What Kind of God has a Satan? – The Nature of the God who has an Adversary.
By Jack Hoehn: Preface: Seventh-day Adventists throughout the world are presented in 2016 a series of lessons on sin and salvation, or as the official Sabbath School lessons are titled, “Rebellion and Redemption” by David Tasker edited as usual by Clifford Goldstein (uninterrupted editor for the last 17 years). What follows comes from a Sabbath School Class I co-teach at Walla Walla University SDA church where we take an hour to deepen the topics suggested by the GC lessons. I have an excellent book by Gregory A. Boyd, “SATAN AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL—Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy” published by IVP in 2001 as a key resource in thinking about the kind of God the Bible reveals who permits a real adversary in His universe. Many of the Bible texts used in this study were suggested by Pastor Boyd’s book. But their use and the conclusions of this article are my responsibility.
Why Does God Permit a Wicked Foe?
By the time of the Biblical Daniel or even earlier, a Persian poet and religious leader presented Darius, Cyrus the Great, Ahasuerus (also known as Xerxes or Artaxerxes) with a religious understanding of the universe late known as Zoroastrian belief. These beliefs included that there was one Creator God (Ahura Mazda) who was the originator of everything, including “Truth.” But this Creator had a powerful opponent (Angra or Aka Mainyu) an evil spirit also known as “The Lie.”
Jesus uses the same Zoroastrian title for God’s opponent in John 8:44 when he says, “(The Devil) was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies he speaks his native language, for he is a Liar and the Father of Lies.”
So what kind of Universe do we live in, and what kind of Creator has made or permits an Adversary? How can the Truth permit perpetuation of The Lie? This is not a new question. The prophet Habakkuk (Chapter 1:1-17) also living in the time of Zoroaster thought (?610 BC), asks the same questions.
“My God—Holy One….You are from Everlasting—You will never die…Your eyes are too pure to look on evil…You do not tolerate wrong…” so Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Why must there be conflict? Why do you tolerated the treacherous? Why do you have “a wicked Foe?”
David puzzles in Psalm 5, “You are not a God who is pleased with wickedness; with you evil people are not welcome. The arrogant cannot stand in your presence. You hate all who do wrong; you destroy those who tell lies.” So why does this good God permit the murdering Lie to exist?
Dual, but not Dualism
Are Good and Evil co-eternal and equals? Is the Benevolent always balanced by the malevolent? Do we have di-theism, two gods in eternal rivalry and opposition, good and evil; light and dark; white and black; creative and destructive; God and Satan with the Devil separate from God as an independent deity?
Let C.S. Lewis guide us through this question (Mere Christianity, page 50).
“I freely admit that real Christianity…goes much nearer to Dualism than people think. The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christians agree with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.”
God before All
Let’s remind ourselves of God’s primacy.
Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning-God.”
Deuteronomy 10:14 “To the Lord your God belong the heavens…the earth and everything in it.”
Psalm 135:5,6 “The Lord is great…greater than all gods. The Lord does whatever pleases him, in the heavens, on the earth, in the seas and all their depths.”
John 1:1-3 “The Word was God…without Him nothing was made that has been made.”
Ephesians 1:9-11 “He has made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure…according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will…” Colossians 1:16,17 “…things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
Knowing the End but not controlling the Middle
God knows the End from the Beginning (Isaiah 46:10). All wise, all good, all powerful, the end of the conflict between good and evil is known to God and revealed by Him to us. But knowing the outcome and that He will prevail is not the same as knowing how the battle will run to get there.
Whatever it takes for love to overcome hatred, whatever it will take for good to overcome evil, whatever it will take for life to overcome death, that the infinite God will do. He will prevail. But that does not mean He controls and manipulates the battle. Whatever evil presents, God will fight. Wherever darkness falls, light will shine. Whatever lie is told, truth will triumph. God is in charge of His responses, but God is not in charge of the evil, death, darkness, or lies. In a world of true freedom what happens in the battle is not under God’s control, only subject to God’s response.
Not all Christians understand
When confronted with tragedies such as crippling accidents, natural disasters, cancers and so forth, many Christians respond by uttering truisms like, “God has His reasons.” “There’s a purpose for everything.” “His ways are not our ways.” This is similar to what St. Augustine taught, “Nothing happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen.” And suffering Christians try to find consolation in the thought that their oppressors could not have victimized them as they did, unless God allowed it for a greater good. John Calvin urged believers who fell among thieves or wild beasts to, “consider that all events are governed by God’s secret plan.”
But isn’t a “secret plan” of God’s that little children suffer and die, or girls are raped and tortured, or that drunk drivers, fundamentalist terrorists, and murdering police are sent to “bring a greater good” would be seen as a cruel and hateful plan, unless you tacked the word “God” onto it? You may wish to get God off the hook by saying, God does not cause these things, but He merely permits them. But if I permit what I have power to stop, am I not as culpable as if I did them myself?
God frustrated and not in control
While Scripture emphasizes God’s ultimate authority over the world, it also emphasizes that agents whom God has created can and do resist His will. Scripture does not teach that God controls all the behavior of free agents, whether human or angels.
While God’s general will for world history cannot fail, His particular will for individuals often does fail. God is striving, fighting, warring against rebellion. He is not in control of events, although He will prevail in the end. Until the end, there is real warfare going on and things happen God not only did not plan, or permit, that that truly frustrate and grieve Him. If you read the Bible seriously, you will find a frustrated God, not an in control of events God.
Genesis 6:3-6 shows that God’s “heart was deeply troubled” by human violence and sin. Isaiah 36;7-10 reveals he was “distressed and grieved” by Israel’s failure. Luke 7:29,30 says that religious leaders rejected God’s purpose for them, as Stephen said to enraged church officials (Acts 7) “You resist the Holy Spirit and have not obeyed.” Hebrews 3:10,11,17 says this frustration of His will and rejection of His plans by free agents makes God angry! Grief, frustration, anger are not responses of a God in control of everything, they are the response to choices and actions and events not at all under God’s control.
A figure of speech?
If you tell me you are angry, laughing, jealous, rejoicing, hating, mourning should I tell you, no you are not really feeling that, that’s just a figure of speech. If 17 children are buried alive by a mudslide in Mexico can you deny the parents their emotions? If terror murder a beloved wife or husband or daughter or son in San Bernardino, Oregon, Paris, or New York City, shall I deny the truth of your emotional state? Then why when the Bible is explicit about God having these same emotions (Deuteronomy 9; Psalms 2,7,11,78; Proverbs 6; Exodus 20; Zephaniah 3) do we claim, well God does not really feel those emotions, that is just an expression the writers used? What if in fact the emotions we feel are simply a small, imperfect, and distorted reflection of the great and holy emotions God feels when His will is not done? Our anger is corrupt, but God’s anger is rooted in divine justice. God’s anger is perfectly righteous and predictable, never capricious or malicious. In God’s anger, He never sins. But His anger is more real than our anger, not less real. His joy is more real than our joy, not less real, and His grief is more real than our grief, not less real.
Why did Jesus teach us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth” if everything that happens, good and bad, already is God’s will? The simple answer is, because it isn’t!
Why take the risk?
How is it then that God created a world in which He must genuinely fight to accomplish His will and in which His will is in fact often thwarted? Why has He created a world that is so radically out of sync with His character? Why risk a Satan?
LOVE.
Dante’s Divine Comedy reminds: “The greatest gift that God made in creation, and the most formidable to His goodness, and that which He prizes the most, was the freedom of the will.”
And C.S. Lewis supports: “Free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give [creatures] free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”
So a God, who does not change, created beings who can change, because Love must be chosen. Creatures capable of Love must be capable of saying no. The Bible teaches two truths about God.
- God wants all to be saved and enter into a loving relationship with Himself. (2 Peter 3:9)
- God knows that many will not do that and will not be saved. (1 Peter 3:20, Matthew 7:13, 22:14)
This leads to the conclusion that if God could have created a universe in such a way that all would say yes to Him and no one would be lost, He would have done so. The fact that He did not, suggests that it is not possible.
Love cannot be forced. Powerful people may be able to force others to do just about anything. Through psychological or physical torture, they may succeed in forcing them to curse their own children, abandon their parents, or deny their faith. They may even succeed in forcing others to act and say or do “loving things” to them. But no one can force another person to actually love them.
“The Liar” versus God
The theme that underlies Jesus’ entire ministry is the assumption that creation has been seized by a cosmic force and that God is now battling this force to rescue His creation. Every exorcism and healing marked an advance towards establishing the kingdom of God against the kingdom of Satan.
(John 12:31) The Prince of This World is to be driven out.
(John 14:30,31) The Prince of This World has no hold over me.
(Luke 4:5,6) The Kingdoms of this world belong to Satan.
(1 John 5:19) The Lie has the whole world under his control.
(Ephesians 2:1-5) The disobedient spirit is the ruler of the kingdom of the air.
The Battle is real and we are not safe
The greatness of God is not as a grand puppet master, but as the creator of a Universe that can oppose Him, seemingly true both of spiritual or angelic powers, and material or earthly creatures. And the Bible does not show God as sitting back letting rebellion have its way, but actively participating in the battle, limited by the freedoms He has designed the creation with. This suggests God knows what I might do, and knows what He will do no matter what I choose, but that my choice is not predetermined. And my participation in following or not following God’s will does very much affect the outcome of the battle or the part of the battle I am privileged to fight in. My actions have consequences, and those consequences are my choice, not God’s choice.
Evil is not of God, it is of God’s creature Satan and our human ancestors who elected to submit to the Lie. Instead of preventing evil God fights it. We are not safe in this battle. There is no assurance we will not be injured by forces and agents against God’s will for us. It is our duty to do all we can to fight evil, not by passive acceptance of what comes, but by active opposition to evil by means spiritual and physical. It is not enough to pray for protection, we need to put on our seat belts, wear bike helmets, get vaccines, take antibiotics, and lock our doors. And get out and vote. Also it means this SDA church can be victorious, but it is not God who will determine that, it us we church members and leaders who will follow the Lamb or follow our fears and yesterday ideas. If we fight with 18th century weapons a 21st century battle, we should not expect to win. What was God’s advice then, is not necessarily God’s advice now, circumstances change, God’s enemies change. God’s church needs to adapt to new circumstances as God leads us forward.
Yet we need not fear
Jesus promises his disciples trouble on earth, but does not want us to be sad about it.
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! (Be of good cheer!) I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Jesus knows we will have losses, but promises a day of recompense.
“And Jesus answered and said, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age…and in the age to come eternal life.” (Mark 10:29,30)
We do not fight alone.
“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in His love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)
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(Comments are open and will not be edited for this article.)
Next time: Did this war begin in Eden or before Eden?
(Our exploration of the 2nd lesson will study this true battle (great controversy) in historical and pre-historical contexts.)
Dr. Hoehn,
Your essay ignored Jesus Christ words: Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain:… While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. It is He, not us, that chooses. It is He, not us, that keeps us.
Jesus’ words encapsulate the entire story of Israel. God has chosen for Himself a people. God has chosen a man, Abraham. He has chosen Isaac, not Ishmael, Jacob not Esau. (Rm 9) It is God’s will, his hand, that turned the evil intended Joseph into Israel’s deliverance. God is hardening the heart of Pharaoh in unbelief so He can multiply his wonders and deliver Israel with a mighty hand. And it is His will that they should not enter in, but their carcasses rot in the wilderness in unbelief.
We have free will. We exercised it. We chose to believe the serpent who beguiled us. We said ‘yes’ to what God said, ‘no’ to. And the day that we ate of that fruit we surely died. That is what our free will has chosen: death.
Jesus Christ was predestined; the Lamb slain from the foundation of the earth. Dr. Hoehn, how can you write an essay about the nature of God and completely ignore His incarnation? The One who said: “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”
If we have free will, which we do, then God’s choosing was that we choose, not He. God choose not to make the choices. He choose the wild, the unpredictable, the free and untidy universe we inhabit.
Of course God chooses those who choose Love, and his Love hardens those who don’t choose Love, as the sun melts butter and hardens clay.
The difference between our choosing and God’s choosing is we choose imperfectly. But I don’t think God’s perfect choosing is in control of the events of life. He has chosen to let His creatures control this Universe, under the rules of the laws of nature and the requirements of self-sacrificing love. Jesus in his incarnation of the Father doesn’t show us a puppet master of life, but a mighty warrior working against the reality of an adversary, working with us in the reality of a truly free and contingent universe.
So all that business about God doing the choosing I read about in the bible is wrong?
I said we have free will. The bible says we used our free will to choose death. We used it to say ‘no’ to God and to life. When we said ‘no’ God said ‘yes’ to us in the gift of Himself, Jesus Christ. God is totally free. He chose to redeem us from the awful consequences of our free will untethered from God.
Jesus Christ is revealed as the Son of God, risen from the dead, the King of Israel; we have seen Him. Why do you keep talking about a puppet master?
There is an inadequate perception of God as sovereign over all that happens. That if I have a flat tire, God felt it best for me to have a flat tire. If I suffer a disease, either I did something wrong or I am being punished for my own good. This mis-perception of God as responsible for all that happens, instead of a God who responds in a loving way to all that happens, is what I am promoting. This is the God of openness, of power to save, of infinite wisdom and perfect love, but who does not “pull the strings” of events except by the moral means of urging, encouraging, argument, and appealing to reason and emotion to obtain human cooperation. God did not let your toast burn this morning, you did. God did not choose malaria to make you suffer, Satan did.
Dr. Hoehn,
You are repeating yourself. What about all the places in scripture where it says God, not we, is doing the choosing? Jesus Christ says, not only that He chooses us, but that we do not choose Him. He ordains us to bear fruit. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” Let’s discuss the scriptural texts that contradict your theory. I have no quarrel with you over who burnt the toast.
“Many are called, but few are chosen”.
“Calling and election are not one and the same thing.” EGW
“Make your calling and election sure.” Peter
End the end, God chooses those who respond.
Bill,
What does Jesus Christ mean when he says, “You did not choose me”.
The idea of a vine branch choosing the vine is contradicted by the Father removing the unfruitful branches. Jesus says, “I have ordained you to bear much fruit” Again it is Jesus Christ determining, willing, ordering, that we bear much fruit. He doesn’t say: “I command you to bear much fruit.” We are His and He has ordered things so we will bear much fruit. He commands His chosen ones to love one another, even as He has loved them. It is in loving one another you, make your calling and election sure.
Jack Responds: William, Of course we disciples didn’t choose our Savior, God the Father willed the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the earth.
He was slain to make it possible for us to choose Salvation, but we can’t choose how to be Saved. We can’t choose Mohammed or Buddha or Ted Wilson to save us, We didn’t choose Jesus to be our Savior. But we can choose which one to follow, and which one to serve. We choose the offered salvation or we reject it. That is the freedom we have. There is no conflict between what we can and what we cannot choose. We can not choose not to be born, not to be the children of our parents, not to live where we live. But we can choose. And if we consent we will be grafted into the vine, thank God. That is a wonderful contingency.
We are all chosen to be saved. Our choice, as I see it, is when we reject God’s mercy.
What a joy it is to read something that is well thought out and refreshing, and is particularly relevant and useful, today in the Sabbath School Lesson study. Thank you Jack!
I hope that the proud mention of Canada as your birthplace, will encourage other Canadians to come forward during these “difficult times”. (smile)
As you imply, it is time for others to take up Clifford Goldstein’s task. Seventeen years and counting is way too long.
The Zoroastrian explanation indicates all explanations of duality (or its cousin, dualism) are blah blah blah, along with the current Christian version of it. In other words, there is no real explanation for the part of God and human behavior called evil, or sin, in Christian lingo. It may well be the best there is. Jack’s precis of it as fine as any I have seen. But it isn’t good enough.
1. The theory doesn’t change anything as death still occurs with “evil” resident, unchanged in human life as it always has from the birth of mankind
2. In either case of duality, God is weak, explained by the contrived device of “free will.”
3. God’s approval of a “wicked foe” means he approves our suffering without guilt
4. God’s approval of “wickednes” while hating it is a character flaw not even excused in human thought, we are better than him
5. An uncontrolled “Middle” by God means he is inept and really has no control of either end
6. God’s will outlined in this theory has failed; its perpetual delay is an excuse extended by kind humans to cover his frailty
Christians claim the arrival of Christ in history changed everything. Really? How did the eons of prior history successfully arrive at his era without self-destruction, without his ethic? Because love has been a part of mankind as the offset to self-destruction. God as the experience of love has no “nature” to describe, no theory of redemption necessary, just an eternal magnetic existence.
Bugs, He is the God of Israel. How can Christians claim the arrival of Christ changed everything, when they claim Christ is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the earth?
Bugs, “blah blah blah” is not an adequate response.
I partially agree. I’m working on a better one.
By blah blah blah, I mean there are no good explanations for God and Satan and are the devices. All are premises, simple speculation. The worst one is God as a passive onlooker of evil.
Buddhists, Hindus, Islamics, Native Americans, and countless other religious entities have versions of God unlike the Christian one. They aren’t the same.
One chooses the version of God he likes, unverifiable and unprovable. If one prefers the concept of the Great Controversy, Jacks argument is as useful as it gets.
The conception of God by the ancients survives with little noticeable adjustment for Christianity (the war version included) because there isn’t a better one. There can never be. God isn’t knowable. Conjured mental creations of him thrive with countless disparate, collective disciples. Conviction is the iron door behind which adherents convert god theory into their preferred image.
The finest rhetoric, plausible arguments, creative anthropomorphism, authoritative references, create an image, but reveal nothing but beguiling abstractions. All the works of all historical speculators fabricate nothing but opinions.
Christ was a product of Judaism and as best as can be discerned. He didn’t explain Jehovah. God as love was as far as he would go, spoken, but mostly shouted loudly by his actions.
One cohabits with the God he likes. I experience love in my life and I call that the God effect.
Jack Hoehn
I think you have made a brave attempt to summarize the problem of evil as it is presented in the Bible, coupled with the views of a couple philosophers. In my experience,SDAs are afraid to tackle this subject at such level.The following experience I will never forget . In a Bible Doctrine class, conducted by the Dean of Men,we were studying the topic of “God”. A student, who was a Catholic, asked the question: Sir, this God, where did He come from? That teacher thoroughly castigated the young man for,”asking such a disrespectful and sacrilegious question”. The young man was so embarrassed,that he kept his head down for the rest of the class period. For my part, I lost all respect for that Bible teacher from that moment. Good Adventist people must never question God, or anything about God.
How can a good God who has the power to create everything,permit the activities of a so-called Satan, as we are taught to believe, causing so much suffering and destruction and death, is way beyond our understanding. We are told that He sent His Son to die to save the world, and that salvation has indeed come; but the misery and suffering and death continue as before Calvary. We are told that God must prove His love and justice to the unfallen worlds, so the situation must continue until all of them are convinced. Why must a God who can save us the heart ache permit us to continue suffering to make a point which the Host of the universe may never understand? Some…
Something must be wrong about that explanation. Indeed, we exercise our powers of choice; but even those who choose to do right are suffering with those who do wrong. We, as wicked humans, do not mete out punishment in that fashion. No question, we must suffer the consequences of our decisions; but what we are seeing around us is that others are suffering because of our wrong choices.
It is clear to me that the stories we have about God and Satan and good and evil,do not explain the situation correctly. It may be more acceptable to say that we do not understand, than to make God appear as one who is experimenting with our life,trying out measures which fail sometimes and succeed at other times. Of course, I am not against the wave of speculation which surrounds this topic; but we must let people know that we are only speculating, and hope to get brighter light on the topic sometime later.
True, we cannot give full answers to all questions but we can make fairly informed speculation based on the many clues given us – especially by what the Biblical record retains of what I think we can consider the greatest light – Jesus’ comments on the topic. Add up all the clues and the end game described is pretty clear – certainly clear enough to give us great hope. That is the chief difference between Christianity and any of the many other philosophies or religions that try to explain things; Christianity accepts that Jesus was who He said He was, (a direct revelation of God) – others attempt to just reason it all out without the benefit of a revelation. Kudos to Jack for the interesting commentary.
Historically, the idea of “Sa-tan” originated with Zororastianism and the Jews readily adopted it as an explanation for their perspectives. There was no adversary (the meaning of Satan) to be found in much of the Torah because God was in charge of all: both good and evil. He sent the flood, he was there when people built the tower to reach the heavens; he sent the plagues of Egypt, he enacted miracles of both life and death for the Israelites; and he ordered them to kill all those who objected to their taking over the former occupants.
Not until the Persian Exile did the Bible writers introduce Satan. The error of naming Satan Lucifer was a later interpretation of the pride of the king of Tyre as Lucifer, which Jerome named the adversary in his translation.
By the time of Daniel, shortly before the Macabeean revolt, Satan was a well-known figure and in the NT he is referred to often; most notably in John’s Revelation. The serpent in Eden is never called Satan. EGW liberally copied Milton. Where would Christianity be without Satan who has become a very important person in Christianity as an antagonist.
The reason Satan is not mentioned in most of the earlier OT books is because of Exodus 23:13 and Joshua 23:7. These verses prohibit Israel from even naming the names of false gods. Leviticus 17:7 and Deuteronomy 32:17 says these false gods are actually demons. Ascribing power to these demons would have led people to believe that Yahweh was merely one God among many. However, Deuteronomy 4:35, 39 and 6:4 make it clear that God is not merely one of many gods or even the chief god in a pantheon. He is actually the only God and there are no others. The reality of Satan was more fully revealed to Israel when they were less likely to worship him as a god.
Jack- Another excellent book is “The Origin of Satan” by Elaine Pagals, published around 1995, I think.
“How Jesus Became God,” by Bart D. Ehrman is good recount of the God side of he story.
Elaine,
This is overly broad: “and he ordered them to kill all those who objected to their taking over the former occupants”
But very good: God’s sovereignty is beyond dispute in the Torah. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Michael, Bugs and William:
Karen Armstrong, Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman have contributed greatly to my understanding of Christian history. What a pity that so many view them as “atheist” writers and will have nothing to do with them. The historians recognize their scholarship and liberally quote them.
It’s disingenuous to deny that the Torah writers believed that God was in charge of EVERYTHING, including good and evil. Only much later did a new position arise and became part of Christian teaching.
All three have shaped my thinking,too, Elaine. They are not only trusted scholars- their books are not difficult to read.
Dr Hoehn, a valiant attempt to provide some understanding of good/evil existence but there is no understanding to the Christian, which brings us to reasonable understanding as to how the most powerful Creator of all things, has caused to occur in His Dominion, evil, which has brought suffering and death to every single living creature on Earth. Billions of humanity who has stained the Earth with their blood, which flows as a river. If the story line is true that Lucifer the finest, most beautiful, most intelligent being in all the universe was created with “free Will”, and seemingly everlasting life, rebelled, and had sufficient power to convince a third of all heavenly creatures to follow him into exile, then God made a tragic mistake. And then to double down by creating mankind with free will, and most it appears, refuse to honor God, and instead follow the “PRINCE of this world”, has not only created a devil, but has let him destroy his most awesome Creation in this Galaxy. The fact is i believe in a Creative talent of spectacular awesomeness in the magnificent variety of living creatures with great detailing of their individual living systems, their unique physical structures, the beauty of their markings and colors, and of course the quintessential human brain. None of this could exist without the most awesome Master Designer. We call Him God.
But what do we know of the constant battle for supremacy of Earth??? We offer
suggestions, but know “nothing certain.
Thanks Earl. I surely don’t know everything, and may have some things wrong, but I also refuse to join the “Know-Nothing Party.” I do know some things about God by education and experience. And I am sorting 69 years of study to suggest that some ideas are stronger and more satisfying than others. I welcome better explanations and stronger revelations of truth. But I am quite convinced that I serve a God who permits a Satan, who has created a universe where this is possible. I do not damn Him for this, I admire Him for this. And seek to live with the consequences of that knowledge.
Earl,
The Jews had the more rational belief: God is omnipotent and in charge, period.
But Christians constantly try to explain by dividing what is evil and what is good, an impossibility which is nothing more than humans trying to divine God. Why the need to define and explain: Let God be God and simply accept that we are helpless to prevent much of the suffering around us; but only do what we are capable ob.
Looking at the pictures of the starving children in Kenya, is heart-breaking. But there is apparently little we can do, at this time, to change things.
Elaine,
Looking at the humiliated, suffering, dying Christ and believing that He is “God with us” “God for us” is hopeful. Never avert your eyes from human suffering. But see in suffering a hopeful answer. Serve the poor and suffering as though they were God and you will have kept His commandments. God bless you Elaine as you labor for Him.
Amazingly complex logic and theories, I have some trouble keeping up but I really love this. When we get too far afield -I find myself wondering if I can believe in the God of the Bible with all this perplexity and paradox-it can bring me to what Bugs was saying-which sounds like we created God to explain the impulse for both love and hate imbedded deep within us and that God is an Idea. Jesus as the best manifestation of God that we are capable of grasping, creating a path and a hope – is what I settle back on when my mind hurts. The limit to that though,is a lack of feeling that I believe strongly enough to die for this-something that clearly Jesus and Jesus followers have and are willing to do. The party line is that the Holy Spirit moves in us to really know, really believe, really become like Jesus in a sacrificial way. In that case we wouldn’t expect logic to get us there. I have had a drop of this power in the form of recovery from alcoholism but nothing like the flood I would think I would need to stand with martyrs in Syria and say I will let you kill me for my belief and love you while you are doing it. How does one get from here to there? Then I rest and say, keep it simple, do justice walk humbly,love mercy-in my present state that is hard enough.
God reveals to us all that we need to know about Himself and His government to make a viable response to what He reveals and then be held accountable for how we respond.
This is the foundation of the kingdom of God. Every attack on God and His kingdom attacks this truth in some way or another. There are plenty of enigmas in the bible about God and His sovereignty. But no excuse will be acceptable because of the enigmas. We know enough to be held accountable and we better reason from this reality and not try to excuse ourselves because we don’t “know it all”.
When they ask Mark Twain about the things he didn’t understand in the bible and the difficulties of finding a perfect continuity and if that bothered him about knowing God, he responded, “It is not the things I don’t understand in the bible that bother and worry me, it is the things I do understand that really bother me.”
A very wise response to a difficult question and concept. People may think they have found an “out” for their immorality and rejection of God’s word, but will find in the end, they have only fooled and deceived themselves. In the final judgment, we will be judged by what we did understand or had a clear opportunity to learn and refused to know and the lost will admit they knew, but simply refused to confess it. As Luther said, “You can’t fool God, He knows what you know.”
We only lie ourselves and others when we pretend we don’t know.
Maybe Mark Twain would have been more truthful if he had said, “…it is the things I think I understand that really bother me.”
Jack, your explanation leaves open the possibility that Satan could triumph in the battle. In fact, he already has when the evidence is measured using the criteria at hand. If you credit the mayhem visited on the earth throughout its history, (with no evidence to support any current improvement) to its source, it can’t be a good God.
The argument that the battle isn’t over and the outcome for good is assured begs the question. A good God could kill the damn devil without the need for an explanation, without the imagined impediment farce of free will, and if necessary, start over. We all die anyway, he could implement an acceleration, and put us out of our misery. That would be an admission of failure, but no worse than now. In your scenario he is powerless against Lucifer and is overpowered by our presence.
The truth is, there is no good explanation for chaos, evil, sin. All explanations are salve for the existential hole in our soul, manufactured in the human mind for relief. So we are stuck in our own devices by the mystery of our existence.
I have no better explanation than you, Jack. Any I could contrive or embrace would be in my estimation, as faulty as yours. What I do know is that my conditional existence is no different than all others alive or passed. There is no factual proposition that delivers me from the end of all others.
CONTINUED. So I am helpless. No, not quite. Mankind has experienced love from day one, apparently. Christ identified that as knowing God. I accept that experience as my soul salve, explainable, simple.
My math teacher told me I was making it too hard. I later told myself Christianity was making it too hard. So I chose simple. I realized one can’t know what is unknowable. Self-deception is the violation of that reality.
If one ignores the barnacle laden barge of theology created post resurrection and concentrates on what Christ taught in word and deed one can ferret out a reason to live, a healing of the soul hole. It results in living joyfully without need for answers or proposals of solving the unexplainable. The pretense of knowing the end from the beginning is unnecessary, in addition to being unavailable. What is available is human relationships and therein is the crux of Christ’s mission. His advice was to love each other as he loved his disciples.
When I see a child in dads arms, both giggling in joy, I have observed and experienced Love, I am lifted in spirit. Everywhere I turn I see Love and I am renewed in joy. I am satisfied if that is all there is to be alive, it is good enough. There is a heavenly segment of my heart that is continually activated by my experiencing Love. And I will go into that “dark night” with a light in my soul trusting that Love to be the eternal answer, if there is one.
Impossibly simple for theologicrats.
This line: “I accept that experience as my soul salve, explainable, simple,” should read: “I accept that experience as my soul salve, unexplainable, simple.”
More “Blah, blah, blah”…….
Bill, you just verified my expectation, “Impossibly simple for theologicrats!”
Alfred Lord Tennyson captured what I and many others accept in the last lines of his “Thanatopsis”:
“So live, that when thy summons comes
to join the innumerable caravan
Which moves to that mysterious realm
Where each shall take his place,
Thou, go not, like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but,
Sustained by an unfaltering trust,
Approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”
The God of Love will do what is right.
Beautiful prose. That last phrase vibrates ” God will do what is right” He is more wonderful than we can imagine. He is fair.
Too many times the Christian does not show the fairness of God. As the Psalmist says, “This one was born there..” (87:4-7)
Wow, Elaine! I wasn’t aware of that quote. I have copied it into an archive. Thanks!
“good night sweet prince, and angels sing thee to thy rest. why does the drum come hither; arise, arise, your Lord hath returned to thee thy soul”.
“parting is such sweet sorrow, that i should say good night till it be morrow”.
“O death, where is thy sting, O grave, where is thy victory”.
I respect my elders, and you and Elaine deserve praise for your wisdom. A club soda toast to you both!
Since so much has been ascribed to BLAH, BLAHS
I thought some relevant scripture would be in
place since we are talking about God!
1 Chronicles 16:25
For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; He also is to be feared above all gods.
Psalm 96:4
For great is the LORD and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods.
1 Chronicles 29:11
Nehemiah 1:5
I said, “I beseech You, O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who preserves the covenant and loving kindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments,
Isaiah 12:6
Cry aloud and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
Ezekiel 36:23
“I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst Then the nations will know that I am the LORD,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight.
Sam, thanks to you, too, for your contribution. I don’t know your age but if you are past my age of 75, I’ll include you in the club soda toast!
My question is not “What kind of God has a Satan”
My question is what kind of God ( and his “universe “) allow a Satan
to perpetuate atrocities, agonies and abject misery for six thousand years and counting?
And if we are to credit current scientific research on the age of the earth,
MISERY has been endemic on this planet for a much longer period.
How do God’s nostrils tolerate the STENCH of mayhem and misery for so many millenia?
EGW’s “Grest Controversy” implodes when she states that “the universe” has to vindicate God, before Christ’s return.
In order to be effective jurors in this trial the “universe” surely has to be provided with all the evidence.
“Live streaming” of atrocities, genocides, holocausts, famines , epidemics and other harrowing horrors,
intruding on the bliss of “unfallen beings” on other planets, for so many millenia, has produced no apparent response.
The “guardian Angels” long ago must have been induced into a state of perpetual post traumatic stress disorder.
When twenty per cent of our returning veterans form war zones suffer from PTSD,
how can Angels witnessing inquisition, tortures, genocides, Ebola epidemics and worse, escape such a fate?
And yet the carnage and calamities and catastrophes continue unabated, leaving one to conclude that neither God,
nor the Angels, nor the “universe” have any invested interest in bringing a conclusion to this “controversy”
Robin,Your comments remind me of a story I heard from a Jewish Chaplain at CSMC. A group of Jewish men sat in their concentration camp barracks, discussing their plight, the injustice, the pain, the suffering, the death. They agreed that their plight was impossible to reconcile with any concept of God they held. Then they got up, gathered around their makeshift altar, recited the Shema “Hear O Israel, YHVH our God is one” and went about their usual routine
Religious belief survives because that is all that is left when there is nothing more. It’s the imaginary filler of the void. It consists of propositions addressing the emptiness of the unknowable.
A guy’s guy maligns his brother in a Woody Allen joke as being crazy for thinking he’s a chicken. The complainer replies to the question, “Why isn’t he turned in?” by answering, “because we need the eggs.”
It’s the enigma of life where fanciful answers are devised for questions that cannot be answered simply because we need them.
Bugs,
I wish to politely disagree with you. Religious belief often survives because it is a person’s concept of how they relate to the divine, but whether that belief survives with power is a more critical issue and that depends on a person’s relationship with God. I remember in the early ’80s when I was working with a church ministry in New York City and met hundreds, if not thousands, of Jewish survivors of the Nazi death camps. While many of them were still practicing Jews because they had been raised Jewish, few had any faith in God. Instead, their religious practices were a familiar effort to connect with the divine, who always seemed to be far away from them and to have rejected them. Unfortunately, that is the state of faith for many professed followers of Jesus. However, it is possible to have an empowered, personal relationship with God and I am growing in just such an experience. More than once along the way I’ve argued with God and demanded that He explain something, but His answer was that I didn’t need to understand that because I needed to understand something else instead. What He shows me and what I see Him doing where He wants me to understand helps me let-go of pursuing the things I do not understand and as a result they are not issues for me. So I’m willing to wait until Heaven to get the answers to the questions He isn’t answering now. To me, that is a critical aspect of a living and empowered faith in God.
William, I see your post as verification of my last paragraph: “It’s the enigma of life where fanciful answers are devised for questions that cannot be answered simply because we need them.” However, I have no argument with your experience. I am always ready to take issue with ideas, but not a person’s experience with his “eggs.” Kindness becomes you, William, I’ve seen nothing contrary to that in any of your postings.
Mr Hansen,
I challenge you to go and see the Holocaust movie,
SON OF SAUL, just nominated last week for an OSCAR,
and winner of the GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS for best
foreign picture (Hungarian).
I challenge you to sit through the entire movie with EQUANIMITY.
THE SAME APPARENT EQUANIMITY, IMPERTURBABILITY,
and total lack of compassion, with which the universe, including the Angels
have dealt with millenia of human misery.
If I could not stomach the Holocaust movie SCHINDLERS LIST, and walked out,
how can the universe watch eons of accumulated agonizing anguish without response?
EGW’S fraudulent GREAT CONTROVERSY makes no sense, when she expects us to believe
that we are waiting for the “universe “to “vindicate “God. Did her view of the “universe”
equate with the movie PLANET OF THE APES, as being populated with primitive primates,
totally lacking im empathy and compassion?
Furthermore, her totally dispassionate and rote recital of the Christians being throw to the lions
in the Colisseum, plus her unfeeling recital of a whole host of further atrocities, assures me
that she copied her material.
Had she seen these atrocities in brilliant technicolor vision, with the shrieks of the tortured
in Dolby stereophonic sound, and all with IMAX intensity, she would have known
INTUITIVELY that no rational “universe” could have viewed these events without CLAMORIMG
to God to end the carnage, declaring that they LONG AGO, were persuaded!
Robin, I’ve talked to a few Holocaust survivors. If you go down to the Fairfax
district, you might still find a few around. They got over their experience.
While the plight of the jews is only one example of suffering in the world, the fact is that God told them very clearly what would happen if they failed to fulfill their obligations to Him.
I studied Hebrew with a Jewish man who lived in Park La Brea. I asked him about the Holocaust once. He said “Look, if I washed up on an island after a shipwreck and found a corpse, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time with it. I’d get on with my own survival.” I suspect he lost family to the Nazis because his grandfather came to the US from Poland.He loved to study Scripture and had a wonderful faith in God.
I try not to borrow trouble. Has your life really been so bad?
I like his reply. But the results are still felt by many and has been the reason that so many have become agnostic (an honest belief) or atheistic. My husband’s family came from Poland as well but had to “convert” to get out. I’m sure they left many family members behind.
If God could have, He would have ended things long time ago. However, in order that the wicked will have no excuses whatsoever for their eternal destruction, He has chosen to show them mercy and allow them to have every chance possible to repent and turn from their evil. God does not want any being to be able to accuse Him of being unmerciful and unforgiving. The only way the wicked will acknowledge His righteousness, justice, and love is when they are confronted with their life record and see that the only reason they are lost was due to their choice and not their circumstances.
John,
Please read my reply to Hansen above.
‘It is finished’ There is no more controversy. Only Christ our King victorious. Hell and Death are no more. He has risen. The Father smells the sweet savor of Messiah’s offering and He is satisfied.
The stench of my sin and yours is not in God’s nostrils.
William,
Please read my reply to Hansen above.
If the stench of my sin and the misery on this planet is NOT
in God’s nostrils, then he is entirely without feeling and compassion.
This applies also to the”universe”and the Angels, who watch eons
of EVIL with equanimity an utterly NO empathy, otherwise they would
be CLAMORING for an end to the carnage.
Robin,
Not everyone has eyes to see Jesus Christ suffering and dying is God himself suffering. I am content with this answer to why there is suffering.
Lets do what we can to relieve suffering and trust God in obedience. Even as Christ was obedient. Obedient unto a death on the Cross.
Then why are we still here? Robin has a point-Adventist doctrine doesn’t satisfy me on this-and even Ellen said the onlookers were convinced at the cross.
These are the kinds of practical articles that result in a wonderful community of shared testimonies. And testimonies rarely result in contention, as evidenced by the comment thread here. While a few find it hard to affirm others, affirmation is breaking out all over the comment thread here!
Thanks for the reference to Gregory Boyd’ “Satan and the Problem of Evil” A book that has also een encouraging and supportive for me is Richard Rice’ “Suffering and the Search for Meaning.” This survey summarizes caringly and openly seven theodicies.
Perfect Plan Theodicy
The Free Will Defense
Soul Making Theodicy
Cosmic Conflict Theodicy
Openness of God Theodicy
Finite God Theodicy
Protest Theodicies
And in a wonderful personal integration, Rice addresses the concept of theodicy and personal suffering in his closing chapter, When Suffering Comes to You.
As Rice illustrates in personal ways, theodicies are helpful without needing to be definitive. Reading his summary of the insights and inadequacies of each of the seven theodicies, I was unable to identify the theodicy he is personally most drawn to. That is no small accomplishment, which is why his work is so successfully informative.
That he frees me to be helped without being certain is truly comforting, the seeing of which feels like the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to send the Comforter.
The Sabbath School series is informed by the Cosmic Conflict Theodicy, which Seventh-day Adventists are drawn to by reason of the place Ellen White’s “The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan” holds for the church. The other side of the Rebellion and Redemption coin from theodicy is soteriology. How are we to be saved?
Accepting the clear suggestion that not many will be saved, feels like conceding that God has not resolved the Cosmic Conflict, the Rebellion, if he arbitrarily saves anyone unless he somehow saves everyone. On the other hand can a Rebellion is quelled by spiritual evolution in which an imagined few (1 in 20?) because of some inexplicable combination of genetics, culture, and raw individual human thought process become salvation-worthy through acceptance, concession perhaps, or maybe even mere self-determination.
But what about all those passages about the few? 1 Peter 3 may not be about only 8 being saved, but only 8 being ‘saved by water.’ Are there other ways of being saved? As Sister White explains, “God does not put himself on trial in the bible.” We are free, she offers, to understand without understanding everything.
Indeed, we live by faith, faith being the evidence of what we cannot see and the substance of what we trust as ours is to be claimed soon.
So we comfort one another by sharing our faith rather than explaining our beliefs.
As is so evidenced in the comments here!
Bill Garber,
Please read my comments on EGW’S GREAT CONTROVERSY,
in my reply to HANSEN, above.
THANKS Robin
Yes, indeed, Robin. Explaining sin and suffering just doesn’t soothe. It doesn’t actually explain. How can it?
Perhaps that is the message of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Seeking such knowledge will kill you, which is quite different I wonder from a natural death.
It isn’t that we die, it is that we fear we will perish. We sense our vulnerability. We are naked. Adam must have known about death or linking death to the tree would have mean’t nothing. Feeling naked was something quite otherwise, apparently. Knowledge does strange things to us.
I saw Schindler’s List. You are right that it reveals sociopath and victim. It reveals the inescapable sense ‘there by the grace of God I am too.’ How else to understand Schindler in this malestrom? Now for utter starkness, How must God sense Lucifer? If Jesus saved us while we were his enemies, well, … rebellion does not disqualify one from Grace. Something else must be going on. I hope so, not in the sense of there is a chance, but in the sense of, I trust.
The movie is horrific yet memorable for other reasons.
I have no doubt that Satan was in control of the tragedy of World War Two. Satan unleashed! The banality of the Schindler character reminds me of how easy it is to hinge vast results on one unholy decision that God then sanctifies and expands on. For me it was a decision in an AA meeting that God must love alcoholics because derelicts were changing before my very eyes, so how could I continue to believe that I was unlovable? From that moment my heart has opened-incrementally to be sure, like his was. We do need our un heroes like Schindler to remind us that we are nobody special, yet in invaluable link in the chain of love. Thanks for all you discussions, I think I’ll go bake a loaf of bread to give to Jesus somewhere nearby.
“Accepting the clear suggestion that not many will be saved.”
There are also contradictory texts in the Bible that God came to save the world.
Conversely, I believe that the great majority of humans will be welcomed to His kingdom. Only those who have deliberately rejected Him will be lost. Those who have lived with kindness and respect for others, which is the much larger number, will not be cast out. Why should they? Surely, no one believes that the majority in this world are wicked and evil.
I am hopeful that creation is core to redemption rather than separated by time.
One of the messages of the New Testament is that the kingdom was ushered in by Jesus and to refer to the kingdom solely in the future tense and to assume that heaven is “the kingdom” is to deny some of the good news that happened a few thousand years ago. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on EARTH as it is in heaven.” The love that Bugs is always talking about exists in the here and now. Feeling and expressing love to (and from) our fellow men is one of the rewards of the kingdom. As far as loving God with all my heart is concerned, I have to admit that I am stumped. For me, its hard to invest feelings in the idea of a God. Not enough “faith”, I guess.
Right on, Elaine. This is what I believe. God is fair.
“That he frees me to be helped without being certain is truly comforting”.
i have always reconciled myself with this understanding. It is a blessing to the Christian to have this confident hope recognizing that the glass is made
blurry by non believers. Refuse to listen to the naysayers, they know no more than you. Believe in your heart that Gods promises will be certain and they will be. i have occasionally spoken of the lack of communication on the most certainty of life’s questions, knowing the continuing history of our blood flowing as a river, but all except the arch murderers through out history will be in God’s eternal kingdom. Maybe everyone will be saved, and relegated to various designated parts of the Universe, or to different Universes, and contained eternally; Those whose names are in the Book of Life to be spiritually in the presence of God, and assigned responsibilities in the eternal on going expansion of God’s Universes, of which there is no ending.
William Abbot, when I review the record of Christ’s hanging out with publicans, whores, and other edgy people, he doesn’t seem to be holding his nose actually or figuratively. He never suggested neither his nor God’s nostrils were annoyed by any stench of “sinfulness.” And he never issued a verbal clean-up-your-act mandate. There is evidence of his loving presence being reflected by changes in lives and his suggestions of behavior adjustments. But no condemnation for being human. And no expectation of perfection except for aping God as love.
William, I consider your view of the putrid nature of man to be evidence of how one sees himself, quite out of line of Christ’s view of mankind. You are welcome to your imaginary stench condition if you wish, but you are venturing into clinical concerns of self-loathing, it seems to me. Love doesn’t go there.
It was his critics holding their noses because he emitted the odor of kindness to the wrong people in their judgment. They still do.
I was thinking of those who crucified Christ. It was a putrid thing to do. I understand I am consenting unto his death. I’m delighted to hear you have no sin Bugs. You are the first I have met, apart from Him whom I crucified.
The world has a sin problem. I starts with me.
Bugs,
It was his critics holding their noses because he emitted the odor of kindness to the wrong people in their judgment.
That is a mega-distortion! Jesus Christ was crucified because he was threatening the power structures of the nation. That is what Caiaphas said. His critics judicially murdered Him. It wasn’t because he was kind to the wrong sort of people. They didn’t care about that. It was His Messiahship that threatened them.
He came and saved us from the condemnation of being human. You know, sin and death? I’m not engaged in self-loathing. I’m rejoicing I’m forgiven. I’m overwhelmed at the cost God bore to forgive me – me, the one that crucified him.
I wasn’t at all suggesting he was killed by the nose-holders. It was a war against the priests, whom were known to be wealthy by corruption, that motivated them to push for his death. They labeled him the King of The Jews, derision for supposed blasphemy. The Romans didn’t seem all that worried about him.
Robin raises exactly the pertinent issues as mine.
Excuses, excuses, poor wimpy God, needs mortal humans to get him out of an existential jam. What it really demonstrates is that God is a creation of the mind, in our image, so manufacturing adjustments to patch the holes with mental bubble gum is entirely appropriate. That explains the millions of versions of god and the infinite gamut of incompatible, dubious characteristics assigned to him.
The conjecture of saved and lost humans is a manufactured, self-serving script based on self-righteousness. It is the attempt to create a heavenly stockade for the self by fencing out the unworthy, defined conveniently by the corralled. Of course, since there isn’t one shred of evidence beyond imagination. The supporting arguments are gained by picking and choosing from ancient scripts, regardless of their original intention or plausible applications for our scientific age.
The God that Christ celebrated is not god created in our image. God isn’t a person there is therefore no image possible. There is no judgment levied. All are found, none are lost. There is nose for human sin odor. No excuses for massive contradictions since there aren’t any. It didn’t create the world as defined by the perfection defiled, Genesis, crowd. It doesn’t address unanswerable questions. It just resides here in the human heart as the guide for fully living.
God cannot be known, only experienced. Love.
My editing skills only arrive after posting!
These sentences: “Of course, since there isn’t one shred of evidence beyond imagination. The supporting arguments . . .”
should read “Of course, since there isn’t one shred of evidence beyond imagination, the supporting arguments . . .”
This sentence “There is nose for human sin odor.” should read “There is NO nose for human sin odor.”
Some of us take issue with Dr. Hoehn’s contingent God.
Was there any judgment laid on Jesus Christ Larry?
Larry, The God I serve is neither poor nor wimpy. If yours is, that’s too bad for you. Perhaps we do create our own god in our own image.
A few years ago I met a LLU physician who had been working with her husband for ~ a decade in the mountains of Southeast Asia. She was connected to an agency that apparently has nothing to do with SDA. I had never heard of her before. They two saw a need, terrible poverty,ignorance, malnutrition, etc. Instead of cursing God, they left their medical practice in an affluent area of the States and went to the country to make things better. Realizing the country was too big for one couple to make the kind of difference they desired, they developed a program to give advanced medical training to indigenous physicians so they could better serve their countrymen.
Professionally, they brought to the attention of the medical world the existence of a often fatal condition known as Noma, consequent to poverty and malnutrition among children in the mountains of southeast Asia.
These folks didn’t have to go to a movie to cry about something decades in the past. They saw a problem now and went about fixing it.
http://www.ajtmh.org/content/78/4/539.full.pdf
I heard a sermon this past Sabbath by Ronnie Vanderhorst entitled “I Will,” in which he posited that nothing bad that ever happens, or has happened, or that will happen is now, or has ever been God’s will; but that bad things that have happened, and are happening are the consequences or results of free will and the power of choice that has God granted to men and angels.
Vanderhorst argues that God’s intentional will is supplanted by God’s situational will as He works out His ultimate will within the confines and within the context of the free will with which He has given men and angels.
So, insofar as this blog is concerned—or in answer to this blog’s question—the adversary, also known as Satan, resulted from this reality. That is an explanation that makes sense to me.
Stephen, if this explanation makes sense to you, then you have no questions. But there are millions who cannot be content with your answers. What do you have to offer them: accept your explanation and seek another, or simply arrive at what makes sense to them?
People are not monolithic in their thinking and what satisfies one person is not satisfactory for another. To tell a parent that his small child has a terminal cancer that is incurable that it is the consequence or results of free will is cruel or that it is a result of Satan. That is no comfort for a grieving parent and best left unsaid.
Stephen & Elaine,
The bible is supposed to be the unifying authority for what we believe. If you look at the top of the posts, you will see Dr. Hoehn will not engage my simplest questions about scripture. Stephen’s explanations are not scriptural at all. I’m sure he thinks they are not contradictory to scripture. But I’ve posed scriptures that say God isn’t contingent.
Elaine knows what I’m talking about.
As you well know Elaine, there is no theodicy for some small child suffering with or dying from an incurable disease—or for a small child suffering or dying at all—that would comfort the parent of such a child. My comments with regard to Vanderhorst’s sermon were not in response or reply to any comment about children suffering. My comment was a comment on the question posed by the blog’s title.
William Abbott, I am not sure exactly how Vanderhorst’s argument is not Biblical; but I am open to hearing why you believe that it is not.
Stephen,
Vanderhorst’s argument is not made from scripture. It is imposed on the scriptural narrative. For example, from the narrative we know Eve disobeyed God. We know she exercised her will to disobey God. Nothing in the scripture says this happened outside God’s will.
It was God’s sovereign will that Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son: “…I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.”
There is nothing contingent about God’s will for Jesus Christ. He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Jesus Christ teaches us about Satan: We are to resist the temptation to doubt God’s will through the Word of God. “It is written…” Do you doubt God said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, there is none like him in all the earth?” Where is the contingency in that?
William Abbott,
Undoubtedly my brief synopsis of Vanderhorst’s argument did not do it justice. Vanderhorst said (and I’m paraphrasing) that God is all good, and all love, all the time; and that therefore His intentional and ultimate will would result in nothing but blessings and good things. How is that “not made from scripture?”
Just because He made provision for what He knew would occur doesn’t mean that that is what He wanted to occur. Foreknowledge (and pre-planning for lack of a better term) does not equate to, nor is it synonymous with, intent.
I should correct something. What I categorized as His “situational will” was actually identified as His “circumstantial will.”
As for Job, Job’s circumstances were microcosmic of God’s chosen people and His remnant, were they not? It is true that God chose Job, but it is also true that Job chose to trust God…and that it was his choice to make.
Stephen,
And the bad things that happened to Jesus Christ, were they not the will of God?
William Abbott,
It might be conducive at this point to re-read Vanderhorst’s argument as I have summarized it. The cross, i.e. the crucifixion of Christ, was not God’s intentional will; but instead it was a response to man’s choice that activated God’s circumstantial will and the Plan of Redemption…and the execution of it; as on Calvary.
“the crucifixion of Christ was not God’s intentional will”
That is so unscriptural.
William,
Vanderhorst’s argument is that any suggestion that the cross, that is the crucifixion of Jesus, was God’s intentional will is unscriptural. He said that God intended—His “intentional (preferential?) will”—was that Adam and Eve would never have eaten of the forbidden tree, and that they should have continued to live in paradise forever; ever living, ever loving, ever learning, and ever enjoying life and communion with their Creator; and that God is working out a restoration of this in terms of His ultimate will—and that the cross (the crucifixion of Jesus) was a manifestation of His “circumstantial (as opposed to intentional) will.”
Stephen,
I understand Vanderhorst’s argument. Its totally speculative. Scripture knows nothing about his argument.
The end God sought was not a restoration of Eden but the Revelation of the Word made flesh. It was God’s original, sovereign, intention that in Jesus’ death and resurrection we would truly see the Father. Our disobedience in the garden was wrong. But nothing went wrong. Just like Joseph and his brothers. The brothers were wrong but nothing went wrong. God was delivering Israel. God was revealing the wonders of his love.
Where in the world in scripture do you get the idea there is a ‘plan “B”‘?
William,
The alternative with which we are left is that God did not intend (as in prefer) Adam and Eve to obey Him; and that God intended (as in preferred) the world to become a miserable place for most of its inhabitants, wherein sick, suffering, disease, war, and death abound.
He both preferred it, and predetermined it; or He did not prefer it, nor predetermine it, but preplanned for what He knew would happen. Are you telling me that you know of no Bible that unquestionably indicates the latter is true?
Are you telling me that Ezekiel 33:11 or 1 Timothy 2:4 or 2 Peter 3:9 do not indicate that God does NOT impose His intentional will upon us?
Stephen,
If you think it must be one or the other; pick the biblical one. The scripture never makes the will of God contingent. All three of the scriptures you reference talk about God’s will to save tho the uttermost.
The bible tells us what we did; we sinned. We disobeyed. If you want to speculate about what God intended you will have to do it without scriptural authority.
Scripture is the only source of doctrine. Speculation about what a text does not say isn’t a sound hermeneutic.
The pass given to god as “free will,” is the weakest possible contrivance for god as good. My old college roommate told me by phone today he looks forward to dying as it will usher in the moment of reunification with his baby son who died from cancer at one year of age. How possibly can one consider free will as God’s blessing of his 73 years of pain? A tiny example among billions.
The idea that the mayhem visited on humans throughout history is evidence of God’s commitment to liberation (free will) is insane. I call that being an SOB. Christ once said, if your son asks for bread, do you give him a stone? (Matt. 7:9) A stone is exactly what God gives to humans in the name of free will in violation of spirit of this quote.
With this supposition it can be more easily concluded that god is demonic because nothing good comes from this misapplication of the term, free will. This narrative quagmire is the natural outcome of the insanity of literal interpretation of Genesis. It is impossible to rationalize a perfect universe screwed up by two actual humans and what is a bumbling god. The cliff-hanger war in heaven multiplies the fantasy. Evil coexisting with a perfect God cannot be rationalized. He is either powerless, or worse, a masochist who revels in human suffering.
Religion is at its best when it promotes hope in the heart. It is at its worst when it authors, in the mind, melodramatic fiction represented as reality.
Bugs,
Since you reject the Biblical meta-narrative, then of course the whole idea of free moral agency in relation to the consequences of choosing to defy the law of love (otherwise known as the wages of sin) must be nonsensical to you.
By the same token, the salvation that is available to all as a result of the sacrificial death of Jesus can’t make any sense to you either, right?
Bugs, you’re as off kilter as Hansen below! You live quite peacefully in life as it is, look for a bold brave death, but get all tied up in a moral outrage if there were perchance a good God working in this system full of evil. If there were no God, no right, no wrong, no good, no evil, your anger or outrage or frustration against our meta-narrative that would be at best meaningless and at worst infantile. A tantrum. How can anything be wrong if there is no right? How can anything be bad if there is no good. So stop rolling about on the floor kicking your heels in rage, get up and give us a better answer to why Evil is real and why we all know it is, if there is no Good? You may disapprove of God but you can’t dismiss Good by saying, should-a, would-a, could-a about how you think God ought to have behaved. Just because God doesn’t work the way you think God ought to work is not a disproof of a good God. It may just be your misunderstanding of Him. Stephen Foster and I and many saints in the midst of evil have found a way to understand it. We don’t throw nasty names against the God who presents himself as part of this mess, although many before you have so slandered Him and his virgin mother.
Jack, I hope “bold brave death” bypasses me for a long time, I am enjoying “rolling about on the floor kicking your [my]heels,” with abandon!
You ask, “How can anything be bad if there is no good?” The concept of good and evil precedes Judaism and Christianity by eons. The Adam and Eve story were only one of similar ancient tales providing basis for labels for the dichotomy of human behavior, good and evil. As long as there has been us, we, homo sapiens, have devised answers to the question of why. My point is that our current versions are just as mythical as those created by ancestors. And as such, adopting them as religious explanations is an appropriate profession of faith.
But that also means alternative explanations are just as valid, because “truth” is general, not specific. There is not one, verifiable, conclusive explanation for the human condition. Myth, metaphor and allegory is the general amalgamation of hope, facts and speculation that entertains and “explains” the unexplainable. Belief doesn’t manufacture real wars in heaven, doesn’t create a real world-wide flood, nor give birth to two real people destined to visit horrible suffering on billions of people.
You say, “Just because God doesn’t work the way you think God ought to work is not a disproof of a good God.” There is no God that I can outthink. I can outthink the current, defined version, who is therefore disproved.
You say “[Bugs] get all tied up in a moral outrage if there were perchance a good God working in this system full of evil. No, I’m amused at the childish explanations offered. And I maintain that God as love does operate as the restraining force in our world. I can’t out-think love like that.
You say “Stephen Foster and I and many saints in the midst of evil have found a way to understand it.” If you and he represent the majority you are in fact only a companionship of consensus, verifier and creator of nothing but professions of faith.
You say “We don’t throw nasty names against the God who presents himself as part of this mess, although many before you have so slandered Him and his virgin mother.” The god offended by nasty names isn’t much of one, is modeled after ourselves. In antiquity, virgin births, gods born to humans, humans becoming gods, gods becoming humans, amalgamations of god/man, were common aspects of mythology. It took about three hundred years for mortals to figure out the trinity, Christs fitting place, in the current scheme. Again, profession of faith accepts Him as unique, for the salvation of the world. I have no problem with that.
Jack, the steadfast stubborn commitment to making the world fit an understanding of Scripture is the barrier to understanding God as Love. And the intricate theological thousand year old house that Catholicism fashioned leaves God as love gasping for air.
“And I maintain that God as love does operate as the restraining force in our world. I can’t out-think love like that”.
I think it may be time to clarify our a priori assumptions. I do not think I understand yours but it sounds like you think that GODASLOVE exists but cannot be proven from the bible narrative. So, how did you get to the statement above? I want to believe what you wrote above, but I can’t tell how you got there.
Yes. Free will, Bugs, is a concept without direct reference in the bible.
Having freed the Creator from responsibility for evil, the free will invention serves evangelists come church membership recruiters to motivate people to believe they can avoid becoming collateral damage in the Great Controversy by personally taking action to align with God.
How about instead of free will we free humanity from responsibility for our own salvation?
‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.’ Ephesians 2
Sister White, of course, denounces individual responsibility for salvation as ‘making the Creator dependent on the Creature,’ which she goes on to describes as the ‘heresy’ of ‘the Catholic who believes he can purchase salvation’ which she associated with buying indulgences.
So that’s why we are Seventh-day Adventists!?
Discovery rather than choice?
Destiny rather than freedom?
Anchored rather than drifting?
Faith, Trust, and Love rather than knowledge, spiritual practice, or prophecy (1 Corinthians 13)!
Faith is, after all, indeed before all, the Divine replacement for what Sister White terms the ‘heresy’ of self-salvation, itself the inevitable outcome of embracing spiritual free will.
Bill, you have to pick and choose texts to make a case that Christ viewed people as lost because of “sin.” And you won’t find that saving their souls for life after death was the core of his purpose. He was widely thought to be a messiah, one to rid the Romans and reestablish Israel a role he seemed to willingly play. But there is not one shred of support for the idea he was intent on restoring imperfect people to perfection, then or later. That outlook came after the resurrection, and not by him.
He seemed comfortable with the idea that participating in love, as he did with people, places humans in touch with “God.” And that that experience provided benefits in the present and by extension (since love is eternal) to humans for whatever good future outcome might lay in store.
Being “lost” and in need of saving relies on a narrative of a pristine world fouled by two characters. If accurate, God is responsible for creating defective people whom he knew would spit on his world making him, in fact responsible, the polluter in chief. If not accurate, it is an allegory with only allegorical applications.
Your retreat to the shibboleths of EGW and Scripture support a profession of faith, but fail to deal with authentic issues of the lost and found premise.
Ask four Adventists why they are Adventist and you’ll get five answers! So you can only speak for yourself about that! For fun, ask four why they are ex-Adventists!
Bill Garber,
How can you, in the light of Deuteronomy 11:26-28, or of Deuteronomy 30:15-20, or all of Deuteronomy 28 for that matter, suggest that “free will…is a concept without direct reference in the Bible?”
Larry, I previously mentioned crafting god in our own image. You think he’s an SOB. My God is a majestic Creator who was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died and rose again as my substitute and Saviour. I’m sure there will be a place in the lake of fire for your tribe. You can curse God all you like in what remains of your unfortunate life.
We’ll see who is insane, those who trust God like Job, or those who revile him,like you.
Every person has his version of god(s). My intention is not to revile your god, only the one created in human image. That’s the one that stands idly by will billions of people suffered and died and still are. The one that with great skill fathered an unimaginable infinite universe while siring a couple of losers responsible for screwing it up. The one that spoke the big bang into existence but is in danger of losing a skirmish with the devil because of those two idiots. And this for the human constructed, face saving, lame excuse of “free will.” Superguy!
I can’t revile the God as love, Christ’s version. It isn’t a person, an experience, so can’t be anthromorphized, doesn’t require elaborate fabrications to explain or excuse its character, isn’t at war, doesn’t spout anything, including theology, doesn’t market guilt, adores humans, encourages goodness as a reflection of its source, and has been the eternal experience that counteracts “sin” as the preserver of mankind since he/she stepped on earth. This is the God of Job.
And we’ll never know which, if either, of us is “insane,” since death stops our clock and our ability to report. Me and my god are best buds, so I’m satisfied it has my back! I can’t know the destination of my soul other than death, but it is good hands.
Mr. Hansen, comments like yours are why I keep wanting to only have moderated comments append to my articles. It is shameful for people who claim to be following Christ, to write bitter vengeful tribalism suited only for the Devil. Shameful. I wish for you not to open your mouth that way, but I do not wish for you a place in the lake of fire, I do not impute to you an unfortunate life of which I know nothing, but I would love to remove from your hands the “God Hates You” plaque you seem to be holding. Shameful sir.
Consider this a moral edit from Jack who promised not to edit these comments.
Sorry Jack, I don’t agree. Larry has had all the opportunities and more to know and love God. He knows and understands Calvary and Christ’s infinite sacrifice for humanity but he describes God as a bumbling SOB. Those who understand Genesis literally are insane, according to larry
If that is not a high handed rejection of God’s grace, maybe you can explain what is. Paul was quite plain describing the punishment of hellfire that awaits those who continue in sin. I’m not a works oriented person. The greatest sin I know of is not Sabbath breaking or sexual immorality or lying or murder, it’s a refusal to believe in Christ’s atoning sacrifice and resurrection for humanity’s salvation.
If I believe that Abraham and Adam and Eve and Noah were real people then you know I believe in hell fire for the wicked. What can be more wicked that an outright rejection of the gospel by one who knows it?
Repaying Larry in his own coin was inappropriate. I apologize for that.
Hansen, apology not accepted—it isn’t necessary! OK, accepted. Passion isn’t rude, not offensive in the least to me. It, like humor, is the spice of discourse, rescuing the banal from banality.
Let’s have an inventory here. i tend to agree with Larry re: evidence of the
goodness of God, according to the evidence listed in the old testament. If sin was original in the heavenly realm, with Lucifer, the Covering Cherub, God’s greatest creation, was a poor design. According to the Bible, it appears God made Lucifer with “free will”, and eternal life. When and if Lucifer rebelled, and was removed from Heaven, the right and good thing to do would have been to zap him out of exixtence, and or if he had eternal life, banish him, and secure him to an uninhabited sun in some distant Universe. Instead he was permitted to visit our solar system, and secured on planet Earth, even inside the sacred Garden of Eden, where he had carte blanche against the naive Adam and Eve, the supposed first humans on Earth, who had not a chance to resist this wily evil foe. And as a result billions of mankind has suffered torture, untold agony, and death, because of one, one unit, of God’s good creative power. Please, with such evidence as we are witness to, first person observation, how can you not question the goodless and love of God?? We are here. We are real. We suffer mental cruelty to the depths of our soul. We bleed. We die. Every living creature on Earth has suffered this fate. Even if
the Bible stories are false, after all Satan, the Prince of Earth, has had command of the actors involved, where is the mercy and love displayed???????
My statement about god possibly being wimpy, an SOB or a bumbling fool is the common, human manufactured, version, rejected by me.
My point is all that all, yes all, deity narratives attempting to explain god and the human condition are defective except to the easily persuaded and those predisposed to a certain outcome. In other words if you have concluded the Scriptures are the precise record and prescription for mankind, then you will adopt whatever supports that presupposition. You willingly overlook the Swiss Cheese logic and skillfully cartwheel through contradictions with self-satisfaction.
Free will misapplied is such a mental cartwheel. It is the ultimate of the progression of failed arguments supporting the literal narrative of Genesis. A fairytale basis for explaining human mayhem can then only be supported by more fairytales. Now, if you are willing to allow the Genesis story as allegory, forego fleshly Adam and Eve, then you move to a different arena where heroic prose and poems are useful expressions of meaning beyond human realism.
If you accept that god is known only through the experience of love, there is no need for explanations of god or human mayhem. The Everest Mountain of Swiss Cheese propositions are avoided. The fanciful narratives are properly accepted as myth, metaphor and allegory. Evil has no rational explanation. Coping with it does, illustrated by Christ’s life and spoken by his words.
It is easy to get the sense that there are millions of Adventists who are deficient in their education of great literature. The inability to discern the difference between poetry and prose; myth and actual fact, and the history of myth in building all great cultures.
We do not accept the stories of Egypt’s founders and gods; we do not accept as fact the story of the Buddha; or that of the Hindu gods. Yet the majority of Christians accept the entire story the Hebrews wrote as literal facts and then attempt to decode it into meaning for today. The great majority of Jews did not view those stories as literal and actual, but as part of story telling which was the one method of imparting history to each generation.
Just as the Illiad and the Odyssey are the foundation of all Greek literature and history, it was repeated for centuries to instill the bravery of their Grecian forefathers as well as tragedy; much as the young United States developed myths of Washington and Franklin.
But each must determine what is most important in the Bible: Great principles of ethics and love, or absolute literacy, unlike love that needs no explanation.
Bugs,
You write: “I wasn’t at all suggesting he was killed by the nose-holders. It was a war against the priests, whom were known to be wealthy by corruption, that motivated them to push for his death. They labeled him the King of The Jews, derision for supposed blasphemy. The Romans didn’t seem all that worried about him.” Love doesn’t go there? What do you mean?
Who murdered the Christ? You say it wasn’t his critics. It wasn’t the Pharisees? The Romans? Only the priests?
We are all consenting unto His death. As to who labeled Him King of the Jews – I believe His Father in Heaven is responsible for that. God forbid a man read that sign in derision.
William, all four gospels refer to that title, King of the Jews, which was used in derision by Pilate, suggested to him by “someone” (John 19:21). And no, I didn’t consent to his death. If I had been presented that question as a choice to being born, that would be different. My role as human had nothing to do with his death. It’s a faith issue, imaginary, to claim you are responsible. The earth has never seen perfection so “sin” isn’t the mechanism of destruction of something that wasn’t. Again, that is a religious claim that one can refute without reward or penalty, or believe as an option.
Love doesn’t go there, that I is, blaming ourselves for his death.
No, we all didn’t consent to his death (I sure wish you hadn’t, when did you do that)? I consent to his life and his affirmation that God is love. What all that means I don’t know. But I know enough to be free of guilt. I’ve never killed anyone, especially the Good News bearer, figuratively or otherwise.
God immediately “forgives” when asked, which shows how unimportant it is. Something he ignores so easily can’t be very significant.
I know my outlook doesn’t fit into the theologicrats point of view. Way to simple.
Bugs,
What is the significance of Jesus Christ’s death? You obviously reject the traditional understanding.
Also: Historically there are two scenarios regarding the empty tomb.
A: The disciples stole His body away (Gospels and Talmud both allude to this explanation)
B: He rose from the dead.
Which of these two scenarios seems to you most plausible?
William, no one knows. Belief rules. Plausibility? There are more than two possibilities and all are plausible. I don’t know, neither do you, what happened there. The concept of God as love doesn’t depend on what happened there. I know your faith does. Mine doesn’t because the effect of Christ’s teachings and activities don’t depend on the resurrection. I view them as validated by his life which was a reminder and revelation of eternal God as eternal love. That attaches humanity to eternal good with unspoken benefits for humans left in the hands of the one power that cannot be conceived, only experienced. I know, way to simple.
Systematic theology wasn’t done by Christ, but by scholars we now call Catholics, and after his “resurrection.” Thank them for your dogmas.
Bugs, the holy catholic church is the thing. Its big. It has turned the world upside down with hope. And it ever proclaims the crucified and risen Christ. He who was, is, and ever shall be, the King of Israel. The Father Almighty, the One, I AM. Everything Israel hopes for depends on ‘what happened.’
You have invented a new religion. The religion Bugs loves. One in which the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, ‘doesn’t matter’
Are all religions ‘equally plausible’ Bugs?
William, your praise of the Catholic Church drips with irony. Be careful where you drip! To avoid its influence you will need to join my “new religion.” The doctrines you espouse weren’t from the Apostles minds but were developed over the centuries by the Catholic Church. The Protestant Reformation became a new source of adjustments, but accepted the core of Christian belief already formed by the only church for about fourteen hundred years. That’s irony for Adventism!
No, only my religion (and yours, too) are “plausible.” So there are only two. Those pesky Jews haven’t yet awaked to ”
Everything Israel hopes for depends on ‘what happened.’” So that keeps us at two true religions. Right?
I have to say, in conclusion, however, that my religion can beat yours up! So it is righter than yours! Why? Mine is older, developed before those Catholics got hold of it. If the resurrection was falsified it doesn’t affect my faith taught by Christ that God is love. If it is true, ditto. Either way I am a Christian. That doesn’t mean the resurrection isn’t important. Christianity is built on the mystery of it. I certainly am not anti-Christian! Please don’t be disappointed!
Bugs,
That was a lower case ‘c’ catholic on purpose. Bugs you don’t need a bible study. You know the doctrines I espouse are postulated specifically and almost completely on the words of Christ and the writings of the Apostle Paul. Who in turn are themselves postulating Doctrine from the Torah.
We can say with scripture succinctly: God is love You are saying ‘love’ is god. The reason we know God is love is because Messiah is risen from the dead. We have seen God. His tomb is empty. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son …so they might have eternal life.
Idolatry always ends in despair Bugs. Its hopeless.
The irony of Adventism is we are heirs to such an ancient, sure, glorious doctrine of salvation and Dr. Hoehn on our behalf is trying to explain how it just can’t be true.
Come now, William, Jesus said that God is love. Not love is God. My understanding is straight! Skip the idolatry fib!
Looking back up a ways, we had a pretty good spirit going I thought. And then Jack had to dress down (in wonderfully electric prose!) those leaking ad hominem without any sense of the social implications.
Regretfully, it seems that theodicies are an all or nothing kind of proposition. And comment threads seem to be energized by binary propositions.
Perhaps the reason God didn’t just smush the being who became Satan was because in the end Satan is to be redeemed. Clearly Sister White didn’t imagine this outcome, any more than she imagined sin doesn’t die when sinners die. What she did write explicitly, though was this. “God does not put himself on trial in the bible.” She goes on to note that neither the words nor the thoughts of the bible writer are God’s words or thoughts.
The Great Controversy theodicy is imposed on scripture, not something that arises out of scripture. The Great Controversy was Sister White’s attempt to illustrate her sense of what might give meaning to human experience. And if God has not put himself on trial in the bible, he surely has not in the Great Controversy.
Inspired writings are said to be profitable but not independent of the inspiring Spirit. The meaning is sensed with the continuing inspiration by Gods Spirit. Jack’s Inspired, too!
C’mon Bill; I mean, really? First the “free will…is a concept without direct reference in the Bible” assertion; then you incredibly top that with the even more groundless speculation that the devil might be “redeemed.”
What is up with you my man?
Stephen,
About free will.
I’m thinking …
Free will is about rationality, right?
Free will is picking among options, right?
Is Love rational?
Well, Jesus said that the world will know we are Jesus’ disciples because we love one another. And then Jesus explains that we love one another because Jesus first loved us. In which case, we have no choice in Jesus loving us.
Being loved by Jesus is as irrational as Lucifer mistaking himself for a god. Remember, we are told that ‘sin’ was found in him. He didn’t think it up. He didn’t rationalize this. It happened. It is a mystery. Looks like eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is deadly. Still.
Jesus makes clear that we love because we have been loved, not because we make some kind of a choice. Love is not a choice. Love never has been a choice.
And thinking rationally (ironic, I know), to continue to think and act as though one can secure our future by securing God’s favor by our own choice leads to perpetual torment. This is the Third Angel’s part of the Three Angels’ Message. And it is this that Sister White describes as the natural result of failing to sense one’s justification is by faith, rather than choice, which is how she links the Third Angel’s message with Justification by Faith.
C “YYYY“
To: Elaine Nelson (re Jan. 17 post): With all due respect, THANATOPSIS, the closing lines of which you included in your post, was written by American poet William Cullen Bryant, not Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Concerning the question of God choosing us: Jesus came down to us. His sacrifice was from the foundation of the world. He chose us–all of us before He came here in Person. It is a human being who makes the choice to accept Christ and His love or to reject Him according to their knowledge.
I have come to believe in what is called legal objective justification by some. I call it chosen to be saved. Perhaps our names are in the book of life when we are born and only taken out if we reject our Lord.
When we are blessed like Stephen above by a sermon, that helps him and it’s not love to question his experience. We must all choose what makes sense to
time frame).
Most of the above disappeared.
I was trying to explain that what helps me is to recognize life is temporary and no one has really died according to Revelation. There is a second death that seems to be ignored by pastors of any stripe. Whereas when a child dies, he or she will be resurrected in what seems instantly to him. As for suffering, God suffers more than we–a thousand times more in seeing all this. But there will be a happy ending. But we keep asking questions. If that helps good. For those who study with prayer, I believe understanding comes. It’s not always what we’ve been taught.
We should always make it clear whether we are talking about the OBJECTIVE – God to Man, or the SUBJECTIVE – Man to God. God has chosen, before the foundation of the world, the entire humankind for salvation. On the cross at Golgotha God has accomplished, in the body of Jesus Christ, everything needed for our salvation. Whether or not the finished and perfect salvation becomes my personal experience is my choice. Some human beings do not want to be saved. To be in God’s Kingdom requires a total sacrifice. Jesus said: take up your cross and follow me. We are to take our cross and follow Jesus to Golgotha and there be crucified to SELF so that Christ can live in us. This is difficult for many. So the subjective par, i.e. my response to God’ salvation, is up to me. God has saved the entire humankind from guilt and punishment for sin. We will not lose the eternal life because we are under curse for sin against the command. We will lose eternal life because we do not believe that God Has accomplished everything needed for our salvation in the body Of Jesus Christ on the cross at Golgotha.
We can not ever be good enough to go to heaven. But each and everyone of us can here and now believe that Jesus is good enough.
EM, you said, As for suffering, God suffers more than we”.
How do you know that? What is the basis of your declaration?