Did God Create Some Humans to be Damned? Part 5

A Response to the Title Question on the Basis of God’s Foreknowledge

The Apostle John tells us Jesus knew beforehand who His disciples would be—that is, who would believe in Him—and the one disciple named Judas Iscariot who would betray Him (John 6:64).  Jesus also knew Peter would deny Jesus three times (Matt. 26:31-35 ). God knew Pharaoh would harden his heart (Exo. 7:3-5).  God knew the Pharisees and Scribes would have Jesus crucified (John 11:49-53).  God also knew Jesus would be perfectly faithful (Matt. 3:16-17).  And God chose every one of these people and many, many more—the good and the bad--in full knowledge of the outcomes because it is as it is written in Proverbs 16:9:

“A person plans his course, but the Lord directs his steps.” [NET]

But even though God knows beforehand what those people would do, He by no means destined them to their choices, nor did God fix their eternal salvation based upon the choices they made in the situations under discussion; although, in many cases their specific decisions would ultimately prove to reflect an irretrievable hardness of their hearts; but God certainly didn’t impose such hardness in them against their will.  Even though He used those people in foreknowledge of their decisions, He doesn’t force them to make the decisions they did.  And even more importantly, their decisions don’t necessarily decide their eternal disposition. We know this is true by the fact that Peter wasn’t lost and the players who served God’s plan by crucifying Christ were not permanently damned because they did so; indeed, didn’t Christ forgive them (Luke 23:34)?  In any event, listen to what Peter would say to them later:

“And now, brothers, I know you acted in ignorance, as your rulers did too. But the things God foretold long ago through all the prophets – that his Christ would suffer – he has fulfilled in this way. Therefore repent and turn back so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and so that he may send the Messiah appointed for you – that is, Jesus (Acts 3:17-20).” [NET]

God urges them and us to repent in spite of what we may have done and be saved.  And God continues to urge us to such repentance right up to the end.  God doesn’t want anyone to perish.  This is what Paul meant when he spoke of those of God’s chosen people—Israel--who remain opposed to Christ (Rom 9: 19-24).  Even though, because they put their faith in their ethnic and religious heritage instead of Christ, they now remain as vessels of wrath—that is, in God’s judgment—that have been prepared by the potter (God) for destruction, should they repent they will become vessels of God’s mercy prepared by the same potter beforehand for God’s glory; for repentance is certainly the focal point of the instruction of the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 18:1-12) behind Paul’s teaching here, and repentance is also the operative focus of Paul’s teaching in his second epistle to Timothy (II Tim. 2:20-21).  God is calling us to repent by believing in Christ and so stand in His kingdom and live.  But if we refuse, we keep ourselves outside His kingdom and remain under His certain wrath (John 3:36).

God not only continually appeals to us to repent, He always offers an open door of grace out of the course we cast ourselves.  God does not want us to stumble, even if He knows we will and our actions will fulfill God’s plans. This was true right from the beginning, as we know from God’s discourse with Cain before Cain murdered his brother Abel (Gen. 4:1-6).  It was true of Judas Iscariot, whom Jesus not only knew would betray Him but chose Judas as one of His twelve disciples, anyway (John 6:59-71).    A careful reading of the drama of Judas shows us Jesus affording every mercy—every appeal of love—to Judas to move Judas to turn back from the sin forming in Judas’ heart.  Jesus revealed Judas’ duplicity to Judas; Jesus invited Judas to recline at Jesus’ left (the place of highest honor relative to the host); Jesus gave Judas a morsel (another act of high honor).  All of these expressions of love (mercy) were appeals to Judas to repent, but Judas hardened his heart with each offering of mercy extended him.  In the end, Jesus let Judas have Judas’ way, and at that point Judas became irreversibly hardened in his course; as the Scriptures tell us, at that moment, Satan entered Judas’ heart (John 13:21-30).

Another example is Pharaoh before the exodus of Israel (Exo. 7-14).  God, through the plagues, mercifully appealed to Pharaoh to capitulate to the authority of God and release the Israelites.  Instead, with each appeal of mercy, Pharaoh hardened his heart.  We can understand how Moses described the situation as both Pharaoh hardening his heart, and God hardening Pharaoh’s heart.  God didn’t coerce Pharaoh’s will, He appealed to it with mercy, with the result Pharaoh’s true heart was revealed.  This is what Paul meant in Romans 9:14-18 when he said of God, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will harden whom I will harden;” through a relentless mercy, God allowed Pharaoh to ultimately condemn himself, so God in effect hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  And because of this, all could see that God is God, the One who delivers us from our exile.

God is Good in every situation in this fallen world, and always provides grace for everyone to turn back to Him.  God didn’t predispose Judas to betray Jesus, nor did God harden Pharaoh’s heart against the Pharaoh’s will.  To do any of those things would require God to deny himself, and render the outcomes lies—mere facsimiles of what He intended for His creation.  No, Judas and Pharaoh and, unfortunately, many others like them, kept themselves out of the righteous relationship with their Creator because they contained God’s love within themselves, where it atrophied and gave way into hate.

God foreknew these players would do what they did and so fulfill God’s purposes; but God didn’t make them do what they did.  There are things that God determined before all time must happen.  Such things He both foreknew and rendered certain.  We have already discussed these things, and they are 1) God’s purpose of creation as a place where He dwells with His image-bearers in 2) relationships empowered and sustained in the state of holy love, 3) in Christ.  When the Bible reflects on predestination, it means the predestined condition of God’s kingdom, which is both necessary for and the very state of eternal life; it is as Jesus teaches:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, the one who is hearing my word and is believing the one who sent Me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed over from death to life (John 5:24).”

This is God preordained place and conditions where all who choose to love Him must and will exist.  The place and conditions are fixed, not the roll-call; otherwise, as I hope we have already shown, God would contradict His goodness.

Now, the implication of what Jesus said is another reality is also fixed.  If there is only one place to be—and God will see that this will ultimately happen—than those who resolutely remain in rebellion against God cannot be there.  So the place for such rebellious people is also fixed, and Jesus refers to this place as judgment.  But the roster for this place is also not fixed but depends on the consistent choices (heart condition) of those who end up there.

The point is God has definitely chosen His kingdom and the ground rules of His kingdom, but he has not determined who will or who will not be there, even though he knows who they will be.

So why do the scriptures speak often of those who love Him as His elect?  Because God has chosen before all time His kingdom—that is to say, His kingdom is His election—those who truly enter His kingdom become indistinguishable from the kingdom itself—indeed, they define it—so they are His election, or His elect.  We are His elect, then, not because we have no choice in the matter, but because we stand in His kingdom, in Christ, in response to the call of God.

Jesus makes it very clear that no one comes to Him unless God draws Him (John 6:44 and 65); indeed, He teaches

 “And it has been written in the prophets, ‘and all people will be taught by God;’ everyone who hears from the Father and is learning comes to Me (John 6:45).”

But this call is not irresistible; after all, the stipulation here is a willing response from us to actively be about learning from God, and almost constantly Jesus is calling us to be in a continuous state of believing in Him (e.g., John 1:12; 3:16; and 6:29, to expose the tip of the iceberg)—not, I must add, a one-time confession of Christ.  If God’s call were irresistible, then God would not be Good.  Yet God must give each of us all the grace we need to recognize our broken relationship with Him, our need to repent of our ill-fated alliances (i.e., our misplaced trust), the desire to repent, the ability to see the alternatives, and so on.  In short, God must and does give each of us all the grace necessary to turn back to Him without contradicting love.  This call involves both God and us; where God’s involvement ends and our involvement begins, and vice versa, is a mystery.  Why some, even under the influence of such powerful and loving grace, choose to reject God’s gift of salvation is also a mystery.

When we speak of such situations as mysteries we speak without contradiction; we properly invoke mystery to those things beyond the limits of our understanding.  They nevertheless trouble us because we are a people discomforted by tensions; and these particular aforementioned mysteries reside in the granddaddy of all tensions, the tension of God’s sovereignty and Man’s responsibility.  The Bible talks within this tension constantly, yet sees no need to explain how it works.  It is, I think, as Jesus described the person having been born of the Spirit of God:

“The spirit blows where it wills and you hear its voice, but you don’t know where it comes from and where it is going; thus it is for everyone who has been born from the spirit (John 3:8).”

God doesn’t explain it to us because we wouldn’t comprehend it; but more importantly, He doesn’t explain it because to walk in God’s kingdom is to walk by faith alone.  We don’t need to know how God is working His love out in us who believe, only to trust Him to be faithful in doing so, and therefore, demonstrating such trust by objectively obeying Him.  Therefore we need to heed His warning to us:

“Today! If you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts (Heb. 4:7).”

Did God Create Some Humans to be Damned? Part 4

A High-Calvinist Response to the Title Question

The reason I have made such a long statement on God’s justice is because many don’t agree with me, and so have adapted a sordid view of what lies behind the determination of some people to choose not to love God.  The high-Calvinists answer “yes” to the title question of this paper: If God created everything, and some reject Him, doesn’t God create some to damnation? They teach God does so for His glory, which they define as His demonstration of power.  In his book, The Basic Ideas of Calvinism (Baker publications, 6^th Edition, p.54), the Calvinist, H. Henry Meeter explains it this way:

“We can begin by saying that as reprobate, as sinners, they are never the objects of God’s favor, but always of His wrath.  God is glorified in the administration of His justice as revealed in the eternal punishment of the wicked.”

Of course, this viewpoint is completely understandable when argued from the presupposition of voluntarism (above), foundational to Calvinist theology.  But it clearly impugns God’s goodness.

God doesn’t purpose to destroy people in response to their rejection of Him.  God is primarily concerned with restoring right order—the righteousness of His kingdom.  People who reject God place themselves outside of justice (i.e., outside His kingdom) and therefore are dead spiritually and therefore remain outside His kingdom.  God doesn’t need to punish them with hell because they are already in hell—that is, they remain under God’s wrath; although the hell they experience now in the presence of God will certainly pale in comparison of the hell they will experience in the second death (Rev. 20:11-15), where God’s influence is absent.  Whoever holds to a course of rebellion against God, God will ultimately leave him or her to the desire of his or her will because for His kingdom to reign fully, it must be perfectly just; therefore, no injustice can be allowed to exist—again, not because God is vengeful or retributive, but because God is Good.

Some will argue at this point the Scriptures clearly teach God will us judge based on our works (e.g., Ps. 62:12; Prov. 24:12; Jer. 17:10; Matt. 16:27; Rom. 2:6-11; I Pet. 1:17; Rev. 20:12 and 22:12).  This would seem to be distributive justice.  It isn’t.  Our salvation is to stand in the kingdom of God, in Christ.  If we are in God’s salvation it will be reflected by our most consistent character.  Whether our consistent character is of holy love (in the kingdom) or is of selfish-ambition (outside the kingdom), it will be evident by our actions and passions. At the final judgment God will assess our works and depending on what He finds, He will either say we are or we are not in His kingdom—that is, whether we stand in Christ or don’t stand in Christ.  Because we neither earn entrance into God’s kingdom, nor somehow build God’s kingdom for ourselves, our ultimate character as kingdom dwellers is the work of the Holy Spirit within us and our devotion to the Holy Spirit’s work (contrast the passages about judgment by works against passages such as John 3:21, Eph. 2:10, and Phil. 2:12-13)—that is, we live by faith.  If we reject God's Spirit, which is to stand outside of God's kingdom, our consistent character will reflect this choice, too.  Therefore, our salvation is not decided on the basis of distributive justice but on whether or not we are standing in God’s justice.

When we properly understand God’s justice as the right order of things, we can no longer even imagine God creating some people for reprobation.  Double predestination—the choosing before all eternity whom God would love and whom He wouldn’t, or even a more moderate position of God withholding necessary grace from some, so that while acting “freely” they would nevertheless be guaranteed to fail (i.e., compatibilism)—becomes an absurdity in the face of God’s kingdom justice.  To purposely create beings to be disordered—to be unjust—would undermine His purpose in creation, and therefore contradict His Goodness.  No, we must discover a different reason for God allowing the universe to end up with both people who reject God and people who accept Him.

A Response to the Title Question on the Basis of God’s Goodness

Hopefully by all of this we are beginning to understand God’s purpose in creation.  His glory is righteous relationships between His image bearers and Himself and, consequently, between His image bearers, collectively as the kingdom of God.  His glory is the power of His goodness to create a place where beings necessarily in His image can dwell with Him by the same love bonding the relationships inherent to God’s eternal being—not power for the sake of demonstration of power.  When Saint Paul states, “For all persons have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23),” he means the glory of the power of God’s goodness manifested in a kingdom of relationships of holy love.  Paul’s statement doesn’t make sense if glory meant simply a demonstration of God’s power.

God’s glory that is His kingdom has meaning only if His image bearers truly love Him in perfect tension with holiness.  This means among other things, his image bearers must freely choose to love Him.  God could, of course, create automatons programmed to love Him, but such love—if we could call it that—would be unholy, and therefore, not good; for God to create such an artificial state—except, I guess, as a toy kingdom, which was not His purpose--He would have to deny Himself.

To create image bearers who could be true dwellers with Him in His kingdom, He created humankind as neither Good, nor the absence of Good (Evil), but God created humankind innocent (Genesis 2:25).  And God called this nascent state of humankind, very good (beautiful).  He did so because had God created them “Good” they would have been like God in that they could only choose to love in justice.  But being created beings, they are necessarily contingent beings, so they cannot be God, or realize His purpose for them as His image bearers without sharing His nature.  But for them to genuinely share the Divine nature, they must grow into it through a relationship with God because only God is love; otherwise, they wouldn’t be contingent beings, but only mere projections of God.

For such a relationship to be righteous the creature must be able to respond to God’s love by freely choosing to love Him back.  Again, the kind of relationship God purposed us to enter into with Him involves genuine love, not pretence of love.  Only by a relationship can love grow within the creature—can the creature learn the reality of love--until love is eventually perfected in the creature, where the creature perfectly shares the Divine nature.  Therefore, God created humankind innocent—a clean slate—fully outfitted (i.e., created in His image) to grow through a righteous relationship with God until becoming Good, when humankind fully shares His nature.  Putting it differently, only by experiencing love, which means one receives love from God, and then one freely chooses to love God back, can one learn what love is; and this process takes time.

The kingdom relationships God created us to enjoy requires a holy love, which by definition therefore, cannot be coerced.  God could have a type of a relationship with automatons programmed to love.  In one sense the automatons would freely love God, but only because they had been predisposed to do so.  Not only would such a relationship not be righteous, it would be meaningless and therefore an effrontery to God because it would contradict His Goodness; God would not create for Himself a lie, because God does not lie.

Therefore, God created human beings fully capable of growing to the point of fully sharing His nature.  And this growth would occur through a relationship of holy love.  For a time Adam and Eve enjoyed such a relationship—like children with their parent--and they began to grow in their understanding of God’s love.  Through their burgeoning love with God, they were learning the wisdom of love.  And if Adam and Eve had stayed the course, they would have become authentic humanity—that is human beings fully sharing the Divine nature.  If you don’t understand what this means, study Jesus, who is the first born of all of us who dwell in God’s kingdom by faith.

Alas, Adam and Eve believed they could reach the goal without the process.  They bought into Satan’s lie they could take the quick fix and learn to love without loving.  In so doing, they contained love to themselves by rejecting it.  This severed their essential relationship with God, and they died.  Only in a relationship with God through holy love is there life; indeed, to walk with God in His kingdom is to live forever.

When Adam and Eve died, they ran out on their created purpose to maintain, through their righteous relationships with God and each other, the right order of the cosmos as God’s regents.  When Adam and Eve died, the physical realm was plunged into chaos.  No wonder Paul, in the eighth chapter of his letter to the Romans writes,

For I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared to the glory that will be revealed to us.  For the creation eagerly waits for the revelation of the sons of God.  For the creation was subjected to futility – not willingly but because of God who subjected it – in hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children.  For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now.  Not only this, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with endurance (Romans 8:18-25). [NET]

Paul tells us that God allowed the creation to fall into futility.  Why? Humankind must be fully restored to the just relationship with God so humanity will then meet their created purpose as God’s regents in the universe.  Because God is good, He will not artificially restore peace to the cosmos; instead, He waits for right order to be realized as it only properly can through the complete healing of relationships between God and His image-bearers and consequently between His image-bearers.  The restoration of peace in the cosmos—what will finally quell the groaning Paul speaks of (above)—requires the restoration of Divine/Human relationships because this is how God created it to be.  And He did so because of His goodness.

Of course, as a supreme act of God’s goodness, Jesus came and dealt once and for all with our Death which disables our relationship with God.  So why does God wait to bring a close to history?  I can only say I don’t know; it is a mystery.  The apostle Peter gives us a clue, though:

“The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance (II Pet. 3:9).” [NET]

God is relational.  When we ponder the title question, we must do so while standing on the foundation of righteous relationships--not contrived relationships—because God who created us is relational.  Peter’s words seem to imply God will save everyone because, if not, His will would be thwarted.  The Bible clearly stands against universal salvation, and rightly so.  If God saved everyone regardless of their choice, it would contradict His goodness—as we have already discussed.  Consequently, His goodness does impose a certain risk no one will choose Him.  So why would God create us in the first place?  Certainly, not because He needs our love; neither God’s being nor His character are contingent on anything outside Himself (see above).  I suppose the answer lies in His goodness; His goodness by its nature wants to expand out in relationships—not out of need, but by its very nature.  So why take the risk of no one choosing to love Him in return in a righteous relationship—especially at the cost of suffering?  The answer, I think, is He knew some would indeed so love Him.

Did God Create Some Humans to be Damned? Part 3

Mercy and Justice

We have shown that the created purpose of God is a kingdom in which God dwells with His image bearers (us) in a state fostering perfect relationships through the unfettered flow of God’s love in the purity of holiness.  And God predestined this necessary state of affairs would be in Christ for all of us who believe.  Saint Paul states this explicitly in his letter to the Ephesians:

“Blessed is God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us in every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, in that He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we might be holy and blameless before Him in love.” (Eph. 1:3,4)

This is the trajectory of God’s re-creative work in Christ: justice for all who believe in Christ.  But as we know, the cosmos is not yet there.  We who stand in Christ today do stand in this kingdom, today.  But His kingdom is juxtaposed on a very dark and fallen world.  Both regardless and for this reason, we must live as Christ followers in the reality of God’s kingdom by being good just as God teaches us through His prophet Micah:

“He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord really wants from you:

He wants you to promote justice [act justly], to be faithful [love mercy], and to live obediently [walk humbly] before your God.” (Micah 6:8)

The good news is God’s kingdom has come in Christ so we can actually live in this expectation of good because in Christ we now have the wisdom and power to do it (I John 2:7-8).  Thus, if we believe in Christ we will be predisposed to love mercy and act justly because we walk humbly before God—that is, we walk in complete dependence on Him.

The question becomes what is the relationship between the final state of love and holiness and the concepts of mercy and justice? To me the former is the end and the latter is the means.  The confusion comes in understanding justice in both terms of an end state—God’s righteousness—and a means to that end.  Here, we can look to language for help.

In his seminal work, Iustitia Dei, Alister McGrath discusses two Hebrew words relevant to the present discussion (McGrath, Iustitia Dei. Cambridge (2005): pp.6-21).  The Hebrew word for righteousness is sedaqa.  It means the right order of things; therefore it describes the final state of justice.  For this reason, in a broad sense God’s righteousness and justice are synonymous.  What’s interesting about this word sedaqa is over time it came to mean almsgiving.  Dr. McGarth points out how this rather odd change makes perfect sense when we understand justice as right order of things because a key result of the fall of Humankind is poverty (Ibid. p. 13).  In fact, God most frequently speaks of His justice in the Bible as a response to the pleas and needs of the poor (as good bench marks of this consider Is. 58 and Matt. 25:31-46).  So we see in the evolution of the word sedaqa it carries both the final state of justice—right order of things—and the means to getting there—promoting justice.

Another word for our consideration is the Hebrew verb hasdiq, which we translate as “to justify.”  What God meant us to understand from this word is to acquit—that is, to make something right even though it is wrong and undeserving of such an appellation.  The Greek translators of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek pulled their hair out trying to translate hasdiq because there was no Greek equivalent; the very idea of acquitting someone who was guilty was foreign to the Greeks.  In the end they used the Greek verb, δικαιοω, which means “to justify,” but in the Greek sense of giving someone his or her proper due: if you do well, you are rewarded; if you do bad, you are punished.  It is this sense of justice and justifying—what is called distributive justice--we have come to understand God’s justice.  And such an interpretation has dire implications on how we see our role in a very unjust world and as we shall see (below), how we answer the title question.

When we properly speak of justice from God’s perspective, then, we mean the right order of things.  When we speak of God’s justice as a means or response, we mean a movement from the wrong order of things to the right order of things.  Unfortunately, we have come to understand justice as a matter of accounting—balancing the scales—and we attempt to accomplish this balancing through retribution.  The fallen world defines justice as vengeance, tit-for-tat, or retribution.  But this is not Christ’s justice—kingdom of God justice.

Now, it is true the Bible speaks frequently of God’s retribution.   God makes it clear to us: “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” (Rom. 12:19) But there is no reason to understand this as vindictiveness on God’s part.  Instead we should see it in two important aspects.  Firstly, God must be the only one to make final judgments because God is the only one who is perfectly righteous.  Consequently, the relentless seeking of God to vanquish our enemies, as documented in the Bible, is really a call for us to keep trusting God to do what only He can do without us meddling.  We continue to petition God to act so that His justice will be consummated; indeed, this is our certain hope in Christ—a hope, I might add, the rest of the world lacks because they continue to trust retribution as the path to justice.

Secondly, the injustice in the world—that is, the wrong order of things—must ultimately be dealt with for the cosmos to become fully just.  Therefore, God must bring final order by the destruction of everything keeping the cosmos in a disordered condition.  This is not vindictiveness or even retribution on God’s part; God isn’t sitting in heaven thinking, I’m going to beat the crap out of so-and-so because of what he did; no God’s destruction of everything opposing His kingdom is the Goodness of God ultimately prevailing in the cosmos.  God's kingdom will come in fullness, but sadly, many will obstinately refuse to enter it.  In the end, as in Jesus’ parable, the weeds shall be gathered and burned (Matt. 13:24-29 and 37-43).

Justice is not vengeance, even though second temple Judaism came to see it that way.  When John the Baptist asked Jesus if Jesus was the one promised to come—the Messiah who would bring in God’s kingdom—it was because John doubted.  Even though John was certain of Jesus’ Messianic identity, John doubted.  I believe John doubted because, for one thing, he was in prison, and under such conditions even the best of us might tend to lose perspective.  But perhaps John also doubted because he was holding on to the common idea of the Messiah as a conquering warrior. Jesus responded, in His typical loving manner of both correction and instruction, in terms of kingdom justice, not the fallen world’s retributive justice:

So he answered them, “Go tell John what you have seen and heard: The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news proclaimed to them.  Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me (Luke 7:22,23).” [NET]

All that had become disordered because of the Death of humankind, Jesus was restoring in order to usher in His kingdom.  Consequently, blindness both physical and spiritual was being restored; lameness was being replaced by wholeness; the walls of social division were being broken down; and death was being overcome by life.

We don’t want to miss what the Pharisees clearly missed when they accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Satan; Jesus cast out demons by the power of the Holy Spirit, which meant the kingdom of God was coming—indeed, has come—in power:

But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has already overtaken you (Matthew 12:28). [NET]

Jesus is bringing order out of the chaos of rebellion, so He naturally begins with restoring the relationship between us and our Creator by the mercy of forgiveness.  Demons represent Satan’s only hold over us, which is our guilt.  By casting the demons out of people, Jesus relinquished their hold over us.  And by His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection, Jesus divested Satan of any accusation against us who believe in Christ, once and for all.  It was through an act of the mercy of love and forgiveness that Jesus ushered in justice, not by the end of a sword.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day and many others over subsequent history—including many who have professed the name of Christ—thought people can be legislated into justice.  Even today, too many people believe we can bring kingdom justice by the enforcement of rules.  In other words, they think we can only establish justice by wielding the sword of retribution.  Jesus came and both lived and preached the truth that only through the administering of mercy can people be brought into kingdom justice:

If you had known what this means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent (Matthew 12:7). [NET]

But this mercy is love grounded in justice.  The kind of mercy effecting a change from the wrong order of things to the right order of things never condones injustice; rather true mercy, brings the recipient to an understanding of his or her own folly, he or she would have otherwise ignored.

God is bringing about His justice--the restoration of His kingdom—through the kingdom principles of love and holiness manifested as mercy and justice.  God is not bringing justice through the present world’s method of retribution and might-makes-right.  We see this clearly with Jesus on the cross; even though brutalized and mocked, Jesus prayed,

“Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

Therefore, if we confess Jesus as our Lord, which means we walk in His kingdom, then our theology should have no room for distributive justice, but fully embrace the principles of mercy and justice, the present expression of a holy love inspired and powered by God’s Spirit within us.

Did God Create Some Humans to be Damned? Part 2

[What follows is a continuation of the previous post.  If you missed the last post, please read it before continuing on, here.]

The Character of God

Jesus tells us that only God is good.  Indeed, God defines goodness.  If we want to really understand goodness we must look to God.  And because Jesus is God come in the flesh.  We must look to Jesus if we want to see God:

“’If you have known Me, you will also know My Father.  And from now on you know Him and have seen Him…. Jesus said to him, ‘So long a time I am with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? The one who has seen Me, has seen the Father.  How is it you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” [John 14:7, 9]

When Moses asked God to show Moses God’s glory, Moses was seeking to know God’s true Self.  God answered,

"I will make all my goodness pass before your face, and I will proclaim the Lord by name before you; I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.” (Exodus 33:19)  [NET]

"God’s true Self is His goodness.  Some think by how God describes His nature that the corollary, “I will condemn whom I will condemn,” is also true.  Not so.  What God is saying is His goodness is not predicated on anything outside His Being.  In the same way God earlier described the complete autonomy of his Being by saying His name is “I am, that I am.  You must tell the Israelites, I AM has sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14), God now speaks of His nature the same way.  God is also telling Moses by this definition of His nature that God is in the business to bring the opportunity of salvation to all humanity, not just a select few (i.e., Israel); God is seeking to restore His creation to its created purpose.

Justice

The Tension of Love and Holiness

If we are to answer the title question, we must come to better understand God's perspective of justice.

When we consider justice, we usually think about rules, the breaking of rules, and punishment.  God did, indeed, give us a set of laws against killing, stealing, committing adultery, coveting our neighbor’s things, and so on.  So when we speak of a just state, these laws constitute the foundation or minimum condition of order.  But they are not sufficient to complete order; we must also love each other.  It is this complete order of objective purity in love that is God's justice.

The love by which we must love each other for it to be a just state is the selfless love by which God has loved us.  What we discover is when we love in this way there is no longer any need to articulate the rules.  The reason is such love eliminates all the conditions that lead to breaking the rules.  To love with God’s love fully satisfies the objectives of the stated rules.  In other words, selfless love fulfills the law.

Outside of such love, which is where we all find ourselves because we told God we can be our own god, we live in fear: fear of want, fear of death, fear of rejection, fear of betrayal, fear of losing, fear of loneliness, and so on.  Because of God’s goodness, when we love with His love, our fears vanish, and consequently the effects of those fears, which is the breaking of the laws, vanish from the community of humanity.  Think about it: in God's love, everyone would meet the needs of others; everyone would be faithful to others; there would no longer be competition; everyone would be content and willing to share with others.  But only when God’s love empowers and motivates all relationships; otherwise all those consequences switch to their negatives, with the result the rules are broken--people living in fear kill, steal, cheat, lie, grasp, and on and on; what was a just state, with its purity through selfless love, quickly devolves into an unjust state empowered by selfish-ambition.

Love is the key to justice, but can it be autonomous of the rules and still be love?  No, because the rules—rather, the objectives of the rules-- are what shape the love into selfless love.  I might see someone steal bread because they are hungry and tell them it is okay and believe I love them by this—that is, I believe love is defined by an unbridled permissiveness or tolerance.  Not so.  I really choose to take the stand I do to avoid the work to help the person out of his hunger so he no longer needs to steal; so my so-called love is really self-serving, and therefore not God’s love.  The person who steals is not helped to see that he is attempting to meet a genuine need in a wrong way, so he very likely will meet other needs in similar fashions; as his own sense of self-interest escalates, so do his breaking of the rules.  Furthermore, his real needs still are not met, so he becomes embittered and covetous, and lashes out with greater virulence.  And his victims will respond in kind.  The result is the once just state collapses; and the collapse is complete because both love and purity are lost.

What happens if we disconnect the rules from love?  In our simple example of the bread thief, the thief is punished for breaking the law.  The punisher believes he will prevent any future stealing by instilling fear into the thief.  But the thief’s needs go unmet, so he will steal again—perhaps now from a sense of vengeance, so  he breaks more laws in the process.  The punisher sees himself more worthy than the thief because the punisher does not break the written call or letter of the rules; and this sense of superiority engenders a haughty contempt for the thief and anyone like the thief.  In short, the legalism of the punisher creates destructive relationships and both the letter and the objectives of the laws are thwarted.  As in the case when love is practiced outside the law, when the law is practiced without love the once just state becomes unjust, and both love and purity are destroyed.

Therefore, God’s justice is not a matter of unbridled tolerance, nor is it a police state.  God’s justice is when love and holiness are kept in perfect tension.  Saying it differently: God’s justice is the right order of things as defined by relationships, empowered and driven by God’s love, cradled within the objective state of purity that is holiness.

God’s justice is the necessary condition of the kingdom He created for us to dwell with Him.  And when God consummates His kingdom—when God is all and in all—the cosmos will be stand perfectly in justice--God’s righteousness.  But as we all know His kingdom has not yet come in completion; there are still destructive relationships in our world, and because of them, great disorder.  For this reason, the Bible most frequently speaks of love and holiness in terms of mercy and justice.

Did God Create Some Humans to be Damned? Part 1

Over the next several weeks I will be publishing here installments of a paper I wrote on behalf of my fellow elders in my church.  In it I attempted to provide some perspective on the thorny question of how sin can exist in a world created by a good God.  Notice I said perspective and not answer because many brilliant man and woman have preceded me, are alive today, and will arise in the future with far better minds than I possess, who nevertheless won't be able to definitively answer this question.  Alas, I would much rather take the high road and continue to have us consider what it means to be dwellers in God's kingdom, in Christ, but I cannot seem to evade these difficult theological questions; such is one of the challenges that goes with the territory.  The following paper will likely not satisfy anyone; the scholars among you will find it poorly attested, and the rest of you will find it too heady.  Please don't give up on it, though; because the exercise will be good for all our brains and hopefully cause us to wrestle with--perhaps for the first time--what we believe and why.  BONSAI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Presuppositions

In order to give an answer to the question, “If God knew some would reject Him and yet created them, anyway, doesn’t that mean he created them for damnation?” I must first list the seven presuppositions undergirding my thinking.

1) Because God is Good whatever He wills is Good; God’s will always flows out of His inherent Goodness.  One reason we can be certain we can trust God to be faithful to His promises is because His Goodness is His very nature.  It is as the Psalmist confidently trusts:

He restores my strength.

He leads me down the right paths

for the sake of his reputation. (Ps. 23:3)

The presupposition opposing this is held by the so-called High-Calvinists.  It states, “Whatever God wills is good because He willed it.”  This supposition, also called voluntarism, was perfected—if not invented— in the 13^th century by Duns Scotus, who firmly asserted that for God to be God, God must be absolutely free.  And voluntarism became the foundation of Reformed theology.  For example, in, Bondage of the Will, Luther states,

God is that Being, for whose will no cause or reason is to be assigned, as a rule or standard by which it acts, seeing that, nothing is superior or equal to it, but it is itself the rule of all things.  For if it acted by any rule or standard, or from any cause or reason, it would no longer be the will of God.[i]

One of the main problems I have with voluntarism is if it were true, it would leave us doubting God’s faithfulness to His promises.  If His will is only a pure expression of His free, unbridled power and not His goodness, then God could change His mind, if He so chose, in order to demonstrate His power.

2) God will not act in contradiction of His Goodness; God is God.

3) God is relational.  The whole Biblical narrative attests to this fact, but a particularly poignant demonstration of the relational nature of God is found in Matthew 23:37,

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would have none of it!” [NET]

We also know God is relational because of the eternal relationship of the three Persons of the Trinity.  And this relationship is bonded together by love; for God is love.

4) There is a right order that both defines and is defined by love; God is holy. The inscrutable Divine nature  is Goodness, which is love and holiness in perfect tension, where by tension is meant that if either side—love or holiness—is diminished, or eliminated, both sides are lost.  That Goodness can be defined by the tension of love and holiness is supported by Micah 6:8.  Probably the most explicit statement of the tension of love and holiness is found in Ephesians 1:4,

For he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we may be holy and unblemished in his sight in love. [NET]

But the love/holiness tension is ubiquitous throughout the Scriptures[ii], and usually stated in terms of mercy and justice (see below).

5) God’s love does not want to be contained.  But because of its nature, love can be contained by one rejecting it.

6) Therefore,  righteous relationships, by definition, are when love is freely chosen and shared through translation—not as a transaction—between the lovers in  the perfect tension of love and holiness.  Love is not a matter of deal making or coercion, but freely giving and freely receiving and receiving in order to freely give again.

7) God is sovereign over His sovereignty; although, this is really a restatement of Presupposition 2 (above).

God’s Purpose in Creation

Next, before we can properly address the thesis question of this paper, we must establish what we know about God’s purpose in creation.  God created the physical world—the cosmos—to be joined with the spiritual world—heaven-- to become God’s dominion—the kingdom of God.
 

“Heaven is My throne, and the earth My footstool.”

Love was both the motivation and the purpose of creating the kingdom of God.  His kingdom is a place of righteous relationships, where by righteous relationship I mean one set apart from all other types of relationships because it is grounded, empowered, and driven by love in perfect tension with holiness.  Thus, God created beings with whom He could dwell, and therefore they—God and created beings--could dwell together in righteous relationships:

Surely your goodness and faithfulness will pursue me all my days,

and I will live in the Lord’s house for the rest of my life (Ps. 23:6). [NET]

Putting it another way, God created beings capable of sharing His Divine nature (II Peter 1:3,4).  By necessity, then, God created these beings in His image (Genesis 1:27).  Such creatures could reflect God’s image back to God, which means God’s love flows between God and the creatures and back to God freely in the perfect tension of love and holiness.

Because of the righteous relationship between God and His image bearers, there can be, consequentially, righteous relationships between the image bearers.  This truth is behind the two commandments summing up the Law and Prophets (i.e., the entire Scriptural narrative) and Jesus’ careful ordering of them:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37, 38).’” [NET]

It is through these righteous relationships—God and His image bearers, and between His image bearers—human beings fulfill their task as God’s regents over the cosmos:

When I look up at the heavens, which your fingers made, and see the moon and the stars, which you set in place, Of what importance is the human race, that you should notice them?

Of what importance is mankind, that you should pay attention to them, and make them a little less than the heavenly beings? You grant mankind honor and majesty; you appoint them to rule over your creation; you have placed everything under their authority, including all the sheep and cattle, as well as the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea

and everything that moves through the currents of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how magnificent is your reputation throughout the earth (Psalm 8:3-9)! [NET]

And as the Psalmist so beautifully concludes, God’s kingdom—His Dominion of righteous relationships—is established in His Goodness: God’s reputation.

---

[i] Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will.  Kindle Books, Loc. No. 2501.

[ii] E.g., Gal. 5:13-26; Col. 3:12-14;I Pet. 1:22-25;I Thes. 4:1-12; Ps. 25:8

Dr. Z

When I was in fifth grade my parents went away for the weekend leaving me with the next door neighbors.  When they returned home my mother asked me how it had gone and what did I end up doing.  I told her I went to a movie.  "Oh?" she said, "Which one?" "Doctor Zhivago," I proudly answered.  My mother was livid.

I've read Pasternak's novel three times since those formative years, and seen the movie countless more times.  Tonight I screened Dr. Z for my daughter and my wife.  My daughter liked it, but didn't like the ending; my wife still loathes the film, and I suspect she always will. I don't blame her, really; one can only like a few of the characters in the tale, such as Tonya, her mother, and father, and perhaps a handful of others; all of whom have limited air time.  I typically don't like stories where I can't like a main character; so I should agree with my wife on this one.  But I don't, and I will explain why in a minute.

In college I took two history courses as part of my humanities requirement: Russian History, and Soviet history.  They were both taught by a professor who had defected from the Soviet Union with his parents and siblings after WWII.  His lectures were riveting; he made history, not just Russian history come alive with his anecdotes, perspectives, and analyses.  He also smoked these jet-black Russian cigars while he lectured; actually, he inhaled them as I and the rest of his students looked on aghast.

There are two things relevant to the present discussion I would like to relate from those Russian history lectures.  Firstly, he told us how maybe only 20% of the Soviet population actually believed what was published in the newspaper, Pravda.  This was quite ironic, of course, because Pravda means truth.  There was nothing the Russian people could do about it at that point, being under Brezhnev's thumb. My professor went on to say about 70% of Americans believed what they read in American newspapers.  And for 1977 this was a reasonable position for people to take because by and large American journalism was trustworthy then.

Secondly, when our professor had been called to Washington to assist our diplomats with visitors from the Soviet Union, some young professors from Colorado College stood in for him.  They spoke glibly about all the arguments they had had with our professor as they extolled the virtues of Bolshevism.  They as much as said our professor was quite naive in his repudiation of communism.  I thought at the time these guys, who had probably grown up in upper middle class homes and attended Harvard or some other Ivy League school, had a lot of nerve to challenge our professor who had actually lived under the Soviet system.  But even though the communist systems have proven themselves to be political and economic failures, after butchering millions upon millions of people in the bargain, I still know some who believe communism is a viable social option.  And if given the chance, they would embrace communism with open arms.

This is why I like Doctor Zhivago so much.

The critics might be right in downgrading Dr. Z for its over-inflated romanticism, but they miss the point.  It is a fairly accurate and true depiction of a society in self-destruction.  It is a slice of history.  And all history needs to be seen--whether dramatized or not-- lest we forget and live through it again.

Dr. Z is a cautionary tale.  It warns us of at least two factors that play into destroying a society.  The first is the cold indifference of those who have resources towards those who do not.  When I watch the dragoons slaughter the poor peaceful demonstrators near the beginning of the story, I think how those wealthy who looked on from their lavish parties in their ivory palaces instead of interceding to bring justice, brought certain irreversible calamity to both themselves and those poor people--that is, those who had it in their power to make positive changes to Russia, for the benefit of all, didn't, and so left the door open for the opportunists.

The second warning from this great epic, then, is how easily wolves in sheep's clothing can infiltrate a flock of complacent sheep.  When Evgrav, Yuri Zhivago's Bolshevik brother, spoke how the Bolsheviks would win when the boots of the Russian soldiers finally wore out in WWI, he told the truth.  But the truth was not that they would usher in a system in which everyone would prosper and live as brothers, as the Bolshevik propaganda spewed in Pravda and elsewhere, rather a small group of opportunists would take advantage of a bad situation to wrest power and wealth for themselves at the expense of everyone else.  And they accomplished this by publishing a steady stream of lies through control of the press and the liberal use of mob tactics.  And the people let the thugs lead the people to the slaughter house--like the Morlocks did the Eloi in H.G. Wells' Time Machine--because the initial subtle incursions by the thugs didn't immediately and intimately affect most of the people, while the rest remained afraid or in desperate want.

Unlike the 1970s, the American press is no longer trustworthy.  There have been too many distortions of the facts by the press exposed in recent days to believe otherwise.  And it is when you see a cockroach, you need to start worrying about an infestation.  Yet the American public has been largely silent to these glaring breaches of trust.  Why?  I'll let you answer that question.

The press or certain political figures might challenge me at this juncture in the same way the Bolshevik commissar did Yuri when Yuri rebuked him for not admitting there was typhus and starvation in the city: "Why is it so important to you that I admit it?"  And I would answer along with Yuri, "Because it is so."

Jesus teaches us that it is truth that sets us free.  We haven't been getting much truth lately. But what is even more frightening is we don't seem to care.

We need to watch stories such as Dr. Z, even if we don't particularly like them or the characters in them, because they remind us of what has happened before and therefore awaken us to what might be happening now.  As has been said many times, if we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

Perelandra

Recently, my daughter found herself in a difficult situation.  I felt sorry for her because I know how important it is to her not to hurt people's feelings, especially people closest to her.  But there she was, like in the old song, stuck in the middle again.  My daughter, even though a teenager, has already traveled extensively, so someone innocently asked her what her favorite place to visit is.  Immediately, before she could breathe, loved ones started lobbying for their favorite destinations.  They were pleasant enough in this, but the threat of disappointment should she not choose their first choice was certainly palpable.  We still don't know her opinion, and I suspect we might never know it.

Even though C.S. Lewis is no science fiction writer of the caliber of say, Isaac Asimov, it amazes me of how little air-time is given to Lewis' so-called space trilogy.  I personally feel it is a brilliant and quite unique contribution to the genre.  The third book, That Hideous Strength, is a terrifying tour de force; I have never read a book that so powerfully and chillingly portrays the battle of good versus evil as does this piece.  It starts out slowly, but gradually picks up speed off the heat of your blood.  As horrific That Hideous Strength is, the second book, Perelandra, is philosophical.

In Perelandra, the protagonist of the trilogy is transported to the planet Venus, where he finds a second garden of Eden untouched by rebellion.  He has the chance to speak with the Eve figure to help her hold to the right path.  The conflict arises when a second visitor invades the world, seeking to sow corruption.  The ensuing three-way conversation is a potent discourse on the daunting questions of existence, purpose, and meaning.  The reader easily gets dragged into the debate, and for this reason, of the three books, Perelandra takes the longest to read.

Now, what does all this have to do with my poor daughter's dilemma?  One issue raised in Perelandra is that of making comparisons.  Let's eves drop (no pun intended) into the conversation between the protagonist, Ransom (whom she calls Piebald) and the Lady, in progress...

"What you made me see," answered the Lady, "is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before.  Yet it has happened every day.  One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one's mind.  Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of.  One joy was expected and another is given.  But this I had never noticed before--that the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside.  The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment before you.  And if you wished--if it were possible to wish--you could keep it there.  You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got.  You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other....  And this, O' Piebald, is the glory and wonder you have made me see; that it is I, I myself, who turn from the good expected to the given good.  Out of my own heart I do it.  One can conceive a heart which did not: which clung to the good it had first thought of and turned the good which was given it into no good." [Perelandra, Collier Books: 1944, pp.68,69.]

When we live our lives making constant comparisons, we cheat ourselves.  And whether or not we may realize it, this embezzlement of one's self by one's self will eventually lead to a bitterness that, in turn, becomes a covetousness.  It is a disposition that drives us to steal: in the case of my daughter, the good and the joy of her own experiences.  And should this theft go unchallenged, it will lead in some cases to a wholesale robbery of the person's identity and purpose.  As I have said before, forced assimilation is a consummate evil.

Such is only the beginning of the woes engendered by covetousness.  Other transgressions such as murder, adultery, bigotry, elitism, hatred, and so on, all grow from the root of covetousness.  Saint Paul said the love of money is the root of all evil.  I would suggest the love of money stems from covetousness that arises from the fear basic to a discontented heart.  And where does this discontentment come from?: all too often, the intoxication of making comparisons.

Of course, most of us have fond memories of some happy place of our past; we might favorably compare it against everything else we've experienced.  There is nothing wrong with this.  But it is a thin ice to tread.  As the Lady of Perelandra suggested, it takes an act of will to not let those past glories rob us of the present ones.  It perhaps takes even greater self-control to celebrate the glories of others and avoid fettering others to one's own glories, and so take from them.

The simple and wondrous truth is our God and Creator offers us an infinite kingdom not a limited one. As breathtaking standing at the entrance to this great kingdom might me, God would not keep us there. Instead, He leads us forward on an eternal journey of discovery, where every new good is followed by another, and each good is the best good.  It is the real Perelandra, where one cannot find the verb, compare, in the dictionary; because to revel in the present is to live, but to compare against the past is to wither and die.