Philetus said:
Is there a choice to be made as to who or what we serve? And who makes that choice and when? You cannot avoid the question by simply dismissing it. Freedom to choose your master is freedom no less and limiting choice to two fractions does not eliminate it. Call it ‘limited authority to disobey’ or anything you like. It remains that God’s created beings distort His image by trashing themselves and God either allows it or causes it. Whether we live in the first century or the twenty-first, with or without the influence of Augustine or Plato, the issue is real. God either causes or allows sin.
My question to you, Philetus, is whether you see that choice being made by the will or through action, for it would seem to me that you see the "choice" being equated to will (what one desires) and what I see is a choice made through action (what one does). You are equating the choice to free agency (will) while I'm equating the choice to contingency (action dictated by the will of another). So in essence I see on option (not so much a choice) to either live in obedience to God or to live in obedience to sin. It is not a choice, per se, for one's complicitness with one master or the other is entirely wrapped up in one's actions, whether intentional or not. One is guilty of sin (one is still distorted) even though one's sin comes as a result of being enslaved (or being tricked by the cunning of another). Sin need not be intentional, for sin has a will that overshadows the will of the individual; and if we live by our will (by our own "cunning") we end up submitting our will to distortion, for we are not the authors of ultimacy in the Creation.
That said, the issue is not whether God "causes or allows sin" as you put it. That is to give sin a reality that it really does not have. Sin is not ontologically independent. As I have said repeatedly, sin is a distortion of the good, and as a distortion is a parasite to reality. It cannot sustain itself. Its reality is utterly contingent upon God and upon the Creation. And because it is so utterly contingent, it is not a threat to either God or the Creation. The only reason we would perceive sin as a threat is only because we have submitted to its distortion (and believed its lies of immortality), for the only power of sin is to destroy. But if we, who are in Christ, recognize our mortality (our contingency in this world upon God), and if we repent of our "grabbing for power and life," then we will also recognize that the power of those who distort this Creation leading to destruction is only a power for their own destruction. For once the sinful have destroyed the very thing to which they are a parasite, they have ultimately brought about their own destruction. God neither causes nor allows sin. Sin is caused by our disobedience to God, and a rejection of God's will for the Creation. And though sin has entered into this world, God has not allowed it to continue (for had God done such a thing, God would have allowed the Creation to reach its proper end in that action, i.e. destruction, a return to the void from which it was drawn). But God has allowed no such thing, and certainly is not the cause of it. God has sent God's Son into the world, so that through God's Son the world might be saved (that is the entire cosmos which was on the path to its own destruction). In Christ the power of sin is utterly defeated (and the war is won, for the battle which was fought ended in the enemy falling on his own sword). God raised Christ from the dead, showing that the destruction which is seen as powerful in this world is no power at all, for what sin destroys God can raise in new life!
Philetus said:
No one is suggesting that ‘freedom of will’ transcends God’s sovereignty. Of course it is only as God ordains. And yes, exercising that limited authority contrary to God’s intended purposes for all creation is bad. It is sin. Recognizing our limitations as humans does not satisfy the question. Open theists do not besmirch the character of God by suggesting we can save our selves independently. We are masters of Creation with liberty to name its animals but without freedom to serve our Master? Hog wash! We can cut down too many trees in the forest and pave a parking lot, but cannot with the aid of the Holy Spirit choose to serve the Creator? We can harness the energy of the atom but cannot recognize the potential for either good or harm? In all we do, it is up to us to decide who we serve! If that isn’t freedom of will, however limited, tell me what it is. I agree that true freedom is service as Paul points out in Romans 12. Being set free to worship God by offering ourselves in reasonable service is freedom. I’ve got a relationship with God in Christ that I did not have before the Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and I repented. You can call it what you want. I call it reconciliation between two parties with previously differing wills. Now we work together where before I worked in opposition. God really doesn’t need my help, doesn’t treat me like a servant either … He calls me son. If you are jealous … take it up with your Father. I’m enjoying the working relationship.
You are missing the point, however, in all of this. You have no "freedom of will." Your will is in slavery to sin (at least if you are not in Christ). And if you are in Christ your will has been released from the chains under which it was held. Either way your will has not been active in any of this. You were enslaved against your will, and against your will you have been set free (for those who are enslaved to sin have set themselves against God). Yet though our will was against God, God did the very thing we least wanted God to do, and that was to love us. When you call God your "enemy" you don't want God as your enemy to lay down his life for your sake, for that undermines the very reality to which you had subscribed. And once God has done this act, you are no more. The enemies of God are no longer enemies of God (for in essence he has called us friends). Jesus calls out on the cross, "Father forgive them, for they are slaves (they don't know what they are doing)."
You see, there is one element of your own conversion that you have failed to explain, you were "convicted by the Holy Spirit." In other words the very message of the gospel went out and you could no longer refute the truth. It wasn't that you chose to follow God now (in your own will). God revealed to you just how empty your will had been, and showed you as who you really were, God's Creation (which you had never ceased to be). And those who reject the truth also show themselves for who they really are, the very people who have utterly distorted themselves beyond recognition. It is not that God desired for them to be that way (God would have desired for them never to have been enslaved in the first place). But God is very patient with even the most stubborn, and it is their own stubborness that leads to their destruction (they hold onto the empty reality that God has shown for what it really is). Notice that the destruction of the people after the opening of the 6th seal of the scroll in the Book of Revelation does not come by God's hand (for God is revealed in the slain lamb; the lion of Judah is expected, and he shows himself as a lamb who should be dead). And the people who continue to put themselves against God crawl into the caves and cry out "Fall on us, hide us from the
terror of the lamb." (ooooooooo, AHHHHHHH). The irony is almost too much. It is God in the garden all over again, the God who asks the most telling question, "Where are you?" It is the image of the Father waiting patiently for the return of his son. Yet the children have hid themselves from the Father, thinking they had something to hide from him, thinking that God was against them. Yet God only asks that they see the truth and return to him.
Philetus said:
Words matter! You might want to read more carefully. But, words are not enough. You make too much of it. You seem to be hung up on or driven up the wall by words. Get past the words and live. In your eagerness to return to a pre-modern world view, don’t trash the relationships others are enjoying. I did not place the characteristics of God in opposition to one another. You make a big leap of assumptions. I didn’t call you out of the mucky-muck … I invited you into it. Again as Clete has pointed out, you avoid the question and go off on so many tangents it is unreal. You have been drinking too much home brewed neopla-tionic and keep accusing everybody else of it.
In your arrogance not to see the sins of the modern world, look at the suffering of those around you and see that you are complicit in it. Your relationship with God comes at the cost of loving your neighbor. Only in love for our neighbor do we truly love God. I do not see people enjoying relationship with their God. I see the millions and billions of people who are enslaved in this world because of a select few who want to enjoy their "relatedness" to their God without seeing Lazarus who sits at their gates begging for crumbs from the table. I see neurotic Christians who at the first plague of guilt must question once again whether they are saved! I see people who are so wrapped up in their own "personal relationship with God" that they fail to see their continued slavery in the sin of the world! I "see" a church that has become invisible, because its only aspect in this world is in the "personal convictions" of its supposed members! You want to accuse me of idealism! I go to India with a group of Christians (who I love dearly as my friends from College), and they all have a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." Yet we arrive in India, and their actions are quite other. Tell me, Philetus, about this, when a group of Christians goes to an orphanage in India and begins to make little crafts for the kids there, only for me to discover that the crafts that we were making were "Made (manufactured) in India," and as I asked them to think about the realities of this no one even cared. Does our "good intention" in trying to entertain these children cover up the fact that materials we use were made by the parents of these children, parents who could not afford to care for their children because of the low wages given to them by the factory? My Christian brothers and sisters claim "relationship with God" and yet that relationship allows them to sit like the rich man at the table without even considering the poor Lazarus at the gates. All they said was "good intentions, good intentions, good intentions" which would allow them to ignore the question I had raised. And all of this in their "relationship with Christ"? What about the fact that the same group who had been told specifically to eat whatever was put before them refusing to eat the meal that this family (who was taking care of 8 orphans, children that weren't their own) had prepared for our group (a group consisting of 17) out of their own funds?
You see, the "relationship with God" that we claim to have in our evangelical "freedom" in the Democratic world has brought us to the same sins of the Pharisees, who ignored the weightier portions of the law consisting of "love, mercy, and justice" to have their "relationship with God" in ritualistic "cleanliness." And if one thinks that it is only an "international problem" that is only because that one has been well-trained to ignore the poor in our world.
I do want to stress that I am not accusing you of this, Philetus. But what I want to tell you is that one can very easily have a "relationship with God" without being true.
Philetus said:
You have no idea as to my views about the incarnation and the embodiment of Christ in the Church. My relationship with God finds expression in the alley (the mucky-muck) where I both experience and represent Jesus. Of all people you cannot accuse me of reducing salvation to personal piety or an exclusively individualistic relationship. I am so far from that it isn’t even in my thinking. You assume way too much. I am crucified with Christ, and the life I continue living in the flesh (and in the world) is a testimony to the fact that the eschatological statement of Christ (which he says he will make in the future) “I was” is a present reality “I am”. This Open Theist grasps the amazingness of the gospel and sees Jesus in the hungry, the poor and the naked as much as in the gathering of servants in his name. I experience Jesus in the wretched of the earth, who are finding out through proclamation and witness that God is present seeing to their every need. Don’t make me a target for your war on evangelicalism. You will miss the mark!
Yet you continue to push eschatology into the future, though the scriptures make the eschaton realized in the church (in the people of God). The end is not awaiting the "destruction of the earth" (that would be what we would expect if God simply "allowed" sin). The eschaton is just as much now as it is future. In Christ the future is brought to us (Christ is raised). Though the "present evil age" has not come to an end, the "age to come" is already here in Christ and in his church, we who are called out of this world, to live in this world as though we are not of it (for we are not). Christ has already defeated the powers of sin. The war has been won (even as Christ continues to submit the world to God). Now is the time for the purification of God's people, so that the bride (the church) can be presented to the groom "blameless," without spot or wrinkle. We are the virgins waiting for the arrival of the groom, so that when he comes we may enter into the great wedding feast that is prepared for all of God's people. You can't just "experience Jesus in the wretched of the earth," you must become poor (you must have compassion) with them, and live as though they were the most important in this world (for they really are!!). The Kingdom has come, and there has been a great reversal (not in the future, but now). And that reversal is not witnessed in the world (which continues to live by the present evil age), but it is witnessed among God's people, in the church. A relationship with God outside of the church is no relationship at all, but a farse!
Philetus said:
The relationship I speak of is first and foremost one of experiencing Jesus in the world. In the mucky-muck that is passing away as creatures made new experience the present reality of God in Christ. It has been so long since I saw a stained glass window from inside a sanctuary that I would forget what one looked like were it not for your avatar. The fellowship I enjoy is among believers who are still in the world as the body of Christ merely informing others in word and deed by extending God’s salvation hospitality in Christ. Open View Theists enjoy a freedom that you do not even understand when you limit the view to a single question and assume we have no experience that validates our position. The new order is apparently waxing fuller than you are aware.
And yet you still put off the new order to the future for you still see God "allowing sin," and because God "allows sin" you can enjoy your "freedom" to relate to God without having to place yourself in the way of those who are in power in this world in order to protect those who have no power at all, just as my dear friends could enjoy their relationship with God (and "share" that with the poor children) without having to ask what to do about the materials they were using for that end.
I have been in the "mucky-muck" and then some. And I have even seen God working through those same friends of mine for the good. But it was not by any "will" of theirs. It was the very fact that they submitted to the church (the body of Christians who gathered in India in different places) and who taught us how to be more Christian than we could have ever imagined on our own. We went to India in order to "serve them," and the people we served ended up teaching us about Christ. Amazingly, we did not share the message of the gospel with those who were in India, but they did for us.
Philetus said:
I’m not wrong about the historical context. You are wrong in your assumptions about me. The church is present … even in the post modern world … and it still has a head … and every member has a relationship to that head and through that head to every other member. Redemption is about being added to the body as members in particular.
And yet the church remains invisible for you, for it is determined by the "conviction" of the individual members in how closely they are related to Christ, as opposed to being determined by the members being "knit together at the sinews and ligaments" who as a
body submit to Christ, and individually as members of that body. We are not in a Post-modern world by any stretch of the imagination (I doubt there are any who can actually think beyond the Modern); If anything we have jumped into lightspeed in a hyper-modern world. Redemption from this is about the Body of Christ which God has established by his Son, and which continues in the faithful who
gather in Christ. It is about a visible presence in this world; it is about a people who together produce good fruit contrasting the wickedness of the age. Oh how wonderfully Ephesians illustrates this very point. "It is by grace ya'll have been saved, through faithfulness (which isn't yall's own, it is a gift, not by (human) works, lest anyone boast). For we (all) are God's workmanship (singular) Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand
that they should be our way of life." Redemption is about the Body, which we are implored to be a part of. The testimony of Christ is born witness to in the life of the gathering, which lives faithfully in worship to the Lord. It isn't nominal; it is actual, as we submit ourselves to God's Spirit, who comes among us as a comfortor in Christ's stead (and calls us to patiently await his coming again).
Philetus said:
Don’t lecture an Open Theist about the present reality of the rule of God in Christ. I live in the modern world, the present, and in the reality of Christ. It is here and now that the truth of God rings clear. The evidence is all around. I don’t know who your beef is with but you are missing your target by a million miles with me. I’m not into churchianity. I am one in the world sharing in the suffering of Christ for the world in growing conformity with his death, experiencing the power of His resurrection with others being changed into his likeness in all the freedom of Christ …. Today!
Then don't push the eschaton off into the future (as if the age to come had not already begun in the church); and recognize that the power of God is not to change people's hearts (seeing how peoples hearts are swayed by food and entertainment; Ceasar could change people's hearts; the leaders of the US government can change peoples hearts, as Bush is illustrating to us quite well). No, God's power is in the life, death and resurrection of God's Son, who establishes a faithful people in this world to testify by their actions to the present reality of the Kingdom that even as it is now still is still hoped for to come in its fullness. "Experiencing the power of Christ's resurrection" comes as we submit ourselves to the people that God has established in this world (and as they submit to Christ as a body). This is not a personal relationship. There are no individual martyrs (despite what the Roman Catholic Church might say). Martyrs are only what they are (witnesses) in the plural, just as saints only have a reality as a body of saints (because any one saint is quite blemished).
You can pretend that you are not affected by the Modern World (that you can just live within yourself in a different way, by your own personal acts of piety and charity, sustained by your own personal conviction for the Lord). But the reality is that you as an individual are a member not of Christ but of this world (a world that is passing away). So if you are to be found in Christ, you must be found in the Body (just as it is for me). But as long as the body remains invisible we as a church will continue in falsity and in danger of our own destruction (especially if we continue to believe that it is our "freedom" in Democracy to do so).
Peace,
Michael
