Man Gave Names to All the Animals

"Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field."   Genesis 2:19-20 NIV

In the midst of extending his creation of man from just male to male and female, God brought Eden's menagerie before Adam, sat back so to speak, and let man take the lead in something creative. Some might find fault with my characterization of this event this way, but I don't think it's all that far off.

This occurred before God's sabbath, so his "work" week wasn't quite finished when this happened. He was, in fact, not even done with the model called man, for female he had not made them yet. He tapped his son Adam to help his Dad finish his work, much the same way my dad used to "take me to work" with him on Saturday mornings to "help" him. Day 6 was the very first Take-Your-Son-to-Work Day in history!

The work wasn't hard (neither was mine with my dad). The Father could easily have done it himself, but he didn't want to. In fact, it seems to me, the Father got a kick out of having Adam do it. I know it doesn't come right out and say that, but it does say God went on to finish his creative work (including the part Adam "helped" with), and when done, pronounced it good. A perfect God produced perfect quality work with which he was perfectly satisfied--including the component added by Adam!

One might ask, "Why?" I think it speaks profoundly about the glory of God and what brings him satisfication and joy. The news flash is that it isn't doing a puppet show with the marionettes he made out of clay. God let man name the animals, and whatever man named them, that was their name.

God wanted mankind to be creatively free. He made them to be. That is what they must be, in order for the Son to incarnate as one of them and fellowship with them, Creator with the created. God has never shown any interest in dealing with mankind as robots so far as I can tell: it is a complete misapprehension of his purposes and plans to ever think that he would.

Answering as an Arminian

I was asked by one of my Calvinist readers to respond to a couple of questions on soteriology from my Arminian perspective; however, I am an Arminian more by default than by choice. My beliefs were developed from reading the Bible rather than James Arminius or Arminian theologians, so I am not truly an effective apologist for Arminian theology. That said, I do find myself in agreement with basic theological tenets set forth by Arminians and have no problem being associated as one of their lot (although that might not be a two way street! ;-) ). There is an excellent resource on the web (at http://evangelicalarminians.org/) that any of you readers would probably find very helpful in understanding the tenets of Arminian theology. On to the questions...

What is man's part in salvation?
There is no human role in salvation. The plan was God’s, the execution was God’s. Man either receives or rejects what God has finished in Christ. Those that believe in that plan and receive Christ, are saved, those that reject that plan and Christ will remain rejected by God. Calvinists characterize Arminianism as making man co-redemptors with Christ by such a stand, but Arminians see that as entirely specious. Look at it this way: if you’re at a carnival where there is a guy making balloon animals and offering them to the bystanders, how does taking one from him make you the co-creator or co-artist in it’s creation?

I know of no passages in the scripture that say salvation is effected apart from faith on the part of the receiver. So, Arminians see that faith is the effective reaction a human makes to a work completed by God, and is thus saved by Christ. Calvinists believe that kind of faith is impossible, due to their view on Total Depravity, without regeneration preceding faith. Arminians, though we generally share the Calvinist’s view on Total Depravity, believe faith comes first, made possible by the visitation of God grace. To review: for every human saved the Arminian would say that the plan was God’s, the execution was God’s, and the enabling grace was God’s. Man either puts faith in Christ as a result or does not.

For me personally, the problem I have with Calvinistic conceptions of this issue is that in order to give the glory to God alone and remove any “free role” for man, Calvinists end up relying in some fashion on Determinism. Once that is adopted, God alone getting the glory for salvation may be assured, but dragged along for the ride is God inexorably getting the blame for sin as well. If things happen as they happen by the decree of God, that God’s will is the effective determiner of what happens for good or for ill, then God is not only the author of salvation but the author of sin as well. I find that a totally unscriptural characterization of God and what he’s revealed about how he does things. Calvinists appeal to “mystery” to deal with the problem, I just see an unmysterious problem.

Can one lose their salvation?
Arminians have widely varying viewpoints on this issue. Arminius, himself, was not precisely clear on the subject. I do not believe anyone can lose their salvation, but I do believe they can lose their faith. The two are related but most definitely distinct. Salvation was achieved by the finished work of Christ, not by any work of the saved. If our works do not save us, our works cannot “unsave” us. Our faith, on the other hand, is the means through which grace and salvation are effected, and a loss of such faith would result in God’s grace and salvation becoming ineffective as well.

There are instances of folks falling away from Christ in the NT, and Hebrews 6 spells out at least the possibility. Calvinists, generally, rely on the “they were never saved in the first place” argument. I see no validity in that approach at all, and practically, see it completely undermining trust in Christ in real time because one can’t trust that their faith is true at any given moment—they might just be fooling themselves and never truly believed from the start. From an Arminian perspective, if I know Christ is the risen Lord now, and trust him now, I am saved now. That is what an examination of oneself to see if he is in the faith should produce.

If any of my Arminian readers would like to chime in, I'd be blessed to hear your comments.

Zero Based Prayer

I believe we can have what we ask of God. I believe the teaching of scripture in this matter is straight forward and simple. It is in aligning a reality in which we don't always get what we pray for with that teaching that a difficulty emerges. I think that is especially true when we're convinced that our request was agreeable to God's will and we thought we asked in faith without doubting. Yet, even in those apparent conditions, some prayer goes unanswered. "Sup with that!

First, let me say that our experience here was never meant to encapsulate all that has been earned by Christ and promised to us. Immortality cannot be inherited by mortality. Oh, the blessings are our's all right, bought with the price of blood (sale complete, I might add), but they are not necessarily experienced in the here and now. The tank of God's blessings is full, but we only get the splashover here and now. That's nothing to sneeze at--no mere trifle by any stretch. The tank includes eternal, disease-free, curse-free life in which we know even as we are known. Even some fraction of that looks like a lot to me! A lot more than many folks seem to settle for.

People have asked me how I can believe I'm going to get what I ask for when there have been times when my prayers haven't been answered, or at least haven't been answered yet. When I see the awesome quality and quantity that has been established for us in Christ, I just can't get hung up on what went wrong with yesterday's unanswered prayer, I concentrate on today's problems and today's prayers. Today's promise is always, "Ask what you will..." and "with God, nothing is impossible," so why let yesterday's doubt, yesterday's weakness, or yesterday's sin rob me of God's blessing today? 

When I was studying accounting, oh, so many years ago, we were taught a concept called Zero Based Budgeting. The salient feature in that system is that there is no carry over from prior period's experience in producing the next period's budget. You start with a blank slate. I approach prayer everyday from a zero based outlook. Yesterday's failures in prayer have no effect on today's promises. So, I pray expectantly, and anticipate answers, and I get more than a few, for even though I've been known to to fail in a promise, Jesus never has!

Practical, Relational Repercussions of the Trinity

In the first verse of the “Shema,” the Bible clearly states that there is but one God, who is in himself one. The eternally self-existent "I AM" (YHWH), the Creator of heaven and earth is one, but he has further revealed himself as embodying within himself the principles of relationship and association entailed in being Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is a trinity, a unity of three persons. It is his very nature.

In some respect, we can “reverse engineer” the nature of humankind to understand the perplexing, trinitarian nature of God. We were made in the image of God, and so we are reflective of his nature, at least in some key ways. For instance, I am a father, but I am also a son, and there is a sense of me, a “vibe” let's call it, that is accessible to those around me. I am a finite and flawed reflection of the infinite God--Father, Son and Holy Spirit--in this respect.

Furthermore, when God looked at Adam, alone in the Garden, his response was that it was not good for man to be alone. Why? Could it be that since God in himself is not alone, and we are made to be like him, it was not good (i.e reflective of God) for man to be alone either? No man is an island, he was never intended to be. Humankind is made in the image of a triune, relational Godhead, and are not what they should be out of fellowship with others of their kind.

God's desire is that we would reflect him, not only in ourselves, but also with each other as Jesus stated in such soaring language in his “High Priestly Prayer.” The Trinity is not just an arcane church doctrine hammered out so long ago: it’s a practical understanding of God, and by extension, us. The relational Godhead has called us into relationship with him, like him. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is more than a formula for baptism, it’s the fundamental nature of God, and it is the relational fabric we’re being woven into as the children of God.

A Day for Father

Fathers' Day is upon us, another Hallmark moment meant to sell drivel in greeting cards--right? Primarily, yes! If we truly desired to honor our fathers (or mothers, for that matter) we'd respect them, obey them (if we're still under their roofs), and pay attention to their instruction 365 days a year. It's not like one day a year can wash out 364 days of disrespect, disobedience and disconnection. Of course, some of that is a two way street; regardless, I think you get my point.

There is one Father, I think, who gets more disrespect and neglect than all others combined. That is our heavenly Father. He's bigger, stronger and more important than all our earthly fathers, so at least some small portion among us deign to give him one day a week of props rather than one day a year. But still, doesn't he deserve more than that? Apparently, the appeal of eternity spent with the heavenly Father gains no traction with those who live for the here and now--and that includes church folk!  The masses outside don't even want to hear about the heavenly Father.

I hope you take the time on Fathers Day to communicate your love, respect and gratitude to your earthly father, if you still have him. Better yet, I hope you take the day to express the same to your heavenly Father--as long as you remember, that with God, a day is 1000 years! Everday, you see, is a day for our Father.

The Word is Sufficient to Describe God's Omniscience

What can we know with certainty about God? Is he even knowable on an objective basis? I think the answer would have to be no, at least for the natural man. There are things that are ascertainable about God by the natural man, some reasonable suppositions can be made by the natural man, but knowing about God with any accuracy, and knowing him personally are impossible to natural man.

God has intervened in and interrupted the lives of natural men in the past, which resulted in them coming to know God. Apparently, natural man is not so bereft of what it takes so as to be totally incapable of "getting something" when spoken to or confronted by God. Abraham, who is the model for all the rest of us, certainly proves the point, as do Noah and Moses.

I don't see how we can with any verifiability know or understand how God's "brain" works. How he knows all that he knows or wills what comes to pass is beyond discovering: it's just a given, part of his nature we accept without having the capacity to understand it or plumb its depths. We can know what God tells us; really, that is all we can know about God. In that sense, his Word is sufficient to bring us into the knowledge of God, at least the knowledge he would like us to have.

What does his word say about what he knows? It tells us that God's knowledge is such that he is capable of knowing things that could have happened but did not (2 Kings 13:19, I Samuel 23:12, Matthew 11:21). It tells us that we are an open book to God: that our thoughts are our thoughts and not his (Jeremiah 7:31, Isaiah 55:8-9), and yet that he knows our thoughts before we think them (Psalm 139:1-6). The word says that God knows what he knows without reference to time. In short, if it can or will be known, or even could have been known, God knows it.

How can a human truly comprehend all this, or understand it sufficiently to say how it works? We're not God--we cannot do what he does nor understand what he understands. We do have his word, however, and it tells us what we can and need to know about him. We may not be able to put all the pieces of the God puzzle together, but the word is sufficient to describe all that we can know about his omniscience.

Does Determinism Undermine Total Depravity?

Theological determinism is the thought that everything occurs because God determined it would before it did. When he actualized the creation, everything followed, and follows, the course decreed for it by God. It is a logical consequence of God's sovereignty, if freewill is not factored in. There are some subtleties and some variations that are possible, but in general, that is how I take determinism.

Total Depravity, in Calvinist theology, is the doctrine that mankind was so flawed by Adam's sin as to be rendered utterly incapable of any true good, without any ability or desire whatsoever to perceive or believe God or to walk according to his command. The doctrine is actually very similar in Armininian conceptions, except, most strikingly, that Arminians believe faith can arise in the depraved through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, whereas Calvinists believe faith cannot occur until the depraved has become the regenerated (i.e. born again).

The question that has been roiling through my brain is how the two theories can be held without excluding one another. If determinism is true, then mankind is not depraved, but is exactly, no more and no less, what God willed and wants them to be. If they are not, only he could be at fault, for only his will carries any weight!

If freewill is an illusion, then so is depravity, at least in any moralistic sense. We are merely as we are programmed to be, and do exactly what God determined for us to do. We are not incapable of walking in God's will, but in fact, whatever we do is precisely God's very will. That doesn't sound depraved to me.

I don't think anyone would posit that a furry little shrew is depraved, because it is and does what it is meant to by God's determination. If we are and do what God has determined for us, then I say, neither are we depraved. But since the scriptures are more than clear on the subject, I say determinism will have to go by the wayside.

No Parlor Tricks Necessary

Divine prescience is a difficult issue for Christians. In the Bible, God demonstrates an exhaustive knowledge of things, which from our perspective, had not yet occurred. What does that say about how the universe is actually managed by God? One approach might suggest that God foreknows what is going to happen in the universe, because it was settled before it happened; or in other words, the happenings were predetermined by God. Another approach could suggest that God foreknows what will happen strictly as a matter of awareness, or omniscience, rather than necessary causation.

Regardless of what one might theorize about prescience, we should at least be clear about this: the universe, as it is, is actively sustained by the omnipotent God. Since God is the omnipotent sustainer of all things, I think reason would come to the conclusion that everything that is and that happens is so and does so because made so by God. The problem with that viewpoint is that no matter how nicely it fits the demands of reason, it doesn't quite fit the demands of scripture (this too). It may make sense, but God says it isn't so! He does things differently than that, but separating causation from observation is a difficult knot to cut, even in our endeavors.

Since I do not know how to go toe to toe with God, my response is to take the word of the Omniscient and to adjust my view of reason so it aligns with his revelation. Some of this disconnect is attributable to God's otherliness. Time is a dimension of the creation, not the Creator. He cannot be constrained nor measured by his creation, because he is other than it, therefore outside of time. His creation can tell us lots about his divine attributes, but it cannot tell us how he interacts with spacetime.

Theorizing God's action as if he was governed, constrained or obligated by time is bound to fall short of understanding how he actually sees or does things (if the timebound even could!). All he is bound to do is what he said he will do, and all that we can know in regard to that is what he tells us. To think that God can only know something before it happens because he caused it to happen, puts God into creation's constraints and binds him with our timeline. He certainly did not reveal to us that is how he knows things, particularly concerning people!

It is simpler and more correct to posit God's foreknowledge as a consequence of his otherliness. He sees the end from the beginning, and the beginning from the end. The picture is of an incomprehensible "pan-time" viewpoint. In his timeless omnipotence he is able to grant independent willful impetus to his creatures; whereby in his omniscience, he is able to thoroughly know and understand what they will think and do, without regard to the time in which they do it. He is able to intervene, react and steer the course of events in time without getting tangled in it, though he is omnipresent.

Whereas God's foreknowledge is exhaustive, he does not rely on exhaustive determinism to make it so. He is outside of time, after all, and capable of more than clever parlor tricks!

The Passing Vanity of Evil

Jesus said, "God alone is good." What does that mean, exactly?

It certainly is saying something about ultimacy and uniqueness. Good is a value, God is so valuable in this regard as to be alone on his playing field. There is God and nothing else when it comes to plumbing the depths of that value, good. It is not said here that God is good because, or in relation to: God himself is what good is, period. So to know if something is good, lay it beside God and compare, how does it measure up to the standard.

Sometimes I think we frame our conceptions of God's virtues in the wrong way in order to "prove" that God is good (i.e. God could never do this or that, or God can not do this or that), but God does whatever he wants and there is no power in heaven or earth that can make him do other. Whatever he says or whatever he does is the very definition of good, it is the standard. He is the standard, and it is left for us to trust him.

The question of contigencies with God is inconsequential. Whether he would have or could have done something else, something better, something more or even less good, is a complete abstraction. We have what's he's said and done and that's it. Is it really possible to imagine another course for the omniscient and omnipotent? I don't have a brain that operates in that realm, does anyone? Of what value or reliability could our musings be?

I believe that good and evil and the option to do one or the other come into play only in the interaction between God and other beings having the power to will. Really, the existence of evil proves the existence of freewill! Evil only exists where a will opposing God's can be expressed, for evil is only evil because it is will expressed in opposition to his. Evil is not an independent, universal value and will not exist in eternity, it's really nothing but a passing vanity.