The Deliberative Stranger

According to my rational, human understanding, God, in knowing all that could transpire, determined what would transpire by speaking the cosmos he foresaw into being. Inexorably, unavoidably, all will happen as it does because God, foreseeing all that would occur, actualized that world and thereby made it so. Now, that is not to say that all will happen in that world necessarily, because God decreed it so as an expression of his sovereign will. God actualized a universe which contained agents who had the God-like freedom to act according to their own wills. God merely foresaw how those agents would act in their freedom, and set in motion the reality that produced the effect he foresaw.

Except that...

In the scriptures, we see God seemingly making real time decisions and adjusting his action and response on a basis other than his foreknowledge or omniscience. That can be sloughed off as anthropomorphisms, or as metaphorical portrayals, but that undermines the reliability of the word (not that there are not figures in the Bible properly understood as such). If the Bible presents God responding to contingencies as if they cause him regret or that they were never part of his thinking, then we must admit that there is a strangeness in how God interacts with creation. Logically, there is no way an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being would be caught by suprise, or get stuck saying, "Shucks, why did I do it that way?" If the Word says that is so, what can that mean?

God certainly has the ability to plan--he sees the end from the beginning. We are clearly told in the Word that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, and that grace was given to us in Christ before times eternal. Before reality and the willful acts of man gave rise to the need, God already established in his own deliberations the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. And yet, God often interacts with creation in a way that is commensurate with its time-boundness rather than his timelessness. It leaves one scratching his head in wonder, and me wondering if one more name can be added to those God already has: The Deliberative Stranger.

The Failure of Preterism in the Olivet Discourse

Important aspects of the Olivet Discourse which factor into this article:

1) The occassion of the discourse was a question from the disciples after Jesus stated that not one stone would be left upon the other in Herod's Temple complex. Though Luke and Mark record virtually the same question, the detail of the question in Matthew tells us most specifically what was asked, and what Jesus was responding to. Matthew's question: "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" directs us to the end of time rather than to 70 CE.

2) The woe upon the pregnant and nursing seems clearly to refer to the same circumstance in all three accounts, and therefore can serve to "align" the details of three accounts. In doing so, it makes Luke's unique language describing the misfortune coming upon the Jews and Jerusalem merely a different description the same events presented in Matthew and Mark. Therefore, there is no description whatsoever in the Olivet Discourse of events occurring in 70 CE.

Specific Prophecies that Prevent a Preterist Intepretation

• "The beginning of birth pangs" in regard to earthquakes in various places, famines, and plagues seems a lot to jam into the space of time from 30 to 70 CE
• "A great falling away" which never occurred before 70 CE
• "The Gospel preached to every nation," which only now is a possibility ("then the end will come")
• "The Abomination of Desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel" has not been fulfilled yet
• "Great tribulation like never before and never again" could in no way describe events before 1940 because of the nature of the Holocaust
• "Immediately after the tribulation of those days" could not have happened before 1940
• "The Son of Man comes in the clouds" has not occurred even yet
• "Angels gathering the elect" (from the earth and heaven) has not occurred yet
• "When we see all these things happening, this generation will not pass until all these things take place" binds the prophecies in the discourse into a unit (at least from the gospel being preached to all nations) that will be seen in its entirety by the generation that sees these signs

A preterist interpretation of the Olivet Discourse is unwarranted and untenable. The Olivet Discourse starts with some general discriptions of what history would hold for the disciples until the end came. The end itself would not come before the Gospel had been preached to all the nations, and when the end finally came, it would be most saliently signified by the Abomination of Desolation which is described by Daniel. The end itself, is nothing other than the Return of Christ, and that just has not happened yet!

Questions from God

Do you trust me?  Will you bet your life on it?  Will you follow me as a result?

What God is after, why God made mankind the way he did, why things happen in historical time as they do is that God has a desire for mankind that requires the right answer to these kinds of questions from God. If one sincerely answers, "yes," God can share himself with that person. If one does not, he or she cannot be trusted with God's image, freedom, or even life itself, and will ultimately be contained and confined in a way not repulsive to God's omniscience.

The Bible demonstrates this from God's testing of Adam to Jesus' dealings with his disciples. God is looking for a response from people that demonstrates their "yes." What God is endeavoring to achieve is not the kind of thing that can avoid choices and the freedom to make them, for God's image cannot be God's image apart from freedom and choice. Within the Trinity, there is always a yes between the persons of the Godhead, there needs to be a yes between our persons and God's.

Calvinism is totally out to lunch when it comes to any understanding whatsoever about God's intents and purposes. The system doesn't begin to understand what we are here for, what God is trying to achieve or how. It is astonishing to me that it is considered intellectual in some corners when it is so fundamentally ignorant! On top of that, it assaults the character of God, making him out to be someone who cannot rise above the level of playing with toy soldiers.

God made mankind to know him, to walk with him, and to experience life along the the lines that he does. The agreement within the Trinity is a picture of what it takes for distinctive people to be able to do that. What must be understood and remembered is that as God puts the questions that matter to mankind, only faith in God can provide the answer he's always looking for.

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.