The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Does Julie think Jesus is God? How will Evangelicals react?

Theology Christology
#141

Rline,
Isn’t it obvious when we say “Chapter and verse please” just like fundamentalists, that it’s a challenge to the other’s views. How we ask for the evidence matters. And I saw that and even expected JP to respond that way.

It’s odd because we always side with the view we agree with. I don’t think JP was anymore demeaning than you. But I can say when someone says

That comes off poorly. Instead why not say something like - You know Jason, I’m not aware of scriptures which represent what you’re speaking about. Please could you point them out.

But I say with certainity it’s antagonistic. And Rline, if you say “I didn’t mean it that way”, then expect JP to say the same. In other words, if you’re going to challenge someone in a condescending way, then expect it in return.

Please everyone, treat others as you would like to be treated. Admins and MOD’s are not exempt from the rules.

#142

Perhaps a few heart strings have been plucked a little too strongly? If I know the subject well, it is certainly one that is near to heart, and easy to upset when drawn out overlong. Especially Unitarian vs Multitarian conversations.

#143

Agreed Lef, we hold our beliefs dear so we get antagonized easily. I tend to think it’s an insecurity in us that manifests our fear - we could be wrong.

#144

Jason, are you really saying that you are both a Trinitarian and panentheist or are you playfully saying that you believe in an omnipresent deity?

Hey firstborn888, I hope that all is well. I want to make sure that I understand what you said in the past. If I correctly recall, does your panentheism teach that God is ultimately impersonal?

JulieF, I am interested in dialoging with you about your version of panentheism, not that I yet know your version. Could I began by asking you some question about your panentheism?

#145

Panentheism does not teach that God is impersonal, nor is it incompatible with Trinitarianism. Panentheism is actually a very grand way of reconciling the creative incarnation of Christ in “helpless babe, grown to die the Son of Man, and rise again defeating Death and Grave”, while maintaining the simultaneous transcendence of God over Creation.

Just adding my two pence/cents concerning it, being a Panentheist myself.

#146

I read a very little bit about Panentheism on Wikipedia (isn’t Wikipedia just great? :laughing: ). Seems to make sense to me.
If it is basically the belief that God is both immanent and transcendent at the same time, and that God is both the Creator and the Sustainer of the universe, then I’d have to say that’s how I see it. :slight_smile:
I also found this interesting quotation that applies to many of us on this site I’m sure:
‘Many Christians who believe in universalism hold panentheistic views of God in conjunction with their belief in apocatastasis, also called universal reconciliation.[19] Panentheistic Christian Universalists often believe that all creation’s subsistence in God renders untenable the notion of final and permanent alienation from Him; they point to Biblical scripture passages such as Ephesians 4:6 ("[God] is over all and through all and in all") and Romans 11:36 (“from [God] and through him and to him are all things”) to justify both panentheism and universalism.’
Of course, I’ve just done only a minute or two of reading on the subject, so I could be way off base as to what it’s really all about. :neutral_face: I first heard the word when flipping through a book by Marcus Borg a few years ago.
It sounded sensible, the way he described it, if I remember correctly.
I’ve heard it said by some that Marcus Borg is bad news… but then I heard that about Rob Bell too, so I’m not gonna make any assumptions at this point. :slight_smile: I think I’m gonna make it a point to hear out more so-called heretics, give 'em a chance, if you know I mean. :slight_smile:
Well, whether yay or nay on ‘panentheism’, what I do believe is that God is beyond us all, and yet, is also nearer to us than our heartbeat. :slight_smile:
I think all of us here can agree on that. :slight_smile:

blessings to you all, and may we be at peace with God and with one another

Matt

#147

Hi Lefien,

I heard of various panentheist views including Eastern Orthodox Christian versions (obviously Trinitarian) and a view of impersonal deity. But I never had the opportunity to dialog with a panentheist about the differences of traditional monotheist transcendence and immanence of God versus panentheist transcendence and immanence of God. :confused:

#148

I have no problem knowing I am wrong, that is the attitude of someone who pursues and chooses to let the truth guide their beliefs, than their beliefs becoming truth.

#149

Hey James! I’m doing well - all things considered. Hope you are well as well. Actually my form of panentheism makes God ALL personal as opposed to separate from creation. So we have a universe not only completely surrounded by God but also made of God who experiences this 3d time/space existence through all conscious living beings. So when an extreme literal panentheist says God is “immanent in creation” it means everything which exists is actually a part of God even though we also believe that God simultaneously transcends creation and this entire time/space dimension. That’s where the idea of impersonalism may come from, the fact that God in the highest sense is an other dimensional super intelligence which (in that supreme form) is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient etc. but doesn’t bring a heavy hand of personal involvement here, but has hemmed in this physical dimension for a particular purpose - to experience the knowledge of contrasts (ie: light/dark, good/evil etc. ) which essentially means to experience need and mortality though it all will ultimately give way under the power of eternity which is what CUs would refer to as the ultimate “reconciliation” of all things.

A Christian panentheist (as Jason) will acknowledge that all is in God but not that all is literally a part of God or consists of God.

A non-Christian panentheist such as myself believes that in an overarching ultimate sense nothing else really exists except God.

#150

Firstborn, are you not a christian?

I am also a panentheist btw. What else can there be but God? There can’t really be nothing if God exists. The creation has to have been made out of Him.

Genesis 1 bara: create, birth, carve out

#151

Byron (firstborn888), thank you for clarifying all of the above. I guess I see little difference between your version of panentheism and various versions of pantheism. And I see little difference between Christian panentheism and the traditional Christian doctrine of divine omnipresence.

#152

Hi redhotmagma,

How come God could not have made creation out of nothing?

For example, Is God incapable of creating a spacetime continuum out of nothing?

Why cannot there be a distinction between the creator and the creature?

Also, are all evil activities of evil people such as Hitler ultimately the evil activity of God?

#153

James, good questions and one’s I’d like to see answered. I myself have never studied panentheism but it sounds very confusing.

#154

I guess He could make something separate from Him. But I don’t see how nothing can exist. Think about before God created. Its not like there was God and then there was nothing surrounding Him, that nothing is then something, its space or molecules or something which would have already had to have been created otherwise God is not the prime source. If thats the case then it seems to me that the creation came out of Him. Thats not to say that when He created that He didn’t separate Himself from the creation, but:

In Him we live and move and have our being.
He upholds all things by His mighty word.
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
From Him, through Him, and to Him are all things

As to the question of Hitler, my belief is there is nothing outside Gods will, He creates light, darkness, good and evil. We may have a measure of free will, but the Lord directs our steps. He created the brain of Hitler, put him in the situations he was in, gave him the experiences to become Hitler, instead of just some guy named Adolph. (I bounce around in my understanding of free will, this is what I see right now)

#155

Though the questions are not addressed to me, more of my two cents I suppose lol.

Perhaps he could have, but it seems more logical that he manifested Creation within himself, out of himself, in much the same way Jesus, bodily, was manifested in the Virgin Mary by the power of God - the Holy Spirit.

Not incapable, in theological theory, but it might be a bit difficult to understand how God could create Existence out of Non-existence, when he alone is Existence from which existent entities can be made, drawn forth, or made manifest.

There is, the creature is itself by sheer fact of being that creature - in idea, and in its created nature as an image bearer of God. But it is not separate from God, but is (I believe) a manifestation of God, an “exflection” of God.

All evil issues out from the Father of Lies, there is no evil that does not first begin in a lie. A lie that we tell ourself, or a lie we are told by another; such as the Devil or devilish men. Lies do not have any existence, there is no truth in them, they only have seeming existence - like lies - and only really because they are believed and acted upon. This has been my thought concerning the theme of moral evil I’ve seen in the Bible.

Evil is apart from God, it is missing the mark of which He, being Truth, is the standard. Therefore Evil I believe is a lie built upon a lie, believed and acted upon to produce ungodly results - but like lies I do not believe Evil has any actual existence. Evil is a parasite towards the Truth, where truths are twisted or made absent in order to give seeming existence to a lie that does not have it on its own, and therefore must be a parasite. The Devil created lies, but only God can create existent truths and realities.

All activities of people that are evil, are the wills of men willing evil upon the premise of a lie, of a lie, of a lie, stretching back to the first lie ever told to man “in the Garden”. “You will be as gods, knowing good from evil…” but of course, since the Devil is sneaky it was perhaps this in his heart in lying; “you shall be what you think you aren’t, now that I’ve created doubt. You shall be mighty knowing good…and knowing apartness from God…(evil)”

#156

I think what makes it difficult (being new to penentheism) is that it seems very compatible with Trinitarianism. It’s hard for me to make out distinctions.

I don’t believe that Trinitarianism depends on ex-nihlo. Perhaps I’m wrong about that.

Also the evil that exists - if evil is a thing - it seems penentheists would have to embrace, like Calvinists, that evil does in fact have it’s roots in God.

#157

Eastern Orthodox Trinitarianism includes panentheism. In this case, I’m unsure if panentheism existed in the ancient church or if it is a more recent development. I’ll need to do more historical research on it. But there definitely are versions of panentheism that are Trinitarian. I am also unsure if all versions of Trinitarian panenthesim reject ex-nihlo creation of the initial conditions of the observed universe.

#158

There’s a lot of conversation here that is interesting to me while I’ve limited time for now. I’ll do the best that I can, in condensed form.

I believe that God originally existed as a dimensionless being, no space or time. For example, an infinitely long arrow of time could never pass so there needed to be an original timeless existence.

I believe that nothing happens without God’s permission, but he allows many things to happen against his will because he wants to love free-will agents.

#159

Thank you for your two cents. Any panentheist can take a stab at my questions. :laughing:

#160

I believe there is no bounds to God, that He is infinite, space-time did not exist before the creation, and He still exists outside of space-time, or that space-time exists within Him. At the ultimate level I can’t perceive How He can have anything outside of Himself, because He upholds all things, everything would cease to exist without His breath. Even if He created out of nothing and its separate, it still must exist in something (my head is starting to hurt) I think.

Its kind of like where does our universe end, whats outside of it? there can’t be nothing because nothing is non-existent, there has to be something. Or maybe its “The Nothing” like in “The Never Ending Story” :nerd: