The God Who Over-Knows the Future

God perfectly knows from all time what will be, what would be, and what may be. He sovereignly sets parameters for all three categories. His knowledge of what might occur leaves him no less prepared for the future than his knowledge of determined aspects of creation. Because he is infinitely intelligent, he does not need to focus his attention on a limited set of possibilities as we do.
In other words, he is able to attend to each one of a trillion billion possibilities, as though it was the only possibility he had to consider. He is infinitely attentive to each and every one. Hence, whatever possibility ends up coming to pass, we may say that from all eternity God was preparing for just this possibility, as though it were the only possibility that could ever possibly occur.

Even when possibilities occur that are objectively improbable—and to this extent surprise or disappoint God—it is not at all the case the he is caught of guard. He is as perfectly prepared for the improbable as he is for the probable.

We humans with our limited intelligence could not as confidently attend to a trillion billion possibilities as easily, and as perfectly, as we could attend to one certainty. Indeed, our focus is divided in half the second we have to attend to two possibilities instead of one certainty. And we humans with our limited wisdom and power could not assure anyone of a certain outcome unless we exhaustively controlled all of the variables.

Hence it is tempting to project our experience upon God and assume that God must face similar difficulties. Those who criticize Open Theism often assume that God (like a finite human) can be assured of ultimate victory only if he controls all the variables. Hence, they criticize a concept of God who is not all-controlling as being out of control.

The open view of the future does not undermine God’s wisdom and sovereign control: it rather infinitely exalts it. In this view God does not know less than the classical view: he knows more. He does not under-know the future, as it were: he over-knows it.


Adapted from Satan and the Problem of Evil, pages 128-130

No Despair of Ours can Alter the Reality of Things.....

I love this quote from Thomas Merton about all of us being part of God's dance!  I can let go of trying to understand it all and just get carried along by the Dancer and enjoy the Dance!  Life is so precious, so beautiful..something to treasure and savor, not analyze and categorize.  Life is meant to be lived, a Gift is meant to be enjoyed, a Dance is meant to be danced!  I love the carefree abandon of the Grace Dance we are all caught up in, whether we are aware of it fully or not..yet when the light of Grace breaks like dawn upon our hearts, how wonderful to let go of our works and thoughts and struggles and just watch ourselves flow with the Dancer in HIs beautiful Dance!  It's always so playful and light with Him, all earthbound heaviness somehow rising in the lilting buoyant arms of the Dancer as He holds us, swings us high, laughs with great laughter like bells ringing, and twirls us around in LOVE!

Here is Merton's wonderful quote to savor:

"What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as "play" is perhaps what he Himself takes most seriously. At any rate, the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Bashō we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash--at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

"For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

"Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance."

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Justification

In today’s writing, Michael Wells takes us back to “self-justification” and gives us some startling truths that very few have taken the time to see the hole they are digging for themselves!  Or, perhaps have never known these truths.  WOW!  This is some priceless information to know and use for everyday life. 

Because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight---

Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus 

For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. --Romans 3:20, 24, and 28

I have heard some wonderful arguments concerning justification of self. Any number of times I have sat listening to eloquent reasoning, and after the person has made his case, he or she asks something like, “Would you put up with that? Can you see how it makes me feel? No one deserves to be treated this way, and what about the children? Should they have to put up with it?” 

Everyone has some form of self-justification, and often people make some very good and strong arguments that would, in fact, justify their actions if they were living under the law. Therein lies the downside. Judging and justifying indicates a willingness to have God judge and justify. Who is that heady? I do not want to be justified; I want to live under grace. I want Christ’s life in me to take the initiative to love and to bless in my daily interactions. I want His grace toward me. I want life. Observe the one justifying himself; is there a lift in his spirit? Do you want to be like that person? Does he exude life? We are not suited for self-justification; it depletes us, empties us, and leaves us under the law.No, thanks!

The truth sets us free, God tells us.  There is some dynamic truth in today’s writing.  Doesn’t the first paragraph just make us stop and think about how easy it is to go into a diatribe that sounds so familiar to his example…all the while not realizing how much we are moving to “self-justification” and opening ourselves to God judging and justifying us…and bringing on a “drop in our spirit.”  Goodness.  I want to be like Michael: “I do not want to be justified; I want to live under grace.”

And it is very important how Michael takes us to know and desire “Christ’s life in me to take the initiative to love and bless in my daily interactions.  I want His grace toward me.  I want life.”  Once we experience a great moment of His Life living through us…we will not want anything else!

Good-by Law!  Hello Grace!  

Was Jesus Fully Human and Fully God

The New Testament is very clear that Jesus was a full human being. He had to grow in wisdom (Lk 2:52) and learn obedience by going through trials, just like every other human being (Heb. 5:8). He grew hungry and tired, like the rest of us. He experienced the same range of emotions as the rest of us and was tempted in all the ways we are (Heb 4:15). He was, in other words, made like us “in every way” (Heb 2:17). Jesus was a full human being. In fact, all indications are that Jesus still is a full human being, albeit in a resurrected and transformed state.


At the same time, the New Testament also clearly teaches us that Jesus is God. John tells us that, while no one has ever seen God as he is in himself, the Word (Jesus), who is himself God, has made him known (Jn. 1:18). Similarly, in his epistle he refers to the Son of God as “the true God” (I Jn 5:20). Along the same lines, Paul refers to Jesus as “God over all” (Rom. 9:5) and “our great God and Savior” (Titus 2:13) while Thomas calls Jesus “Lord” and “God,” and Jesus commends him for his faith (Jn. 20:28).

The New Testament repeatedly ascribes to Jesus titles and activities that are elsewhere reserved for God alone. For example, the single most common title given to Jesus in the New Testament is “Lord” (kurios) (e.g. Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 1:7). This is the Greek equivalent of Yahweh, the most sacred name for God in the Old Testament. So too, the Bible teaches that God alone is judge and creator, yet Jesus is depicted in these roles in the New Testament (Col 1:16). Similarly, Yahweh alone is said to be “the alpha and the omega” and “the beginning and the end” (Isa. 44:6), yet Jesus says this of himself in the New Testament (Rev. 22:13).

One of the most interesting evidences of Jesus’ divinity occurs when Jesus says to his audience, “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn. 8:58, emphasis added). The reason Jesus mixes the past and present tense is because by referring to himself as the “I am,” he’s identifying himself with Yahweh who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush saying, “ I am that I am” (Ex. 3:14). His Jewish audience understood exactly what he was claiming for himself, for they immediately picked up stones to stone him for blasphemy.

Finally, and perhaps most impressively, the Bible consistently stresses that humans are to pray to and worship God alone. Whenever humans or even angels find others bowing before them in the Bible, they immediately put a stop to it. Yet we find people – monotheistic Jews no less – worshipping Jesus, and he not only allows it, but encourages it (e.g. Jn 20:28-29). The practice of worshipping and praying to Jesus as Lord is found throughout the New Testament.

The only conclusion we can draw from the New Testament evidence is the one the early church drew at the council of Chalcedon (451 AD); namely, Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human. He’s not (as some teach today) simply a great teacher, an enlightened guru, an inspired prophet or an angel: He’s rather “the Word made flesh” (Jn. 1:14), the very embodiment of God. (The embodiment of God in Christ is known as “the Incarnation”). The Incarnation reveals that God was so in love with humanity, despite our sin and rebellion, that he decided to enter into our sin infested world and become one of us!


Of course, it’s very hard, if not impossible, to understand how a person can be at one and the same time fully God and fully human. But it shouldn’t surprise us that we confront mysteries when trying to comprehend God. After all, we confront paradoxes when studying our own physical world. For example, physicists tell us that light has the property of waves in some circumstances and of particles in other circumstances – yet we have no way of understanding how this is possible. If we confront paradoxes trying to understand the nature of our physical world, it should hardly surprise us if we confront paradoxes trying to understand God!

- Greg Boyd

Do You Believe the Bible is:

There are many people out there who believe...The Bible is:

B...Basic
I...Instructions
B...Before
L...Leaving
E...Earth

If that is our philosophy regarding the Bible and the Gospel...no wonder...people believe that believers are too heavenly minded to be any earthly good! First and foremost the Bible is not a book to get us fitted for heaven...rather the Bible is a book to fit us for living gracefully and godly in the earth.

The Bible and the Gospel is far more about getting the atmosphere of heaven to earth by God working in and through His people to fill the earth with His glory...than it is getting the atmosphere of earth to heaven by taking religious mind-setted people to heaven!

People are already fitted for heaven, Jesus saw to that through His finished work on the cross...the problem is getting religious-mind-setted people fit to live on the earth so they can fulfill the plan of God for the Community of Humanity by Him doing His work through religionless-believers so that unbelievers will know that God has already forgiven them and loves them so they will turn to Him (repent). But the problem will always be a problem if we refuse to break free of our religious-mind-settedness from the idea that unbelievers are only worthy of hell.

If we go to heaven retaining our religious denominational mindsets, heaven will be one messed up hell of a place...that even God would vacate.

I believe that the philosophy of the Bible, when rightly understood is:

B...BASIC
I...INSTRUCTIONS
B...for BELIEVING
L...and LIVING
E...the gospel in the EARTH daily

Then, if heaven is to be our final home...people who are already fitted for it, will also be fitted for earth ENTER the kingdom of God and the mission of God in the earth!

At least...that is the way Glenn sees it!

- Glenn Regular

Wonderful Quotes on Our True Self

I love these uplifting quotes on our True Self that I recently read in a devotional by Richard Rohr, and so I wanted to share them here.  It is such a comfort and joy to know that our True Self at our deepest core is Spirit of His Spirit!  Christ in us, making us who we are, Christ in us, the hope of glory - glory already in us, one day to be fully revealed!

"I have the immense joy of being [hu]man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now [that] I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. . . [This realization] was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time....We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time."

- Thomas Merton

"At the center of our being is a point ... which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, ... which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point ... is the pure glory of God in us. . . . It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely."  

- Richard Rohr 

The God of Wisdom. Romans 9 Part 5

This week we have been looking at Romans 9. In this post, we will look at the sixth and final argument against the deterministic interpretation of this famous chapter.

Argument #6: It’s About Wisdom, Not Power

When Paul responds to the charge of injustice by asking, “who… are you, a human being, to argue with God?” (vs. 20), he is not thereby appealing to the sheer power of the potter over the clay. He is rather appealing to the sovereign wisdom of the potter in refashioning clay in a manner that fits the kind of clay he has to work with. When “clay” yields to his influence and has faith, he fashions a vessel of honor. When “clay” becomes “spoiled” (Jer 18:4) and resists his will, he fashions a “vessel of ordinary use” that is being prepared for destruction.

Again, this fashioning looks arbitrary to Jews who believed that they were the “vessel of honor” by virtue of their national identity or good works – Jews who did not “strive for [God’s righteousness] on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works” (Rom 9:32). It is to these people, expressing this sentiment, that Paul sarcastically asks, “Who are you…?” In truth, God’s fashioning is not arbitrary at all. It is based on whether or not one is willing “to seek” after the righteousness of God that comes by faith, not works (9:30–32; 10:3–5, 12–13; 11:22–23).

Conclusion

On the basis of these six considerations I conclude that the deterministic interpretation of Romans 9 is as misguided as it is unfortunate. It is misguided not only because it misinterprets Paul, but because it fundamentally clashes with the supremacy of God’s self-revelation in Christ. And it is unfortunate because it tragically replaces the unsurpassably glorious picture of God as Jesus Christ dying on the cross for undeserving sinners with a picture of a deity who defies all moral sensibilities by arbitrarily fashioning certain people to be vessels fit for eternal destruction — and then punishing them for being that way. It exchanges the picture of a beautiful God who reigns supreme with self-sacrificial love and flexible wisdom for a picture of a God who reigns by the arbitrary exercise of sheer power.


I unequivocally affirm that the sovereign God “has mercy on whomever he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whomever he wants to harden.” I would simply add that the “whomever” he has mercy on refers to “all who choose to believe” while the “whomever” he hardens refers to “all who refuse to believe.” The passage demonstrates the wisdom of God’s loving flexibility, not the sheer determinism of God’s power.

- Greg Boyd