truly God, or is their God an idol as well? Or how about this one: is the God of the Christians who go to the New World and conquor the native peoples in the name of their God truly God, or have they turned to an idol?
You see, Philetus, my objections are not with the claims that God has been revealed to us. My objections are with those who would claim that the revelation to them gives them the right to use that revelation however they please, or makes right they interpretations of that revelation of God. The Montonists claimed to follow Christ, but though they appeal to this true revelation of God, their use of it is far from true.
Philetus said:
The Open View is an honest reconsideration of the self-revelation God has made known to us, what is said of God in scripture (all that is said of God in scripture) and what is caused or allowed to be seen in the person of Jesus as opposed to starting with Augustine’s exaggerated view of immutability. The insistence that God is unaffected by creation as a notion that he obviously brought to the table from his earlier association with Greek Philosophy and (inspite of his many good writings) is not a week argument to be dismissed lightly. Augustine has become so idolized in much of the church that even to question his starting point is seen as paramount to heresy. I commend THEOLOGYONLINE for allowing this discussion. It seems to be so threatening to many that the topic has been banned on some ‘Christian Forms’.
Despite what you may think, my views do not start with Augustine. Now I might come to a different conclusion about Augustine than you would, but I do not start with him. And I in no way "saintify" him in the same way that the Roman Catholic Church has done. He is a member of the saints as he gathers with his brothers and sisters in Christ; he is not a saint in the singular.
I don't start with the immutible God. I start with the transcendant God, i.e. the God who is other, the God who remains mysterious. This is not some remnant of paganism brought over to Christianity by Augustine, it is simply the reality of the revelation. If God is truly to be immanent, God first must be transcendant. If God truly is to be close to us, God must first be other than us. For the God who is in need of us, is a God who is not sustained in the love of the Father, Son and Spirit, and certainly is not a God who can draw us into Godself to share in his glory and love. This is not to make God impersonal, it is to define personhood in God; it is not to make God non-relational, it is to place relationship within God. This is why Paul can announce to the Athenians, using the very words of one of their poets, "In God we live and move and have our being."
Thus God is not the one who needs to be made whole through relationship. God
is relationship and personhood, and that is all sustained in the love held between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (which was from age to age, and from before the ages of the earth). God doesn't call us to a new relationship; God invites us into the very relationship that God already shares within Godself. It is not a selfish thing to do. It is a wonderous gift that God gives to us (asking for nothing in return).
So relationship must be held in God if it is to be true relationship, for anything that is grounded in our own will and selves is nothing more than a corruption of that true relationship held in God. Our relationships are driven by mutual desires for fulfillment. God's relationship is an invitation to share in the love that is already held in God. That is why in the garden God gives us the same invitation, to have our lives sustained in him (to eat from the tree of life). And that is also why he calls us away from the false relation that would take right into our own hands and make us "like gods knowing good and evil (or setting what is right in our own eyes)" (to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil). It is not to remove God's care for the Creation to say that God is sustained in God's self, for the God who has invited us to share in God is also the God who has already poured out himself into the Creation from the very beginning. The God who was other than us has poured shown fourth in the Creation to invite us to share in God. The Spirit and the Word were at work from the very beginning, and continue their work to its culmination, to its
telos.
Philetus said:
Is there danger in personalizing God? Yes! It is risky for both God and us.
There is a danger in personalizing God, but it is not a risk for God. For God is always sustained in the very relationship of the Trinity. But for us in our attempts to personalize God in the way we understand relationship (i.e. mutual fulfillment), it is dangerous because we make God into an idol. As soon as we understand relationship as we encounter it in our distorted persons, and try to fit God into that relationship, we have committed idolatry, and have submitted ourselves to a god that remains within us. This is not a selfless God, but is a god who only cares about the Creation because it has something to offer him, i.e. personal fulfillment. If we didn't have anything to offer God, God wouldn't care about us.
So in your attempts to make a God whose fate is tied to ours, you have in fact done the very opposite of what you set out to do. Rather than a God who gives freely of himself for our benefit, you have fashioned a god who is no better than us, who has become like us. This is where we need to repent of our god, that we might be freed from our understanding of God and liberated in that our life (I prefer life over the word fate) is now tied to the life of God (which is unending life, indeed!!).
Philetus said:
You seem to fail to recognize that scripture is full of God’s terms for personal relationships.
I am not unaware of this. That is why I continue to defer to the very revelation of Godself to us when I speak of God, for to do anything else would be idolatrous. But what I want to stress is that the word of God does not bind God, but God is the very word that God speaks. Kings give commands that can come back on them out of control. The gods of the Greeks can pronounce a judgment on the earth that turns on them to threaten even them. So when the flood occurs in the Greek stories of it, the gods have to run and hide from the very flood they have produced. God's word doesn't become a burden on God, but God's word goes out and produces what God has set out to do. For the word is not sustained by the obedience of the Creation (although it calls us to obedience), but God in Godself will bring it about. God's word on his relationship to us is not a means for us to control God. And as soon as we think that we can twist the words of God for our benefit (that God can be made vulnerable through God's own words) than we become our own destruction. Christ may seem to us a vulnerable God on the cross, but the scriptures make it very clear that Christ on the cross is the very power of God, the God as a king who has come unto his throne!
Philetus said:
If the bible is not the revelation of God’s attempt at relating to humanity, what is it?
It is not an attempt. It is the successful relationship of God with humanity. The very fact that we have the scriptures even now is testimony to the fact that God has succeeded.
Philetus said:
If Jesus was doing anything other than making the heart, mind and will of God known in order to relate, what was he doing?
It is not God's attempt to relate to us as we relate to one another (as maybe a contingent being would relate to a contingent being). God relates to us a non-contingent being to a contingent being. And that means God invites us to be sustained in him; God doesn't long to be sustained by us. God is not fulfilled by us. We have nothing to offer him. He is sustained in the love of the Trinity. But the mystery of God is God's grace that would drive God to invite the Creation to share in the love of God.
Philetus said:
If God was not in Christ reconciling the world unto himself for the purpose of relationship, what is the purpose of reconciliation?
He is! And the purpose of the reconciliation that God gives us is the New Creation. God sets aside what we were in sin and makes us into who we ought to be.
Philetus said:
I see God in Christ as redeeming and refashioning me in His image for the purpose of relationship that involves me; something a Closed view either does not allow for or frustrates beyond comprehension. The danger of misrepresenting God is not new.
God redeems and refashions us so that we might truly share in the relationship that is God, not to form a new one. Worship for God is not some egotistical "give me props" session that God lords over the Creation. Worship is the invitation by God for the Creation to share in God's rest.
Philetus said:
I would argue that rather than “define your relationship with God” ... just have one. I think you will find that God is far more loving, redemptive and even personable than any theology can imagine let alone define.
I'm sorry, Philetus, but to just have a relationship with God will not do. A Muslim cannot just have a relationship with God, nor can a Budhist. Oh, they can be related to God despite their idolatry, because no matter how much we might think our lives are sustained within ourselves, we are still sustained in God (his rain falls on both the righteous and unrighteous). But in order to share in the eternal sustanance of God that is eternal life, we must bring ourselves low, and humbly submit to the revelation that God has shown forth in Christ. God is not a personable God. But in God a person can be made a true person.
Philetus said:
As for the bad guys playing catch with live babies on bayonets, (an evil you used to illustrate your point that makes me shudder) I cannot idolize God out of that one. I refuse to make God responsible for such evil. ...He has the last word and he is faithful.
And that we can both agree on, and I would say is true power. For a God that must respond to evil on its own terms is no God at all.
Philetus said:
So where do we begin to understand God? We must start with the God on the cross in creation relating to God’s creatures. Why the cross? After all , it is mere foolishness to the Greeks But, the cross is the wisdom of God for those being saved from using bayonets on babies.
I agree with you, but I'm confused as to why you would change the words of the scriptures. The cross is not the wisdom of God for salvation (though it becomes wisdom as it turns into foolishness even the wisest wisdom of men). But the cross with regards to salvation is the very
power of God (
dunomei). God is not a passive in the cross, but is the most active that God can be. The cross is power, not weakness. For in the cross God defeats the very authority of sin. Those who submitted to the framework of the world of sin, where one must overcome one's enemies by force, those are the very people who have submitted themselves to foolishness, for the only true power is from God, so that even God's weakness (from our perspective) is stronger than the strongest of men's strengths. God isn't passive in our salvation (waiting for us simply to respond) but God is active, making us look quite like the passive ones in the relationship.
Philetus said:
Though it does not always save the victims from the acts of evil men, it has the power to save and make new the men capable of such acts. The cross is God’s terms. The cross is the power behind “Go and sin no more.”
Now you got it. But know that even the victims are given power in the cross, for God will not ignore their cries. God does raise the dead!!!
Philetus said:
The cross does not define God. The cross reveals the true nature of God. It defines us! It does not even defend God, as the problem of evil often assumes. The cross holds no defense only offence. The cross exposes us and evil for who’s it is and reveals God as the greatest risk taker for loves sake.
Amen, except the "risk taker" part, for the cross is not a risk, but is the power of God at its fullness. God doesn't need to respond to evil in kind, but can overcome evil through good. And now in the cross we see that we are called to do the same. The only risk that is exposed is to those who would believe that they can sustain their lives in themselves, who would continue to live under the dominion of sin and reject the invitation of their Creator.
Philetus said:
I too, am horrified at a God who allows evil ... horrified at God for allowing evil. And my horror is intensified when I come to the cross where God suffers as I do, but more importantly suffers because of me and still desires to relate to me. At the cross, I am horrified because I see evil for what it is ... my own. Not God’s. My horror turns to brokenness not because God could have stopped evil, but precisely because he did not. He who said do not repay evil for evil confronts evil on his own terms and in keeping with his own rules at great expense and risk in order to relate to me ... on his terms!
God goes to the cross to reveal himself to the world, Yes. But this is not a risk on God's part, for God is not threatened by God's own Creation. God Created us. We can't threaten God. We might think that we can create things that threaten us, but that is only because we don't recognize that our creations are manipulations of another, not creations unto themselves. But God is the one true Creator, and so is not threatened by the Creation. But the cross does another thing. At the cross God not only reveals God's self in fullness, but also reveals humanity in the image of God. We are not the true image of God, for we have exchanged that image for a lie. We allowed ourselves to be distorted to become like gods. But in Christ, God comes near to us to reveal Godself, and through that revelation reveals who we are called to be as humanity created in the image of God. In Christ we are truly a new creation, behold old things have passed and all has become new!!
That really changes men and that changes everything.
Philetus said:
How can you have it both ways? Either few are willing to accept God’s call or no one is able to resist it.
God remains God. And the relationship of God is sustained in the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit). But we are given an invitation to enter into what is God, to be found in God, and live in God's rest, as
true worshipers of our God. It is not forced on us, but we do not remain if we resist.
God's relationship to the world is irresistible not in our obedience or disobedience to God. But it is irresistible because God's relationship will remain always. The Trinity is eternal, from before the ages, through all ages, and into the ages to come. And we who chose to participate in that, who receive God's grace, will be sustained in eternal life. While those who "resist" God will come to nothing (ergo resulting in a complete lack of resistance).
Peace,
Michael