The Bible Tunes Our Ears to the Voice of Jesus

In the description given by himself in John 10:27, Jesus said that a believer in him is one who receives impressions communicated from him and responds to them. So, according to Christ, Christians are those who experience a sensible, interactive companionship with Christ. As the familiar song put it, “He walks with me and he talks with me...” I have suggested some of the ways that communication from Christ is impressed upon us, ways that are not for the elite but for any of us.

There are concerning issues in attempting to apply this to ourselves, however. The individual's subjectivity and credulity can lead to hearing the voice in what isn't the voice. So we need a tool that can tune our "ears" to the voice of the shepherd so we can distinguish that from what isn't the shepherd. We need not only ears that hear, but ears that hear discerningly. The good news is that we have such a tool in the Bible. 

Scripture puts lines on the road, curbs on the highway. It keeps us steering on the course directed by the Shepherd. For the ear that’s been tuned by the Word of God, it becomes a simple task to recognize whether or not an impression is within the lines or outside them, from God or from the flesh, from the Shepherd or from the devil. Jesus quickly dispatched the noise of the devil by using the Word of God and that same Word (plus the New Testament for us) can help us do the same thing.

The Word is a light unto our feet, it shines upon the very place our feet are to fall. It primes our expectancy for the kind of things the voice will communicate so we can readily perceive them when they come. Ears tuned by the Word of God quickly ascertain what steps the voice of the shepherd is impressing us to make and enables us to make them. Kinda like the old, old song: “footprints of Jesus that make the pathway glow.”

Of course, we must make the effort to get the Word into us if it is to tune our ears. If one can read that won't present much of a problem in most places, but in other places, there's a huge problem. Bible availability, illiteracy, lack of translations present tremendous hurdles to some folk. If auditory memory served the ancient saints well in this regard, it still can in our day. However, if we have the written Word available to us, why wouldn't we make the effort to tune our ears by it?

Do we want to accompany Christ or not? If we do, the effort invested in turning our ears is of the utmost value.

Through the Word we build presuppositions that inform our readiness to hear. By the Word we inform our decisions to go with an impression or to deny it. Applying the Word we inform our “after-action reports” where we assess whether or not we actually heard and acted on the Shepherd’s voice or if we blew it in some way. The Word informs, the Word tunes our ears to hear, it presets our perspective.

We will never confidently discern the voice of the shepherd without the Word. However, we must not let our experience inform our understanding of the Word, rather we must let the Word inform our experience. Experience read into the Word will lead to distortion and error. The Word examining our experience allows us to discern the good and exclude that not from the Shepherd. If you’re going to hear the voice clearly, and grow in that skill, you’ve got to be in the Word!

How Does God Know Our Thoughts?

Does God know our thoughts, all of them from start to finish, before we even think them?

Of course he does, but how?

Perhaps he knows them by the brute fact of his essence, i.e. everything knowable is necessarily known by an omniscient God. If God knows everything essentially, just because he is the omniscient God, there would be some issues. Because God is eternal, not created nor bound by the created, the implication would be that what he knows, he always knew. It's part of his timeless being. Our thoughts-- the good, the bad and the ugly-- would be part of who and what God is from all eternity quite apart from our existence which came to be in time.

If that were the case, sin's expression in creation could only be the instantiation of what was in the thought of God himself, apart from creation. Our thoughts would be, in fact, the very thoughts of God, and there wouldn't be any way to prove them otherwise. Could our actions be free or blameworthy in the sense of being ours and not his? In "the chicken or the egg" argument about the matter, I think we would have to conclude that everything in our lives was an expression of the essence of God, including sin. 

If that were the case, our lives would be authored by God in the same way fictional characters' lives are authored by the writer of the fiction. 

Interestingly enough, there is no actual, practical difference in respect to this issue whether God's omniscience is described by Essential Omniscience or by Divine Determinism. In either case, every act of even apparently free creatures is not actually the acts of those creatures but God's. He would have thought them up prior to their existence and then actuated them through creation. Under either regimen there is no actual freedom, so no blame could be ascribed to anyone other than he who premeditated those actions and then enacted them. God would be the only sinner.

God contemplating evil or cogitating sin within himself apart from the existence of creation is a biblical impossibility. Even premeditating a plan which would pick and choose the temptations which would fill the ensuing history of mankind is out of the question. God is not against himself, ever! He's not divided or impure. Those things which are contrary to him could only have come into existence after an agency independent of him in will existed. Therefore any conception that has God, within himself, developing, planning, cogitating, or strategizing about evil apart from it actually having come into existence apart from him in creation fails.

God could know, in a general sense, that if he created beings possessing freedom they would exert that freedom in opposition to him, but he wouldn't have known to what degree or how deep or to what end until he actually created them. Then he would see it, transparently, all at once from outside of time. So, if God knows all our thoughts through all time by omniscient, omnitemporal observation there are issues for our comprehension, but none at all in regard to what is revealed in the scriptures about God and his purity. 

On Omnitemporal Observation, God sees all that happens in time without regard to time passing. All time is equally before him and accessible to him. He is neither in time nor constrained by it, anymore than he is by space. He knows all that will ever be in time because he is "already" at each millisecond of time that will ever be in the fullness of his timeless being. All time was before him, at once, from the instant he created.

This is not the quaint notion of God "looking down the corridors of time." "Looking down a corridor" implies a helplessness in waiting that isn't part of God's omnitemporal governance. God has chosen for creation to elapse in time while he is outside time seeing all at once. When it comes to time we have to wait for the future, but in any moment in time, God as he is now is already there, and he's there "now." From such a vantage he is certainly free to affect the entirety of time in any way he wishes in order to cause whatever end he desires.

 

On this view, it is true that God does come to know something by creating that he would not have known apart from creating. Of course, if that isn't the case, then God ends up being the author of sin despite one's view of omniscience and sovereignty, without exception. That God comes to know something given his decision to create doesn't at all impinge upon his sovereignty nor his omniscience. It may have the appearance of contradicting aseity, but God's essential being is not made dependent on something else by this. 

Can there be any real issue with saying that God would not have known the details of humans' thoughts apart from his decision to create humans? I think not, for if he had not made that decision there would have been nothing to know.

A Christian Worldview: Where Are We Going?

In the last post I mentioned that the antidote to the place we find ourselves in is Jesus Christ, but what is it that gets people to come to Christ the antidote? Certainly, God is the most fundamental answer, but if God's effort was all that was needed to get people to the antidote, God would bring everyone to Christ and everyone would be saved. But that is not what happens--it does not comport with reality scripturally or materially. Whatever God does in the hearts of people to draw them to Christ has to be coupled with something that is not up to God to accomplish, otherwise, everyone would come to Christ and be saved.

That something is faith.

It takes faith in the antidote to actually avail oneself of the antidote. Faith in Christ like this is impossible for the depraved mind we spoke of in the last post to express, but it is also impossible for faith like this to be imposed. It wouldn't be faith in that case, it would be something more akin to instinct. So two elements need to come together to produce the faith connection to Christ: God, the Spirit empowering; and a willful reaction to trust God from the human heart. Like epoxy, two elements mix together to make a bond that works.

The old adage says that one can lead a horse to water but he can't make him drink. The Holy Spirit convicts, draws, we might go so far as to say woos the sinful human, but the Holy Spirit cannot and does not believe for him. Enabled by the Spirit's action, we must believe for ourselves. If we won't, God will not do it for us, and we won't be saved. The snag in all this, it seems to me, is that big word, REPENTANCE.

Repentance means to change one's mind, to realize after determining a course, that it was not the right course, and so changing directions. We tend to fixate on the small population of our own misdeeds when thinking about repentance, but that doesn't really get to the root of things. To repent of the thing that really ails us we have to go back to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. True repentance lies in undoing what Adam and Eve did.

Adam and Eve thought their judgment was as good as God's, we have to unthink that. Adam and Eve saw themselves on par with God as to determination of the what and wheres of life, we must "unsee" ourselves as like that. The thing Adam and Eve despaired over with regard to God, we must repair by the application of the cross and the victory of the resurrection. Simply put, we must stop trusting ourselves and start trusting God.

Pop psychology pushes people to trust in themselves, and seems to assume that people don't do so enough. As far as I have seen, most people have “trust-in-self” in spades. They really aren’t interested in trusting God, but they'll trust in their self, independent of God, even if their lives are falling apart. Pride? Perhaps. Yet, so many of those same folks still want eternal paradise, they're just not so hot on the whole overbearing God thing.

But if one doesn't love and trust God, one wouldn't like heaven.

An all-expense-paid trip to Disney World would be totally unappealing to me. I’m not interested in Disney characters, I don’t like standing in line, I have no interest in animatronics and I’m much more interested in experiencing a thrill in movement than watching a cheesy production. To top it off, I hate Florida! The heat and humidity are as close to hell as I hope ever to be. Why would I ever want to go to Disney World, even if offered an all-expense paid trip?

A similar question could be posed rhetorically to some folks regarding heaven. Heaven is all about God. Everyone there trusts him implicitly, everything there serves him unquestioningly, everyone there is fascinated by him, everything there is perfectly aligned to his will (and the people and angels there, willingly so). You see, everyone there is conformed to the image of Christ. For some folks that holds no allure. They may not want to go to hell, but they really don’t want to have life revolve around Jesus either!

The point of this life is not to get an all-expense-paid trip out of hell, nor to have life cease working against us (as in reversing the curse here and now). The point is changing our mind about God and ourselves, about realizing our need for Jesus and embracing a framework for living that revolves around trusting God rather than ourselves. A Christian worldview arises out of repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ.

So where are we heading as Christians?

Toward Christ in trust. Toward knowing Christ as Lord. Toward becoming just like him. A Christian worldview sees life revolving around God. Anything less is a fallacy. So turn to him today. Follow him tomorrow. Be at it next week. Make it the principle that governs all your living. That's where a Christian needs to be going.

How then shall we live...

What Does It Mean to Be Totally Depraved?

The one point that Calvinism and Arminianism agree upon is that humankind is totally depraved. It sounds like an incredibly harsh judgment against the creature, one that is not apparent, particularly, when looking at individual cases. This description, however, is not meant to suggest that everyone is as "bad" as they could possibly be, but to describe their spiritual condition in relation to God. In a nutshell, this characterization refers to the disabling brokenness that sin and death has caused to human nature since Adam's fall.

When Adam forsook God and was justifiably cursed by him, his innate connection to God was broken and his physical being was stricken with death. Adam was cast from the presence of God (the place where God walked) and frustrated in his relationship to the biosphere and with others of his kind (Eve to start). The individual became an island unto himself (so necessarily sinful) with no ability to get back to God, nor to truly understand and relate to him nor, for that matter, to do so with his fellow human (as seen from Jesus' high-priestly prayer). Locked in a self-absorbed prison of death and decay separated from God, debauchery ensued. If God did not initiate contact with humans, no contact, no interest, no desire would be forthcoming from Adam's kind.

Hopefully, it is evident that humankind's depravity should not be seen as something that renders humankind incapable, even in their depraved state, of responding to the interjection of God. God showing up in a way that can be responded to is sufficient in itself to break any barrier that would have kept fallen, natural man in the dark concerning God. Such is demonstrated over and over again throughout biblical history (e.g. Noah, Abram, Moses, etc.). To posit a theory in which God has to fix the depraved human being (i.e. regeneration) before that one can respond to him is unnecessary and not validated by scripture.

The truth is that what makes humans depraved in the first place is a lack of God in their lives. People are depraved in that they are like God (i.e. in his image) but are apart from and without God who's presence is what makes that image work properly. In their depravity, they have no desire to have God (as he truly is) in their lives. What they need they neither discern nor want. When God comes near in the mysterious ways that the Holy Spirit can, that lack is addressed at least to the level that the fallen human is able to see, hear, and respond to what wasn't there before. None of this requires any change in their nature and none is ever mentioned throughout the biblical record.

Human beings always had and have always maintained since the Fall the spiritual capacity to recognize God. That capacity was not such that it could independently discover God or engage him on the basis of executing that capacity in and of itself. God's direct intervention is necessary for each and every human being to come to know and understand him and his ways, but upon that divine intervention, awareness of what we otherwise would not have been aware becomes possible. However, if Adam in all of his pristine purity and perfection could ignore and forsake divine connectedness, than so can all his depraved sons and daughters.

Even the best amongst humankind is totally depraved, broken beyond their ability to help themselves--and yet even the most depraved among us can respond to the gracious visitation of the Holy Spirit. Depravity will continue to be an issue for us until Christ returns and our old dead, depraved natures are done away with once and for all, and new nature completely like unto Christ's is put in their place. That, of course, is predicated upon turning to Christ now. So let me ask you, have you responded to the Holy Spirit drawing you to Christ yet?

A. C.U.R.E.

The famous (or infamous, depending on your view) theological acronym TULIP has for centuries served the Church well in summarizing the basic tenets of Calvinistic soteriology. It arose from the disputations the Arminian school of thought offered back in the 1600's. The Calvinists carried the day at the Synod of Dort (the house was stacked) and walked away from that debate with what became known as TULIP: the Arminians walked away ridiculed with nothing but the truth.

There have been some good offerings for a similar acronym for Arminian soteriology (like FACTS), but I have never found them satisfactory because I didn't feel they were clearly descriptive. So, for the ailment of inexactitude, I'd like to offer a cure.

A.= Absolute Inability: mankind is so incapacitated by spiritual death, that none are able to turn themselves to God apart from the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit.
C.= Conditional Election: God has chosen to save all who trust Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
U.= Unlimited Atonement: the blood of Christ was shed for the sins of the entire world, and anyone who will can avail themselves of its effects through faith.
R.= Resistable Grace: The Holy Spirit's efforts at graciously influencing the sinner can be resisted by the sinner.
E.= Extinguishable Faith: the faith that the Holy Spirit's gracious ministrations made possible can be lost or shipwrecked by the person who had believed at one time.

I think this is a little more clearly descriptive than the FACTS acronym, especially for those who believe in the possibility of apostasy (and it doesn't have to be shared with a toy convention). It sure would be nice to have something as communicative as TULIP among those of us who actually got our soteriology right!

Faith In the Authority of Christ

The central core of Christian faith is it's understanding of Jesus-- in particular, its understanding of his authority. Jesus is recorded asking people, "Do you believe I can do this?" Believers recognized his authority, whereas unbelievers disdainfully asked him, "By what authority do you do this?" That range of opinion represents a nice metric for which to measure the concept of effective faith. 

So what does it take for faith to be effective? The moment effective faith comes into existence is explored in other blog offerings on this site. With this article I approach the subject from a different tack and offer the following postulates, which I believe characterize true faith and which I believe faith must exhibit in order to be effective. In other words, they limn out what is means to believe in Jesus in a way that counts.

1) Effective faith perceives Jesus as the Lord (i.e. the ultimate authority in one's life)
2) Effective faith sees all authority in heaven and earth as given to Jesus
3) Effective faith recognizes that the name of Jesus represents the highest authority
4) Effective faith accepts Jesus' word as enduring in it's authority.

Whether we are talking about salvation or about miracles, faith that produces the desired end is faith that fully embraces the authority of Christ.

By the authority Christ granted to them to use, the apostles healed the sick and cast out demons. When they were shaky about that authority, they couldn't cast out a demon and were rebuked for a lack of faith. By that authority Peter walked upon the water, but when Peter became fuzzy about it he sank into the waves. Apprehending the authority of Christ is the difference between praying hopefully and commanding forcefully.

I wish clarity regarding this was my constant experience, but alas, it isn't. There are moments when the authority of Christ is so clear to me, and at those moments, awesome things happen. Then there are those moments when it's only theory in my head, which I assent to readily, but it's not singular or instant. I have to think about it before its crystal clear. The difference between one and the other is command and request, knowing and hoping.

I wish faith wasn't so elusive. 

Would any of us even break through to effective faith if it wasn't for the Spirit's inspiration? In regard to salvation the answer is any easy "no!" In regard to the miraculous, it's little more complex. By God's design, however, the task of believing in either regard is ours. Jesus died in our place, but God won't believe in our place, we have to. That is what makes faith so slippery. 

God has no doubts about who's in charge. When we're certain as well, our experience erupts into a faith moment. Could you do with more faith moments where you're crystal clear, instantly, about the authority of Christ? I know I sure could. Trees would be flying! But while they remain anchored to the soil, the only real question that matters is, "Who's the boss?" Faith answers, "Jesus Christ."

Worship as an Expression of Faith

Worship is about homage. It is the respect or regard paid to that which has power over one's life. Not everyone would acknowledge belief in the supernatural, but I think everyone worships something. Everyone give props to that which they see as having the power to affect their lives for good. If one truly believes in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, worshipping him is just part of that package.

"God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."         John 4:24  NASB

Worship, really, is an expression of faith.

At its heart, it is a reach, a stretch, wherein a person of conviction dares to seek and see God as he is. God is breath (spirit) and so he is beyond the physicality of this world and all that's in it. His essence is the essence of the soul, of personhood--self-awareness, consciousness, purposefulness. Therefore, that seeking which is worship must engage those same qualities within the seeker. That which is spirit must be worshipped in spirit.

Worship cannot be circumscribed by the merely physical nor the superficial.

Historically, Christian worship has fallen short in both regards. Arrangements of "furniture," postures of bodies, and recitations and intonations done virtually without thought have very little to do with worship. The contemporary fixation with worship as entertainment or a perfunctory preliminary is no better, maybe even worse. The very essence of our spiritual being must be engaged in seeking and revering God, or all we've done is gone through some empty motions.

The very essence of who we are as persons must bow before the very presence of the person of God in order to worship.

Worship is, literally, "kissing towards" the object of reverence, which by use referred to bowing or prostration before the worshipped; that is, doing obeisance or acknowledging superiority. So, at its heart, worship is about surrender. If we have not come to a point of surrender to God, deep in our souls, we have not worshipped. Worship, such as this, is not a duty that can be done from a distance, it can only be accomplished "up close and personal."

Worship must be sincere.

There's no place for illusion in worship. Often the reference to truth in John 4:24 is misinterpreted to refer to fact and logic (i.e., knowledge), as if true worship engages both emotion and intellect. Certainly, heart and mind are part of what makes a human essentially human, but the reference to truth in this case has more to do with integrity than it does to knowledge. Possessing a theologically accomplished mind doesn't qualify one as a worshipper to any degree whatsoever, whereas honestly bowing down does.

Though our publications and practices would seem to suggest it, it has not been left up to us to fashion what worship of God could or should be. Oh, people can do that sort of thing, but they shouldn't expect the result would be considered worship by God. Jesus has told us, clearly, what God is looking for in worship, and what worship of God must be. Worship is an expression of faith, it must come from the essence of what we are as people, it must express surrender to God's authority over us, and it must be unfeigned.

If what you call worship isn't accomplishing this, it's not worship.

The Open Door to Heaven

"After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven..."      Rev 4:1 NASB

The Apostle John looked up after his visionary experience as an amanuensis, saw an opened door in the heavens and heard the now familiar voice of his visions calling to him, presumably, through it. We're not told what caught his attention first: the appearance of the opened door, or the voice beckoning him. It really doesn't matter. A new phase in his visionary experience was beginning, and its significance would soon be apparent.

The opened door in the heavens most readily signifies access to what normally would be inaccessible to mankind. In this particular instance that represents access to two things beyond human purview: 1) the throne room, or very presence, of God; and 2) the future. God has to open the door to the experience of either, or the heavens remain closed. So, even though it is not specifically mentioned in the text, that door had to have been opened by Jesus, a key bearer who opens what no one else can open or close.

Doors, opened or closed, serve a variety of roles in the Apocalypse, but the basic concept is the same regardless--doors represent a barrier only authority or power can open. There are doors only God can open (like the one in question), and there are doors that God does not (cannot?) open. That would seem an odd thing, a door barring God, but the Apocalypse represents such a thing existing. Jesus stands knocking, in that case, waiting for the invitee to open the door. The implication for monergism, perseverance, and the whole of Calvinism is troubling, to say the least.

"Come up here," though in the form of a command, was more along the lines of divine commentary and was specific to John (singular). It cannot be related to the Rapture, nor really, to anyone else's access to God or heaven, whether by prayer or other means. Immediately, John was transported beyond the door into the midst of whatever it was opened to reveal. The surroundings were obviously symbolic because God (the Father and the Spirit) were represented tangibly when they are actually incorporeal, and Jesus was represented as a lamb rather than the corporeal form he has taken.

The purpose of John's visionary translation was to find out what things take place after the things he had already been shown. Those things were contained in the opening vision of Christ and the Letters to the Seven Churches. It stands to reason, it seems to me, that this particular sequential characteristic undermines viewing the Letters as representing successive ages of the Church. Instead, the Letters, all of them together, must have had reference to something that could have been existent in the time of John and before the bulk of what is revealed as happening afterward according to the stated purpose of the command.

What Is and Isn't In the Mind of God

God is omniscient which means he is all-knowing and all-seeing. He doesn't have to discover a thing, or even think through a thing, he "already" knows it. That being the case, can God be surprised to any degree? Surely, there is nothing of which God is not completely aware of and thoroughly comprehending from all eternity--or is there?

If God was thoroughly acquainted with evil before or apart from creation, then I submit that evil did not find its genesis in creation but in God. In that case, God did not "discover" it in creation, for evil was part of his thoughts quite apart from the existence of creation. It would have found it's way into creation reflectively rather than formatively. That seems an impossibility to me because evil is intrinsically at odds with God.

By Christ's argument, a house divided against itself cannot stand, so neither could God stand if he was for himself (good) and against himself (evil) within his own thoughts.

Therefore, evil could not have been in God's conceptions apart from those which instantiated creation. Even then, it could only have been so in general terms; i.e. "if we make creatures in our image they will do as they will rather than as we will." If evil was a subject thoroughly plumbed in God's mind apart from creation, then God's thoughts would be of evil to some extent and he would not be good, and he would not be pure. The evil that ended up being produced in the minds of mankind would exist as a reflection of the mind of God who made them rather than as an negative consequence of freewill.

Evil is a consequence of freewill, but it cannot be intrinsic in the created, pristine possessor of that freewill without it indicting the creator for it. Adam and Eve were created good and upright. Evil came their way afterwards, when they opted for their own wills instead of God's will (evil=anything against the will of God). Evil is only possible if there is a freewill apart from God's, but evil does not actually exist until (and unless) freewill is exerted in opposition to God.

A mind endued with such freewill would be transparent to God in all its evil, once it existed, because he is omnitemporally omniscient in regard to creation. Furthermore, all the minds that would ever come into existence would be transparent to God in all their evil, once creation was in place. However, if God omnisciently knew the evil thoughts of mankind from all eternity, that is, apart from creation being put in place, it would mean that something which could not come from God's own thoughts (they're not evil) and which only came into being temporally, informed God's knowledge eternally.

If God is pure and holy as the Word avows, and he actually regretted making mankind and was astonished at the depths of Israel's sin as presented in his Word, it is impossible that evil (whether his or ours) was part of his personal, eternal knowledge. The knowledge of evil, by necessity, is confined to and informed by the decision to create man in his image. If God had not created, he would not have any knowledge of evil. The existence of evil demands that God be aware of it by observation rather than by cogitation.

We may live in a universe that is quantumly frothy, but it seems to me that we must be careful in our explications of God's omniscience to accurately describe what is and isn't in the mind of God, lest we suggest something that would, by necessity, annihilate itself.

A Moment In the Mind of God

We experience, act and think sequentially, in a time-bound fashion, which seems to demand that the entire concept of change be placed squarely within the domain of time. God is not time-bound and sees omnitemporally, and yet presents himself to us within creation as one experiencing change. The paradox is confusing to say the least. Nonetheless, unless we are willing to discount God's self-revelation in scripture, it's a paradox we should accept as true.

I've written previously concerning God's experience of the moment within creation. His timeless experience of the moment in creation means that he's not only always here now, but that what was then is now and what is to be is now for him. We wait on time to unfold--past opening up to present, present becoming future. God sees the beginning from the end and the end from the beginning. He sees all things in motion through time, at once, and he interjects throughout time to affect and influence where things go, at once, and leaves no scar on time to trace that he ever did so.

It is not necessary that he dreamt all this up in the misty ages of eternity, as if he always, forever had a plan to create, and then decided to instantiate it in the moment of creation. He need only to have had a thought and said "be," and in that instant all was what it is in all its time at once before him. From his perspective, all stuff, all time, all the us there will ever be came about with one all-wise, all-seeing, all-knowing decision (or perhaps six day-long decision). The thought that precipitated that decision has not passed: this, right now, is that thought, not the echo of it as it would be if he had to perceive it through the long ages of eternity before he acted.

Really, that precipitating thought was the only one necessary for God to have undertaken regarding all creation throughout its time. Extended pre-planning, meticulous preparation, experimentation, and trial and error were not necessary to bring creation into being. God is wise enough, knows enough, is powerful enough, and is unaffected by time enough to put all this into play, and to still allow creatures free will within time. We are in that moment, the very same moment, and the only moment within the mind of God that produced all creation and in which creation is sustained.

The Limits of Omniscience

Essential Omniscience: resting God's omniscience in the brute fact of his essence rather than sovereignty or observation. In other words, his divine essence is of such a nature that he knows all that can be known, including all free acts of agents throughout time, not because he sees all or controls all, but just because he is what he is.   (SLW)

If God knows everything by the brute fact of his essence, including the free acts of created agents, one has to wonder how and when such knowledge came to be. If God's omniscience is essential, rather than observational, then it would have existed as "long as" his essence has. Why not? On EO, he doesn't rely upon "waiting" for history to unfold or for agents to decide their choices--he "already" knows all by virtue of the brute fact of omniscience founded in his essence.

God's essence is eternal (i.e., without time rather than long-lasting). God is not developing, he doesn't gain some aspect of his essence (such as omniscience if that is the case) by means of time passing or by the instantiation of creation. That would make God essentially dependent upon something other than himself and breach aseity. So if God's knowing is by virtue of his essence, it means he always knew what he knows.

But if God knows every thought, every inclination, every action of every agent from all eternity, those acts and inclinations would have to be God's rather than the agent's. If EO is the case, then each and every one of those actually existed in God's essence quite apart from ever coming into being in the creature. How then could those acts and intentions ever be proven or understood to be anything other than a projection of God's own essence? They cannot.

We cannot have our cake and eat it too. We cannot say that God is not the author of intentions and acts (particularly sin) that were ultimately "in" him before they were in others. If God had in his mind the evil acts of devil and man before the devil and man had a mind, then that evil finds its genesis in God--he had evil in his heart before any of us had a heart that could be evil. If EO were true of God, we would have evil in us because God has evil in him and evil would, in fact, be God's will.

Determinism, Compatibilism, Molinism and Essential Omniscience all fail in this same way.

The interplay of omniscience and freewill can never be posited to be such that free actions were settled or known certainly in the mind of God before creation. Any attempt to do so hits this same brick wall, which has God very specifically and extensively knowing evil before evil was. If evil acts were known by God by virtue of his essence eternally, then in his essence God contemplated evil and plumbed the depths of temptation and enticement apart from their existence in creation. Therefore, permutations of Simple Foreknowledge which resort to omniscience by brute fact of God's essence fail God's scriptural disclaimer that sinful acts in general (James 1:13-15), and certain sinful acts specifically (Jeremiah 19:4-5), were founded in the hearts of sinners and not at all in God.

The only way I can see to avoid this error is to align with the scriptural accounts of God in action and the biblical instances of his self-disclosure and attribute God's omniscience (at least insofar as creaturely freedom goes) to Omnitemporal Observation. Regardless of how philosophically distasteful it may be, any of the more philosophically palatable theories fail to keep God from being the source of evil. Scripture demands that sinful intentions and sinful deeds not be attributed to God--not in conception, not in practice, and not first in the heart of God before in the hearts of our countrymen.

God doesn't think evil thoughts, how would he preconceive them for others? It seems to me that even omniscience has its limits!

How Does God Know the Future?

The future does not really exist (nor for that matter, does the past).

The past is merely the record of what used to be the present, and the future can only be what will be the present when the present gets to that point. It is the present where the action is and it is that action that produces either the past or the future. So the present is what is necessary for either the future or the past to have what existence they might, and never vice versa.

There are of course, circumstances which were in motion in the past and which determine the future to some degree. A huge asteroid could be hurtling toward us from ages past that will impact our future in very tangible ways. Celestial bodies move according to the laws of physics and their courses can be charted and accurately projected. Earthly bodies, and by that I mean humans, cannot--their responses to their environment, to one another, to God, or to themselves cannot be charted because their free actions are uncertain until taken (the Heisenberg principle of free agents?).

Freedom is entirely wrapped up in the present. It exists in the moment of decision. Insofar as choice is concerned, the past is inert and the future is is inaccessible. Decisions are made in the moment their action occurs, necessarily. Some choices are made which effect the future and/or are influenced by the past, but freedom to act, to choose, always and only happens in the present.

Therefore the future cannot be fixed in any real sense, because it is dependent upon a present which is in flux. A future which is dependent upon that which is in flux has to be in flux itself. It seems to me that if there is any truth at all to the notions of will, freedom and spirit (which produce flux) it is impossible for the future to be fixed, and by that fixity control the present. Nothing is actually written until it's written in its present.

That does not mean the future cannot be known. 

If an omnitemporal observer (God) could view all of the presents that will ever exist from a vantage outside of time, the future would be known to him, exhaustively, through observation of the present. That the future is known by this God would not make it fixed, in the sense that it determined the present, for it is the present in which action occurs, the uncertain becomes the established, and which God observes and thereby knows the future. God knows the future because God has seen the present timelessly, but it is never his knowing that causes what he sees.

It is, in fact, a confounding of cause and effect to assume God's knowing the future would bind the freedom of an agent in the present. That God knows an agent will act in some fashion at a particular time is not equivalent to saying that the agent must act in that fashion at that particular time because God knows that agent will. On omnitemporal observation of freewill, the act of the agent causes the knowledge, the knowledge doesn't cause the act. Seeing timelessly is out of our wheelhouse as humans, and therefore justifiably confusing, but it should be straightforward enough to perceive that seeing an act omnitemporally cannot be said to necessitate causing that act in time.

Furthermore, an infinitely wise and powerful God could shape the panorama of time by a directive interposition here and there (or as often as he saw fit) without affecting the existence of freedom, generally, in any present. He could shepherd time to an appointed end without meticulously determining anything that occurred in time. In being able to do so, I see no reason to posit that he would require a mental "trial run" (i.e middle knowledge and/or deterministic decrees) in order to do so. He saw all at once, once he created.

I see no other possible way than this for the future to be known exhaustively by God, for creaturely freedom to exist in the present (see this and this), and for God to not have conceived evil before evil existed. We'll address that last concept later, for now, suffice it to say that if the future is fixed and thereby determinative of the present, will and freedom would have to cease to exist in any meaningful fashion. I see no biblical warrant to suggest such a course. To posit such is to put the cart before the horse and totally miss how God knows the future.

The Measure of Grace

"I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away."    Luke 19:26  NASB

I think grace may be something that is shown to us by God in increments. Not that I'm suggesting the spiritual equivalent of quantum mechanics, but I do think divine light dawns upon the human spirit in measures. If that light has the intended effect, then more light is shone. If it doesn't, then what light had been shining is withdrawn.

When "grace" (or "light") is used in this manner, what it really is referring to is the action of the Spirit of God. Grace, I think, is a term which is used, generally, very inaccurately in the Church. When it is used, more often than not, it conjures up a picture of some mystical force or power flowing from God unto that which he has made. Grace is not such a force or power, it is merely a sentiment in the heart of God toward that which he has made--joyful kindness, unmerited favor.

It is the Holy Spirit (or, at times, those ministering spirits called angels) that actually reaches out and touches someone or something with the application of light and power. God's grace actually does nothing, but God by grace surely does! Nonetheless, in keeping with the way in which grace is used broadly (even if erroneously), I use it here to refer to the unseen activity of the Spirit by which spiritual qualities are imbued to the spirit/soul of one who is a believer or one who may become a believer. In other words, grace is shorthand for the work of the Holy Spirit.

I do not believe that the seed of Adam is capable of receiving such grace unmitigatedly. The darkened souls of Adam's sinful race would be overwhelmed if that were to occur, and the effect would be to blight the image of God they still possess. The image of God entails freewill by necessity and God's design, and it is not God's will to emasculate or eradicate the independence that comes thereby. Therefore, God's drawing, convicting grace does not and cannot come upon man as a storm surge, irresistibly, or it would incapacitate the image of God within.

Grace, it seems to me, is measured out by incremental nudges.

Light shines in some measure upon the souls of men. The soul so illumined which responds to that light gets more light, and softens. The soul repulsed by that light remains in darkness and hardens. The journey of the faithful from rank unbelief to oneness with God is one of responding to increasing grace and brightening light.

The Purpose of Discipline from God

When those Christians who do say it, say that God does not punish sin in our lifetimes (or really, at all for the believer), they do so reckoning upon the punishment for our sins Christ took upon himself. No condemnation remains for us to bear as a result. By that reckoning, anything painful experienced in this life which might appear punitive is either not coming from God or is not intended as a punishment. I must admit, there's much to commend in such a thought.

However, our thoughts about what God does or doesn't do must line up with each and every passage of scripture. Whereas it is certainly biblical to say that the Devil is seeking to bring us pain, it is not biblical at all to say that God won't or can't bring us things that are painful or punitive or both. We can say biblically that if God brings us to something painful, whether punitive or not, he does so for our own good and his grace is sufficient to bring us through it. To hold otherwise puts people who hold otherwise in the regrettable position of trying to make excuses for a theology that doesn't work in real life (unscriptural theology never does), or becoming incredibly self-absorbed trying to improve their faith to get a more desirable outcome.

"...have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him. For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.” 

It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."               Hebrews 12:3-12 NASB

Why would a loving father discipline his children through hardship and suffering? I think we have to trust that there is no other way to get us to where he wants us to be. Ultimately, that is by his side in eternity, sharing in all that is in Christ. Between now and then, Christ is our example, suffering can be a teacher, and the humility that goes with it is a boon to faith.

The bottom line in all this is understanding the reasons our forgiving God might use punitive measures in our lifetimes. Let's be clear, God's corrections mean legitimacy and life and are never without purpose. God uses corrective discipline so we do not go off the deep end and lose all we had in Christ. If punishment from God comes to believers, it comes not to write them off but to preserve them.

There's no reason to walk about shivering in fearful anticipation, looking over our shoulder expecting divine retribution for some misstep to overtake us and ruin our lives. God is not like that, he walks softly among us. But understand this: if you're on a path that could lead to your destruction as a believer, God is not above making an effort to stop you in your tracks and correct your course with a big stick.

When Did God Know?

There is knowledge that did not and could not exist apart from God actually creating. Creation is an act of God's mind, and what he created is sustained by his mind (will), nonetheless, only as God created did that knowledge which had to do with creation and time come into being. Apart from that action, there was nothing to know in regard to it, and if he would never have created, there would be nothing to know. It is not a breach of aseity to realize this.

We have no reason to believe that God amuses himself with fantasy. Does he daydream or ponder, "What if I were to..." trying to figure out what he might do before he did it? I don't think so. God either does or does not, and if he does, he understands what he does thoroughly. When God created, he would have known all conceptual things at once, and seen all historical things as he created. If he had not created, he would have seen and known nothing about creation.

Therefore, when there was no creation, God knew nothing of the acts of free agents, for there was nothing to know. When God created, he instantly knew exhaustively what was not in flux by the brute fact of his omniscience, and what was in flux from omnitemporal observation. Of course, something has to be in existence to be observed, so there is a distinction within the knowledge of God. What exists because of conception God knew when he conceived it, but what exists as a result of freedom he knows by creating that which can act in time and timelessly observing it throughout its time.

When God created the universe, he instantly knew its entire history, including that of mankind, because he observed it from a timeless vantage. The foreknowledge gained through omnitemporal observation is therefore exhaustive while the choices and acts of agents are free. The conception of children in Christ is the only template mentioned in scriptures which guided God in creating. We are never told in the scriptures that a conception of the damned burning throughout eternity, nor the precise acts of mankind, guided anything prior to creation.

There is an aspect of incrementalism in observational foreknowledge. For instance, when God said "let there be...",  he would instantly know the history of all that existed in response to that decree. When he said, "let there be..." again, then he would know the entire history of what that decree brought into existence in conjunction with all the former decree had actualized. It is likely the former history would have been changed in some way by the latter decree. When God finished his creative work, the fullness of all he foreknows observationally would have been perfected.

The Failure of Middle Knowledge

Molinism posits that God's omniscience is expressed in three moments which are logically sequential rather than chronologically sequential. The first moment is God's Natural Knowledge which encompasses everything that is necessarily true apart from God's will. The second moment is God's Middle Knowledge which is aware of all possibilities (particularly free actions of agents) given any circumstance. The third moment is God's Free Knowledge which entails all that he actualized.

What kind of knowledge is Middle Knowledge, actually? At best, it could only be analytical and theoretical, because it is never actualized, never incarnated (apart from that which becomes Free Knowledge). What isn't realized is merely hypothetical--a mental "trial run," if you will. Supposedly, Middle Knowledge answers with certainty, not mere conjecture, the question: "What would occur if another state were to obtain? Since those other states are nothing more than whimsy in the mind of God, who purposely selects what is actualized, how is the outcome resultant from using Middle Knowledge distinct from, or better than, compatibilism, or soft determinism?

A Bible passage that purportedly backs the Middle Knowledge premise is Christ's musings concerning Sodom and Gomorrah. I question whether or not interpreting the passage to teach Middle Knowledge catches the gist of what Jesus was using the illustration for.

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day."    Matthew 11:21-23  NASB

Was Jesus divulging precise alternate history or just making a point about how awful was the rejection of Christ by Jews who heard what he said and saw what he did? I don't think there's really much of a question that it was all about the latter.

If God can forecast the free choices agents would make in any circumstance accurately, without fail, prior to anything created existing, then I submit that those actions are not truly the agents' at all, but are instead mere projections of the mind of God. How could they be proven to be otherwise? The only qualification that withstands scrutiny and averts blameworthiness when it comes to matters of choice is independence (in connection to this, see Genesis 2:19; Judges 3:4; Jeremiah 19:5; James 1:13-15). Choice has to be made by the chooser and seen by the seer at the moment of decision in order to be free.

If a decision of an agent is known with absolute certainty before anything else was even made, and if in making everything else God opts among various possibilities to instantiate that decision (the agent certainly has no access to those possibilities), God unavoidably becomes the author of that decision. In that case, there is no way that choice is free in the sense that it is instigated in freedom by the chooser. The biblical notion of freedom, as I see it, is that choice is derived independently of God. If that choice is made before it's made, the choice is illusory.

Middle Knowledge was formulated as a means of attributing meticulous sovereignty and foreknowledge to God without obliterating freewill or having God incur culpability for actions taken which he opposes (sin). It fails to do so. If God knew what every choice an agent would make was before he created the universe, and knowing, then actualized that "blueprint," then culpability for all choices (including sin) adheres unshakably to God, and none of those choices are actually free (independent).

Molinism, it seems to me, reduces to determinism, so why add the extra layer?

Indestructible Souls and Irresistible Grace

"Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."     Genesis 2:7 (NASB)

The breath of God is a precious thing.

God's breath imparts that something that makes a human soul, that makes one a person. Not that every person animated by that breath is the person of God, but it is God's breath that infuses all of the capacities of soul that personhood builds on and without which there would be no person. It communicates those characteristics of personhood that are analogous to God's personhood. That breath is spirit, and more than anything else in all creation represents something directly emanated from God's being. 

Think about that: something within humans that makes them persons represents a direct input from the person of God. Some repercussions of that astounding fact are easily enough perceived--humans exercise choice (freewill), are creative (even to the extant of bringing something out of nothing), love, and... wait for it... humans are eternal. Once God invested his own breath in humanity, the persons that result have an essence that will never pass away. What an astonishing thought!

God's breath may exist eternally, but that does not translate into those infused by that breath living eternally. Breath that is separated from God does not respire, it does not go out and come in (as it were). God's breath must be actively with God, in tune with God, in contact with and in the presence of God to live. Cut off from God, separated, it merely exists. It projects some measure of its capacity for personhood, but it is dark, really, lifeless.

In order for one in whom God has breathed the breath of life to live, he or she must walk in agreement with God; however, even God cannot make creatures who possess his image but who do not exercise creaturely freedom thereby. His image makes such freedom necessary and irresistible grace impossible. Creatures made in God's image, by the capacity of choice in that nature, must freely choose agreement with God. That is an action of faith (i.e. trustful reliance) without which it is impossible to please God--faith is what it takes for free creatures to live in agreement with God.

Whereas it is very true that God loves everyone he's made, those made in his image with the capacity of choice have no future without faith. The Gordian knot is that no one born since the Fall of Man can make that choice of faith unless the Spirit has enabled him or her. However, if the enablement was such that one was rewired to make that choice without the possibility of not making it, that one would cease being in the image of God. The breath that confers such is indestructible, so it is impossible for the grace that underlies enablement to be irresistible and enablement to be a guarantee.

Does God Love Our Children Less Than We Do?

Does the God who breathed life into them love our children less than we do? We would never write them off, or send them into flames no matter what they had done. Yet, it appears that God is willing to. Do we love and care for them more than he does? No, but we certainly tolerate sin and the company of sinners more than he does.

Whatever is not of faith is sin, so faith is the key for our children. If our children do not come to trust God there will be nothing that can be done for them. There is no obligation that could be enforced upon God in the name of love which could cause him to give eternal life (freedom) to those who do not trust him. Could God allow the evil of sin and rebellion to continue just because some of those who have faith happened to have children who did not? Not without resigning his throne as God!

Since the Fall, however, no one is able to believe (at least effectively) without divine enablement. The Spirit of God attending the word of Christ is the instigator of such enablement, so if our children do not hear that word and come to faith thereby they have no possibility of life. Oh, they may be graced under a parental umbrella for a spell, but there are no reliable coattails to heaven. Those who do not trust God can have no eternal hope.

The love of God is broad and deep, but its object is humans made in his image with creaturely freedom. It is important to God that our children be in his image and have creaturely freedom. Everyone made like that must come to the place where, freely, they trust God and choose to follow him. Our children must come to that place or be separated from God forever.

Perhaps we could never bear to write-off our children and would always find a way to preserve them and commune with them. We are not God. We do not see what he sees and do not have the pure moral clarity he does. God does love our children, but not with sin-stained, sentimental affection like we are apt to. He loved them enough to make them in his image and to redeem that image eternally through the sacrifice of Christ.

God wants our children with him forever, but that is not possible if they do not trust him.

God's Nature and Creaturely Freedom

God's Nature
God has the quality of aseity. He is completely self-sufficient and utterly free. Though he is immutable, he is not inactive. He has sufficient power and complete knowledge to do or not do as he pleases.

God's Relation to Creation and Time
God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has made all that is other than himself, and having created all things, he knows them completely. God is not impassible in regard to creation, but is interactive with it. All creation is before God at every point (i.e. everywhere is in his presence), but he is not in creation nor contained by it. God can step into the limitations of space and experience that space, but always with his omniscience and omnipresence intact, apart from that point of contact.

God is timeless, and is properly outside of time just as he is outside of the rest of creation. All time is equally before him at every point, although God is not in it nor constrained by time. That which is in time (creation) experiences time and is limited by its sequential nature, but God is present with equal facility in the past, present and future, simultaneously (as it were). God can step into the limitations of the moment (time) and experience that moment in real time, but always has his omniscient, omnitemporality intact, apart from that point of contact.

God's Omniscience
God's knows all that can be known. In acting in regard to creation, from the perspective of creation in any time reference, God sees and knows that action and its consequences in all time references. We must plan before we execute our actions or be at the mercy of things ignorantly set in motion, but God is able to see all at once by virtue of his omniscience outside of time. Therefore, he can act, direct and know the end from the beginning, at once, without the necessity of a pre-planned blueprint.

God's Sovereignty
God governs by law and by intervention, of which he sees the effects at once without the limitations of sequence (time). From the viewpoint of creation, there is a quality to God's governance which appears as if the clock was wound at the beginning and is now unwinding. From God's perspective, he knows at once the shape of that unwinding, not because he has minutely determined every second, but because he understands what he has made and how it functions, and sees every second at once.

The laws of nature are the manifestation of God's will for nature. Things act according to law, but without the necessity that each action was specifically willed by God. God's sovereignty is not expressed in the minute detail of every occurrence, but in the laws that produce it. If one were to throw a ball against a wall, the ball would bounce as it does because God wanted a myriad of forces to act the way they do which resulted in such a bounce in time, rather than because God wanted that ball to bounce that way at that time.

Creaturely Freedom
All things in God's creation have a nature by which they are governed and are interacted with by the rest of God's creation by its nature. Some natures are more god-like than others, with human beings (and probably at least some of the angels) being made in the very image of God. The nature of human beings, in their degree of freedom to act, will be most reflective of God's freedom. Apart from an analogous freedom as that possessed by God, human beings would not be in God's image, but only reflect God's attributes as does all creation.

What Is Freewill?

Freewill is a description of volitional power which God, alone, has perfectly. He does as he pleases without disability or mitigation. He can do a thing or not do it.

When God created the heavens and earth and all that lives therein, he made a freewill choice to have that creation reflect himself, and in particular for man to resemble himself. To that end, he gave mankind a physical body made of the stuff that everything else was made of, including everything else living, and infused it with a spiritual animus that made mankind uniquely, specially in his image. Whatever a soul is (and I'm certain we really don't know what that is), it is something that came into being when the breath (spirit) of God was infused into the corpus of man.

It is that ethereal thing, the soul, which expresses itself through a physical being made for it, which makes a healthy human being a reflector of God's freewill and an expresser of it in its own accord. While an individual is in a body, that individual is beholden to that body for its expression of its soulish being. If a brain is damaged, malformed, underdeveloped, diseased or afflicted, the soulish power of freewill will be affected in its expression. God has created man as a discrete singularity made of body, soul and spirit, so that as the body goes, so goes the expression of soulish personhood.

A soul without a properly functioning brain will not express in the physical world the freewill it otherwise has the innate ability to. Without a body a soul is not a complete human, which is reflected, I think, in the crying out under the altar of those martyred souls in Revelation (and the fact that we get new bodies for eternity). When a person is intact and healthy, the existence of his or her soul, is what gives that person the capacity to express freewill. There are limits, of course, the most obvious being the physical laws of the universe, and what is more important in my opinion, the law of Spirit.

The Law of the Spirit determines the ability of the soul to express itself in harmony with God. After the Fall of Adam and Eve, spiritual death, or separation between man and the Spirit of God, was imposed upon mankind. Whatever sort of resting place the soul had been made to be for the breath of God, its connection to the breath of God was broken at that time and so freewill in mankind was incapable of willing in harmony with God. After Jesus rose from the dead and made the Spirit available to those who follow him, the born again have by that rebirth a renewed ability to will freely in harmony with God (though the not perfectly so long as they are in dying bodies).

So what is freewill? It is the volitional power human beings possess, which, among other things, allows them to be the expression of the image of God who possesses freewill in its ultimate sense. Though a soulish quality, it is communicated in the physical world through the auspices of the physical being (particularly, the brain). Natural human beings have no ability to express that capacity in line with God, supernatural human beings (the regenerated) have some capacity to, eternal human beings will be able to perfectly.