Evil Is Not Self-Existent

Evil is real but not self-existent. It isn't an eternal verity, it is only a passing thing, here for time, but not for eternity. If it were not so, God could not be God as presented in the Bible. Instead, god would have to be of a dualistic conception, light and dark at once.

Evil can only exist consequently. Consequent of something God did? Well, yes, but not directly. God did not breath evil into existence, did not cogitate it and then induce it. Evil does not arise from the heart of God, though evil has most certainly arisen.

Evil is not a creation of God, but a creation of creations. Evil bursts into existence when a creation created with the capacity to itself freely create, creates against the will of God. That creation can be an attitude, an action, an aim, or whatever, but to be evil it must be at odds with God--that's what makes it evil. God's response to such is corrective and terminal.

Given God's omni characteristics, if evil were allowed to continue, it would be as if he harbored evil within himself. That would be schizophrenic and impossible, for a house divided against itself cannot stand. Because God is everywhere always, evil cannot be. Therefore, God has circumscribed evil within time for a time until he deals with it eternally.

From the perspective outside of time, evil has not even been a hiccup. For us in time it seems as if evil has been around forever (and always will be), but that is only an illusion we experience from our perspective within time. Outside of time, this realm of time is not so much as even a flash. God who is always the same is there "already" at the beginning and end, whereas evil is not.

Evil is not self-existent, not eternal, and not therefore truly something. Although here and now it is real and has far-reaching consequences, in the eternal scheme of things it is as nothing. Evil is consequent (and therefore dependent) upon creatures taking free actions which are in opposition of God. Where there is no will in opposition to God, there is no evil.

Time and What Matters

I've been talking a lot about time lately. It is real, and fleeting, and overall, a bane to human existence. It is what it is, and all the wishing and wanting, hemming and hawing, ruing and grousing won't do a thing to change it. Time marches on even though we can't keep step.

These thoughts cause me to consider the two great realities upon which all the rest of life hangs.

First, God is the only reality. Nothing else exists of itself. Everything else is a wisp, a flash and a curl of smoke in the mind of God. The universe seems grand and imposing, but it's just a puff (really, of nothing). The machinations and manipulations of countless generations of those made in the image of God vainly tempting to tame the worlds are but a vanishing midst.

Second, time relentlessly, only forges forward. No repeats, no going back, no changes or exchanges, every purchase is final. Time doesn't care about one's dreams, one's loves, one's opportunities, and certainly not about one's regrets. Everyday it puts everything in the round can file and presently stretches toward the next dawn.

Simple and elegant, remarkably profound. These truths consume every other concern and issue in life. As to how, and what this means to any of us, that also seems to me simple and straightforward. So I'll let you do the math.

Shock: Maybe We're Owed A Little Something After All

We are owed nothing. We are entitled to nothing. We are in a position to demand nothing. God is under no obligation to do anything for us. If you think otherwise you know nothing.

I have run across the position of those first sentences and the attitude described in the last taken by zealous folk when discussing God. Truth be told, I may have taken it myself at one time or another. At this point in my life, however, I'm not sure it's tenable. Certainly, none of us would argue for such a position being justified among humans in positions of authority; for example, pet owners.

How could such a position be anything other than callous and oppressive for anyone in a powerful position? Claiming it for God casts him in a very Marie Antoinette-like light. I see absolutely no upside in doing so. A holy and just God merits a better defense than to be cast in that tyrannical light!

Does God not have obligations to sentient beings given his decision to create them? After all, they did not wish themselves into existence with their capacity to (even the inevitability that they would) go against God. I think God does have some responsibility, especially since such souls are eternal and risk everlasting fire. God certainly acts like he has some parental obligations. Perhaps we should take our cue from him regarding this and not press Romans 9:16-24 beyond reasonable measure.

Time continues, giving opportunity for humans to be made right. God has stamped a witness into creation and poured out his Spirit profusely. We have been given all things, including Christ, even holiness is ours if we want it. We may turn our backs upon the responsible provision of God and be left to our fate, but thankfully, God is not so callous that he didn't feel the compulsion to provide.

Foresight and Insight

Thoughtful people have been arguing about the subject of God's foreknowledge and his omniscience for ages. The wrench in the works, it seems to me, always lies in divorcing the timelessness of God's knowing from the sequence of things happening.

God sees the entirety of time, for lack of better words, all at once. He can see not only the free actions of agents in this way, but also his interventions within time along with their effects throughout time (talk about iterated loops!). Despite it appearing terribly confusing to us, God is able to put a screwdriver on the right nut in time in the way we can put one on the right bolt on a machine in front of us and adjust it's functioning to achieve our aims. Foresight.

Additionally, God knows his free moral agents transparently. He sees not only the biochemical processes that carry our soul's thoughts into the realm of physical existence, he also sees the spirit behind it all. He has a superb discernment into what we would do if our circumstances were different because he knows us, he knows what is in us. Though his knowledge of what we actually do is founded upon us doing it, there can be no doubt that he has us pegged, and can see whatever we do coming, so to speak. Insight.

There is no way to translate the scope of God's seeing and knowing into the confines of our ways of doing the same. What he tells us about himself--what he knows and sees, and what he will and will not do--are all that we have that is dependable on the subject. If one's hypothesis about these matters results in a conclusion that has God thinking, saying or doing other than what he's said of himself concerning these matters, then that hypothesis is false. Along those lines, I've come the conclusion that taken together, the biblical material dealing with such matters paints a picture of God's knowledge of the future that is best understood in overarching terms as simple foreknowledge.

The proponents of other approaches (e.g. Determinism, Molinism, Open Theism) would take exception to my conclusions, of course. Scripturally, a case can be made for and against any of those views. When varying theological conjectures arise which have this quality, it is usually because all of the views have only a piece of the puzzle without of acknowledging that the others have a piece too (note my interpretation of the timing of the Rapture). As I see it, all of them in some fashion are both right and wrong, and if so, how can any of them be true?

Foreknowledge and Counterfactuals

Counterfactual knowledge is the awareness of what would be if something other than what happened had happened--seeing, if you will, the alternate timeline that would have arisen if another choice had been made or other circumstances had existed. Is it real? It's hard to say, even in regard to God (though I will try). He is certainly analytical enough to prognosticate in that fashion (as we are under many circumstances), and he has the added benefit of being able to see everything, including our thoughts and intents and not just our outward actions.

Before we can get anywhere with this, however, we must first determine how God uses statements in the Bible we consider counterfactual. Is he actually dispensing information concerning an alternate "what-if" reality, a window on his thoughts about possibilities, or is he merely making points rhetorically? If it were any other person speaking that way we would know the answer was "rhetorical," with the all-knowing God we must pause before reaching such a conclusion. Does God know certainly what any of us would do if we were in different circumstances?

It would be easy enough to say yes, if for no other reason than not to offend God and honor our conceptions of his omniscience and sovereignty, but that isn't really the point. God is about truth, and in particular the truth he tells us about himself. Humans attributing to God what he doesn't claim for himself, even to make him appear "bigger" or "better" doesn't really honor him--at best it would be presumptuous, at worst it would be idolatrous! Is God actually, clearly telling us that he knows what we would do in any given circumstance?

There is scriptural warrant to think he does, cases in point:

Deuteronomy 31:20-22 - God knew the intents of the heart and what history those intents would end up making as a result;

Psalm 139 - God's knows the thoughts and actions of David before they occurred;
Ezekiel 3:6b-9 - God knew the hearts of Israel and took steps within Ezekiel's to counteract them;

Matthew 11:20-24 - Jesus knew that people who did not repent in the past would have repented if they had seen Christ in action. [Now, that is not to say they would have come to faith in Christ, just that the incredibly wicked would not have acted in ways that demanded their immediate destruction rather than waiting until the end of time];

John 2:24-25 - Jesus understood the inner workings of man's intents and desires, and how to thwart their consummation in action;

1 Corinthians 10:13-14 -  God knows what temptation a person can bear and does not allow more than a believer can withstand by promising an available escape.

On the other hand:
Genesis 22:12 - God had to see the determination to act and the act initiated before he could say that he knew that Abraham would not withhold Isaac;
Exodus 13:17-18 - God spoke uncertainly about what the people might do and avoided learning what they would actually do;
Deuteronomy 8:2 - God had to see the heart actualized before he knew for certain what was in it.

I don't know that God meant to establish parallel truth by making counterfactual statements in the Bible. It easy to see these statements as other than the revelation of absolute, certain descriptions of alternate reality. There are obvious other purposes to those counterfactually structured statements that may be more fundamental to their meaning than the apparent counterfactual aspect. As always in biblical interpretation, intent of the (ultimate) author is of paramount importance.

If God had to see something done before he could know it certainly, as seems to be the case in some of the texts cited above, then I think it is safe to say that counterfactuals represent the discernment of God rather than the revelation of an alternate, possible history. Is God accurate in his assessments? Absolutely, but an assessment of a person's character and reactions is not the same as the statement of fact as in a historical narrative. Therefore, counterfactuals in the Bible do not represent an unveiling of Middle Knowledge, but merely the discernment of the all-wise, all-seeing God.

Foreknowledge is based on what God actually sees outside of time, not on permutations of possibilities that he cogitated within the counsels of his own mind before he created. If we posit that God knows with certainty what we would do in any circumstance, that he deliberated through what-ifs of creaturely freedom before he chose what became, we don't have freedom but merely a different way to see Compatibilism. If God has true (that is absolutely certain) counterfactual knowledge of free human action, not founded on what humans actually did, then foreknowledge is "rigged" and compatibilism is true.

Foreknowledge, Time and Omniscience

If God is outside of time, God can foreknow exhaustively on the basis of being omniscient and self-existent, without regard to decree whatsoever. The notion that God foreknows because he has foreordained becomes superfluous, completely unnecessary. Further consideration of it as the cause of foresight can be tossed aside because it is unexplanatory. Of course, that doesn't disprove that God decrees and that is why what is so, is so, but it does remove any necessity for that decree explaining foreknowledge.

If God were instead entwined somehow in time, if there were some sense in which he abided by it, then God could not be the Holy God and the future could not be said to truly exist (to be known). In that case, God would be subject to a quality of creation, not self-existent, and would, like creation, have to wait and see. There could only be the now and the record of the past in such a situation. Any premonition or prescience, even by God, could not be taken as fact so much as prognostication.

God, in fact, sees all at once without regard to and unlimited by time and space--timeless omniscience. This must be so, no matter how hard it may be for us to envision, if God is truly self-existent. That means that God sees all time references with equal facility. Since God is apart from time, I think Simple Foreknowledge is more than adequate to account for God's knowledge of all that is and will be.

That doesn't explain counterfactual knowledge, but that will have to wait until next time...

Foreknowledge and Time

Foreknowledge, in relation to God, means that God already knows what for us is future. Time, in our experience, is linear--it moves in one direction and there's no going back. If God can foresee time that has not transpired, it means that God is either outside of time not subject to its linear quality, or it means that time is nothing more than the actuality of sequence in the unfolding decisions he has already made. Is there anything about time that might tell us how he foreknows?

The nature of time is of utmost significance in this musing. Is time something or is it merely the tape measure that connects the reporting of events? I think we have an answer to this question--not provided by the Bible, but Einstein. Einstein theorized that time was a dimension of the universe, something, part of the nature of stuff. I think that was proved when atomic clocks on the space shuttle and synchronized atomic clocks on the ground were unsynchronized by the experience of differential speed.

If time is effected by what happens to stuff, it must be part of stuff. If it is part of stuff then I think we can come to some conclusions about its relation to God. God is the creator of stuff: he is not stuff (as in pantheism), he is not dependent on stuff (he is self-existent), he is not limited by stuff (he is sovereign). Therefore, God is outside of time, with all time before him as is all creation. If God sees all creation at once without reference to location, then he sees all time at once without reference to past, present or future.

With more to say...

I Think We Need A Cold Shower!

Concupiscence refers to the passion aroused for sex--the longing that pursues and finds satisfaction in the completion of the act. Ray Romano, in Everybody Loves Raymond, serves up a workable video definition of the concept when he informs his wife that she's already activated the launch sequence. If we grant a Solomonic exception because Debra and Ray were married, then we have a picture of concupiscence. It is the arousal of desire that fixes itself upon the attainment of sex.

It is an obscure word, in Bibles only found in the King James Version, so many contemporary readers aren't even familiar with it. Modern versions of the Bible generally translate "covet," "lust," or "desire" where KJV translated concupiscence. Translators obviously felt a more general word was required, although I don't think that makes sense in Colossians 3:5 and 1 Thessalonians 4:5 (even though it does in Romans 7:8). I think the context of the Colossian and Thessalonian passages specifically includes things sexual--hence sexual arousal and desire.

Concupiscence is the very definition of how the heathen live, at least if we take our cues from the popular culture. Everything in that milieu is about sex, or more accurately, the arousal of sexual interest and its pursuit. It fills the silver screen, dominates the lyrical, and sells cars, tools, and perfume. It spills over into the church with the baptism of "romantic" love and the near universal evangelical acceptance of the cat and mouse sexual game the world is so adept at playing. I think we all need a cold shower!

Somehow Christians need to wake up from the daze we're in and realize that following Christ means not following the world. We must dare to be different, for we are a different sort in Christ. We're not called to be the versions of the worldly whose only difference from the lot is the address of our final destination. We're new creatures, with a different kind of fire, for the fire that is burning the world can only end in endless fire and is not the sort we want to share.

Sex and the Bible

Sex is a touchy subject. It's hard for me to write or say the word without blushing. I guess an older generation's sense of decorum rubbed off on me. Not to worry, it's not like the vapors are going to overcome me, so let us proceed.

For all the talk of sex these days amongst evangelicals, the Bible is really not very explicit nor exhaustive in its treatment of the subject. Its approach is not developed in detail from the ground up; but rather sex is treated as a given in human life, something assumed, and handled euphemistically with the less said the better. Generalities and principles are the best that can be inferred, and proscriptively, despite all the angst among the religious through the ages, there really isn't that much said at all. There is enough, however.

I can find but four absolute sexual proscriptions in the entirety of the Bible: homosexuality, bestiality, fornication, and adultery. The overarching principle, it seems to me, is have no sexual intercourse with any creature other than your human spouse of the opposite physical gender. There are specifics that fall under this principle such as no intercourse during menstruation or immediately after birth, and no incest (particularly cross-generational), but that's it, really. So much for the detailed lists that so many believers bandy about!

So how do so many Christians come up with so many proscriptions with so much detail? I think many rely on Natural Law. If one adopts the premise that sex is fundamentally reproductive in purpose, just about anything non-reproductive could be considered willful and ultimately sinful. Masturbation and birth-control are examples of such issues, though neither is ever mentioned in the Bible.

Other proscriptions are clearly man-made and cultural. Specific sexual practices or approaches to the act are most certainly never mentioned in scripture, but that hasn't stopped people authoritatively listing dos and don'ts that do not appear there. What I think can be said in light of what has been said is that whatever a husband and wife wish to do in regards to the subject is up to them. As long as they are agreeable it's nobody's business but theirs.

I wish the subject stayed that way. We are an oversexed culture! What ever happened to less is more? I think the relative biblical silence on the subject ought to tell us something in and of itself, especially today--we think too much and speak too much about sex. And that's just from the pulpit!