I’ll have to catch up on the thread later, as I’m busy with ‘work’ work for the rest of the day. (I read down through most of the recent comments earlier this morning but had to make some choices about where I would use time to reply, and I see more comments including some important ones by Derek since then.)
But I’d like to see some comments from Derek, if possible (this may have already been done and I don’t recall–sorry if so), regarding the Essary Brothers’ The Hour We Least Expected (the link goes to a currently ongoing discussion thread here at the forum), since their thesis would seem to match up well with Derek’s thesis.
Of if it doesn’t, I’d be interested in hearing why not from you Derek. But if it does, you could be of help to them in polishing and refining their position: which is that the Passion events completely fulfill all biblical prophecies (even extensive ones like RevJohn) with none remaining to be fulfilled (aside from everyone going to heaven or otherwise being with God after we die, of course–I’m a little fuzzy from reports yet whether they hold to any bodily resurrection other than Jesus’, and I’m a even a tad fuzzy on whether they hold to that!)
I know one big difference would be that (so far as I, and other people who have actually read their book, can tell) they still hold to some variety of punitive penal sub atonement theory, and I’m pretty sure you don’t, Derek. But otherwise (and that might be one thing you could help them with, or so I would think not being a penal sub proponent per se myself ) their thesis seems to thematically overlap yours in important ways.
I’m being rather critical of them, so sending people more sympathetic to their position in their direction seems to me like a nice thing to do. Especially since you’ve got significantly more experience than they do.
At the risk of sounding flippantly brief, I’m pretty sure those of us who think Jesus actually meant God punishes at least some sinners (including warnings of future punishment to come) with-or-as-Jesus Himself, when Jesus taught about those things, are not contradicting everything Jesus taught as well as demonstrated in His own life.
And I would go on to observe that if any NT author who seemed to be prophetically warning (sometimes via OT references) of coming punishment from Jesus/YHWH, actually was prophetically warning about that (instead of I’m-not-really-sure-what, or being mistaken about it because they had an OT mindset or whatever); then those of us who think there will be punishment still coming from Jesus/YHWH to at least some sinners are not contradicting everything Jesus demonstrates in His own life either.
Moreover, if the OT is to any degree accurate in its many, many, many descriptions about what YHWH (and/or the Angel of the Presence) has done or will do regarding punishment of sinners, and if Jesus (as NT authors, plus Himself by report, routinely indicate they believed) is to be identified as YHWH (and/or the Angel of the Presence) in some way (whether via some variety of trinitarian theism, or binitarianism, or high unitarianism, or modalism, or polytheism, or cosmological multi-theism, or as pretty much any even slightly conservative Christianity has historically promoted); then those of us who think there was and will be punishment coming from Jesus/YHWH to at least some sinners are not contradicting everything Jesus taught and demonstrated in His own life.
In fact I’d say we’re keeping more of what Jesus taught and demonstrated in His own life, than those who disassociate God and/or Christ (and/or the Holy Spirit) from doing any punishment.
Derek,
I agree that we all “observe that God does not prevent” all evil & suffering. But I actually see Calvinist and Arminian orthodoxy agrees that God has sovereign ability to stop it (in #1, his purpose “causes” it; in 2, he “allows” it to achieve important purposes, inc. ‘freedom’). You’d said, suffering has “no positive purpose,” and “God can’t stop it!” You now admirably say, “I don’t know if God can” (and just won’t?).
But without a worthy purpose, wouldn’t both options still contradict Jesus’ hope, teaching & values (that we all value)?
A. If God can stop it, allowing it with no good purpose would seem deeply immoral!
B. If God truly can’t, then even the cross’ display of God’s loving grace can assure no good outcome. It may well be unable to overcome our folly!
My bias: If a ‘Devil’ is the ultimate explanation for our situation, we are stuck in a hopeless dualism. Only an omnipotent God who permits evil, to work out a redemptive purpose, makes sense of hope amid cited texts where suffering achieves God’s goals, and is describable as a refining ‘fire’ sent by God. What doesn’t make sense here?
P.S. Jason, we’ve argued for differing assumptions about God’s nature & ontology, but it’s nice that my perception is that we are arguing for similar conclusions here.
This is a great discussion and it seems to have been carried along on several different threads on this board but the same underlying concepts are generating the debate.
I have greatly enjoyed primarily davef, and ruthj for stating their positions quite clearly in my estimation, and what they have said very much resonates with my own sentiments. It’s been a long and winding road for me coming from a background where God’s so called sovereignty, wrath, and punishment were explored every Sunday morning. For me it led to darkness and a feeling of hopelessness, and in the depths I finally asked for God to show me what it all meant. I don’t claim any sudden revelation from God or any such thing but quietly over the years the following concepts have sort of settled in my heart and calmed the darkness that once seemed impenetrable.
So, this is my current understanding of things as they relate to this thread although I am really at a loss as to how to present it clearly so please bear with me.
To me this says God knows everything about us now and we currently don’t know much about anything. One day we will (suddenly?) know everything about God in the same way he knows everything about us now.
It is somehow a property of equality. If A knows all, and someday B will know everything A knows, then B too will know all.
In essence I think Paul is saying that one day, we, every human that has ever lived, will become “all knowing” just as God is. I realize this is blasphemous and heretical and all that but please don’t let it stop you from really thinking about what Paul is communicating here. It is quite profound. Paul also posed this much related question in 1 Cor 2: “who can know the thoughts of a man except the man himself?” Then in the same letter in chapter 13 he presents the “looking in the mirror concept”. Who do you see every time you look in the mirror? I can’t see this as anything but Paul saying, one day the mirror will be wiped clean and God will be staring himself in the face – as depicted in Psalms 17.
To me this implies the following:
God chose to lose himself so he could be found. He is both the seeker and the one being sought.
God chose to forget so he could remember. He is both the all-knowing and the one in the dark.
God chose to become the prodigal so he could be the welcoming father. He is both the father and the son made whole.
God chose to become ill so he could be healed. He is both the sick and the healer.
God chose to become oppressed so he could be set free. He is both the prisoner and the liberator.
God chose to die so he could be reborn. He is both the dying and the giver of life.
So does this imply that God is also the oppressor, the killer, etc.? Evil as I see it, is our ability granted through the vehicle of freedom to act in the “not God” role, to become the opposing force to what is real and true. Jesus’ death reconciled ALL things including these opposition roles acted out by you and I because of our dim eyesight (as in Cor 13). We have all been, and still very much are, in opposition roles no matter how much we currently believe we are working for good, and our expectations of corrective punishment for the other guys must also then apply to us. Except that, because of Jesus, we will wake up one day free from the burden of guilt, to experience in fullness, God as both the seeker finding, and the lost one being found. Please think about this carefully.
Will God punish sinners? Must he to establish justice or cause correction? I think a better question might be: “Is God allowing himself to suffer and for what purpose?”
In the end, as at the beginning, God is all in all. In the end, he alone will have been the “experiencer” of it all.
I think some parents have forgotten the real effects of “harmless” “appropriate” “spanking”.
What a lot of people here seem unaware of is that it can have the effect of wounding and scarring the child for life, and making it more difficult to love the parent who does it to them. It can take a monumental act of forgiveness to get past that. Additionally, it has been conclusively demonstrated that emotional pain causes physical pain too. So please do not trivialise it.
I don’t know where the Hebrews writer got this from, but he didn’t get it from the Word of God: Jesus never ever said anything like this. He always took pain away - not just damage, but pain.
This is true: in our present reality, harm is possible, therefore we need a warning system to prevent harm. When we feel pain, that tells us there is damage. So if a parent has inflicted pain on their child, they have damaged them, and that is something Jesus (the Word of God, the exact image of God) **never **did, and therefore something that God doesn’t do.
Jason,
Thanks for the feedback. Let me begin by acknowledging the point you make:
I do not want to imply that you do not read Scripture with seriousness and intelligence, nor do I want to imply that you read it with integrity. I can see how you get to where you are at.
I imagine that you could say the same of people who are not universalists like yourself: you can see how they read their Bible’s with seriousness and integrity… and yet you disagree with them.
So I also–with respect and without any animosity–disagree with you on this point. I stress that there are many other vital points that we agree on, and I rejoice for all of those! We probably have more in common that we we do in disagreement. I don’t want that to fall out of sight. Especially on online forums where we can’t see into each others eyes that can so easily get lost. So I want to say that I consider you an ally and a brother.
Secondly, I note that I said “if” we did this. So to the extent that the shoe does not fit, you should not wear it.
Third, (and this gets into some nitty-gritty but important detail of exegesis) perhaps it would be better if instead of saying “everything Jesus said” I instead said “the central point of Jesus’ teaching.” Let me elaborate here:
There is a tendency to focus on single words and phrases when doing exegesis. We see this in Bible commentaries a lot. There is value in doing this, but there is also a real danger of having this “word study” method lead to completely missing the point. This is a huge blind spot of many biblical scholars. I would in contrast advocate a narrative reading. That is, we need to look at the big picture of where the text has been, and where it is going in order not to miss the forest for the trees. What we see in the NT many many times, and especially with the teaching of Jesus, is that he begins with the religious assumptions of his audience, and then pushes those assumptions. Always the the direction he pushes them is towards mercy and radical forgiveness.
Take for example the passage is Matthew where Jesus tells the parable of the ungrateful servant. There we have a picture of a king, presumably standing for God, who comes down hard with retribution on the ungrateful servant. So there we have it: God will be violent and “torture” bad guys.
But hold on. If we back up and look at the context we see something very different: Peter has asked Jesus how many times he should forgive. Jesus tells him not 7 but 77 times. Here Jesus is subverting an OT passage where Lamech says that he will not just take vengrance and kill 7 for every one, but kill 77 people for every one. So Jesus turns that ethic of escalation of retribution into a radical “escalation of forgiveness”.
He then tells the parable of the ungrateful servant to illustrate this. That is our context for the parable: radical forgiveness.
The point of the parable is that because God has been merciful to us in a big way, it would be really suck if we then were not merciful to others with little things. It is parallel to Jesus saying elsewhere to be “merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful.”
Now if Peter then turned to Jesus and said “Okay, so let me see if I got this right Jesus. I need to forgive 77 times, but God only forgives once, and then after that will come with massive vengeance, right?” I think we would see Jesus shake his head in frustration and say (as he often does) “O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you and put up with you?”
Because that interpretation would completely undermine everything Jesus was just saying. No, the point is not that we should be loving but God wont and will “torture” us. “No, no, no” says Jesus “Have I been with you so long and you still don’t get it? If you have seen me you have seen the Father. The Father loves his enemies, so should you Peter! AAAAARRRGGGHHH! I think I’m getting a migraine.”
What I am saying is that the big picture message that Jesus is saying, over and over is:
*Forgive, forgive, and then forgive again. Love your enemies. Act to sew seeds of restoration not retribution, overcome evil with good… Do this because this is what God is like. If you have seen me you have seen the Father. Love mercy. *
The NT is one big move *away *from the OT way of retribution and violence, and us vs. them thinking (all done in the name of God), and towards the way of restorative justice and enemy love. That is the master narrative of Jesus and the NT. It is a major shift from the way of the OT, and so we see them beginning where their audience is, with the assumptions of retribution and dominance and violence, and then continually pushing them away from that. We need to get that progression or we miss the whole point. We need to get that big picture, and not stumble over the little verses, so that we end up missing that master narrative. Grace, grace, grace. Retribution sucks. Redemption rules. Jesus is the messiah. Not the warrior-king you all expected, but the crucified prince of peace.
I would say that the most important answer we can give to suffering is this:
We should never excuse suffering and misery. That is not what Jesus wants. Jesus wants us to join his in ending suffering. So if our apologetic explanation does that, we are missing the point.
We may, in entering into solidarity with those who are oppressed, make ourselves vulnerable to suffering. Jesus did this. But this does not mean that suffering is good. Loving is good. Our goal is not to suffer, but to radically love and stand with those who are hurting.
We need to find a way to trust in love in this broken world of ours. That’s really hard, especially when we really open our eyes and love. Whatever lets you do that, hold on to that for dear life.
David (and Dave!); Although I know I’ve made (and will likely continue to make) statements that seem to oppose what you’re saying here, I have to confess that I share your sentiments in the deepest parts of my being. What I continue to wrestle with is the difficulties presented by the texts of scripture which seem in places to oppose where our hearts want to go.
But maybe in the end, that’s the real test; searching the scriptures thinking that in them we have life, vs. simply paying attention to the Christ now dwelling within us, revealing himself and the Father.
I am a convinced universalist, and a hopeful ultra-u.
Really good post you have contributed here. Very thought provoking, you have an interesting way of looking at it.
That is really a great way to approach the oft asked, “Why does God allow suffering.” You turn it on its head and ask “Why does God allow himself to suffer?” Now, if a person has a theistic concept of God that would be a nonsensical, even blasphemous question. After all, the theistic god is impassable (cannot suffer) and all the other “omni” attributions ascribed to such a god would make that an illegitimate question. And yet Jesus as the Crucified God reveals that very thing that your question raises: That God has allowed himself to suffer the pain of all those who suffer as victims of the almighty power of death. He obviously doesn’t do it to chastise or correct himself, does he? So why does he allow himself to suffer?
Perhaps to take the suffering of others from them.
So he will have been the experiencer of all the experiences of the multitude of the inhabitants of the creation. Both the good and bad of it. In the end he takes the bad experiences from those multitudes and keeps them hidden in himself (YHWH and the Lamb) from them and only leaves them with the good and gives his all bountiful life to provide them with an unending cornucopia of good experiences without the taint of sin and death to mar it in the slightest.
Yes, well said indeed! It is equitable, the *dikaiosune *of God revealed and made available to all.
I hope to see more contributions from you David, they are sorely needed.
I am an hopeful ultra-u too. After all, universalists of all types can only hope that it is true and will come to pass, because what we experience in the here and now certainly doesn’t resemble much what we hope and imagine the new creation of God will be.
I think, unlike the rabid Calvinistic notion that we are totally depraved and therefore must not trust the “sentiments in the deepest parts of our being” that those sentiments are the residual image of God speaking to us. It is that part of us that is still like a little child who trust’s that God is good implicitly, until it is beaten out of them by religious indoctrination and the harsh cruel reality of living in this world. Unless we are born anew and become like a little child we cannot perceive the new creation of God and participate in it. That is what resurrection is for, it allows us to start over with a new birth and joyfully enter into the new creation of God as a child and then we’ll see and experience it without the slightest doubt that God is indeed very, very good.
For some reason, your post reminded me of the quote (I forget where I saw it at the moment) that said: “The gospel is so simple that it takes a theologian to make it confusing.”
Ain’t that the truth. Something truly astonishing and wonderful is about to happen to the whole world that will make the gospel simple again–I feel it in my bones.
On suffering, I love your 3 goals! I too am deeply troubled by suffering, by notions that God ‘tortures’ to achieve his ends, indeed, by P.S. My Theo/Biblical objection is the assumed solution that I’m sensing from many that avoiding atheism requires rejecting a God who has some sort of sure ‘power’ (e.g. as spelled out by Dave). I respect any who honestly clarify that for them salvaging God’s character requires a finite God who tries. But I fear this is a steep price to pay.
You said, we need a “trust” that can “make ourself vulnerable to suffering!” I agree that’s exactly the Bible’s calling for us. But believing that God may lack the ability to redemptively bring victory in it, would lead me to fear that that way of life may well end up being a loser. So for me, such a Jesus-like way of life calls for having a universalist confidence that God has the ability to see that love will win. Thus, we each solve mysterious tensions different ways. But I find that the Bible encourages that very hope that would bolster us in living just as you have encouraged.
Are you saying that pain can never be redemptive? I think about no pain, no gain, in terms of physical exercise. The steep hill I climbed on my mountain bike last week was not fun at all. It was painful, and I had to stop a number of times. However, I know it is causing my lungs to get stronger and my legs as well. I think this is a pattern we see in creation both spiritual and physical. Jesus calls us to die to ourselves. Take up your cross and follow me. Self-denial is painful, and yet Jesus invites us into that. Jesus said things that were painful as well (though always out of love). When he told Peter, “get behind me Satan”, I’m sure that hurt. When he asked Peter three times if he loved him at the end of John, that was painful for Peter. When Jesus told the Rich young ruler to sell everything, the rich young ruler went away sad. I’m reminded of a song entitled “Gentle Wounds” by Over the Rhine that I believe speaks to this concept. And of course Jesus said very painful, hurtful remarks to the Pharisees in his seven Woes to the Pharisees. I believe the intention is like a faceful of cold water that says “Wake up”, though it is done in love. So I stand by the hurt vs. harm, and the Hebrews quote, as I see it is reflective of the person of Jesus described in the gospels.
To be clear, I don’t believe that God lacks the ability to redemptively bring victory. I’m counting in it in fact.
I don’t think it calls for it necessarily. It would honestly be good to live that way even if there was no God at all (let alone a heaven) because it is good for people. That alone is enough reason: we do it because it is right and loving. I think you can be an atheist and be convinced that the way of Jesus is right. many do in fact. I am not an atheist. Just saying.
The reason I want/need it to be true that love wins is because of my love and compassion for those who have been victimized. I want to see them made whole. I want to see it for all those who suffer injustice. So I don’t need it to motivate my own behavior, but I do need it because I care for others and long for (restorative) justice.
Derek, thanks for joining us, bro, I really like and resonate with a lot of what you have to say here, and I just got your book in the mail yesterday, and plan on reading it soon. I’ll let you know what I think.
As for adding my two cents here, like you Derek I’ve always struggled mentally and emotionally with the traditional penal substitution take on the cross, especially the concept of God having to punish Jesus, or God having to punish God (if we’re thinking of the Trinity here), which makes God either appear like an abusive parent or like He’s beating Himself up… which is either discouraging, confusing, or both.
And even more than that, the concept of a God who’s anger must be appeased makes God out to be no better, no more mature and no more trustworthy, at least to me, than any of the flawed and fallible characters we would find in the halls of Olympus in Greek Mythology.
A God who needs to be appeased, at least to me, is like a God who has a hissy-fit until he gets what he wants… and that, honestly, sounds more like me than like a God, or a good God anyway, sounds more like a flawed and fallible human being, like myself, than like the All-Loving, All-Powerful, All-Wise Creator of everything and everyone.
I’ve always wrestled with this image of God, this image of a selfish, capricious, tyrannical Olympian deity sitting far away on a throne somewhere, calling the shots but refusing to enter into the mess and get his hands dirty and deal with life himself…
That is how I pictured God when I was an agnostic/atheist growing up, so is it any wonder I rejected the whole idea of God growing up, when my imaginings were mostly negative like that?
But when I started learning more about Jesus, about a God who cares, who understands, who enters into our mess and does something, who knows what He’s doing, who has a plan, a good plan, who offers real hope, and real love, my views started to change, and that negative image began to be challenged… and to this day, it is still being challenged…
There has been a war in my heart between hope and fear, it seems… in my twenties, especially in my mid to late twenties, up till last year, (I just turned 30 a couple weeks ago), that war raged intensely inside of me…
When I saw God in a more positive light, I felt okay… when I saw God in a more negative light, I didn’t feel okay…
I have had my times when I’ve cried, screamed, hit myself, clawed at myself, pounded my fists on the ground, convulsed, felt as though I was being torn apart, felt as though my heart would cave in, when I’ve ached deeply in my being, full of fear, confusion, pain, on the verge of insanity… and all because of that war within me, that war that involved how I saw God, and then in turn how I saw myself, and the world around me…
Nowadays the war doesn’t wage as intensely, and I’m very thankful for that… I have more hope than fear now (though I still have some fear, and doubt, as we all do at times), and I think that’s in part because of coming to embrace the hope of universal reconciliation sometime last year, which I’d leaned towards in my heart for a long time, but hadn’t really entertained in my head until then, because I didn’t think for a long time that I was allowed to…
I struggled with the hell issue a lot, and mainly because it reinforced that negative perception of God that I had… so coming to believe that God has no intention of throwing away or giving up on anyone is very encouraging and reaffirming of a more positive perception of God, and helps me to believe that God really is good, and really is trustworthy, and really can be identified as love, as love that never fails…
Also, along with that, I feel more free to explore and ask questions and re-think things, even if that means disagreeing with tradition, or even ‘orthodoxy’… I’m trying to keep an open mind now, and feeling free to do so is liberating, I must say… believing in my heart that God is with me and loves me, and all of us, no matter what, helps me to be unafraid of thinking outside the box, of questioning the status quo…
So, in other words, I really appreciate what you have to say, bro, because it resonates deeply with me, considering everything I’ve wrestled with and gone through internally over the years…
I look forward to reading your book, and hearing what you have to say.
But before I close, a couple more things…
I was gonna ask, as I wasn’t sure, do you believe in universal reconciliation, Derek?
Or are you just open and sympathetic to it? Or do you disagree with it?
Your beliefs concerning Jesus’ teachings on enemy love (which I agree with, though it’s of course easier said than done, as we all know) seem to entail that you would believe in universal reconciliation, but I’m not sure…
So do you consider yourself a universalist, or a hopeful universalist, or something else?
And whatever your stance is on this, what are your reasons for taking that stance?
And I hope that my asking this doesn’t make you uncomfortable, I’m just curious.
And as far as my own view on punishment and all of that, I think I can see both sides, yours, as well as Jason’s and Gene’s, and think I’d probably fall somewhere in the middle…
I believe that sometimes one needs to hurt in order to heal…
I appreciate C.S. Lewis’ image of God as a surgeon in his book A Grief Observed…
His quote here is challenging:
If God uses His scalpel not to destroy life, but rather to save life, then He is more trustworthy, at least to me…
Or as the old saying goes, ‘no pain, no gain’, which as cliche as it sounds I still think is true… why that is, I don’t know, but I believe often significant growth tends to involve some kind of pain, or at least discomfort…
And whatever the case, like Lewis said, we’re for it, because pain happens, suffering happens, and we have to find some way to cope with that and live with that, and believing that God has some meaningful reason for allowing it, and believing that He can even use it in our lives for a greater good, can certainly help us to keep going, can help us to trust even when we don’t understand, and it can keep us from going mad, for that matter…
But I agree that I think there’s something wrong with the idea of God being abusive…
But then again, I think what it comes down to for me though is if God’s aim is to truly heal, then whatever means that may require, whether that be a scalpel, to cut out the bad stuff inside of us, or even a big stick, to knock us over the heads with that we may come to our senses, or whatever is needed, then I’m okay with it, and it doesn’t bother me too much…
I think any punishment (or correction) that does irreparable harm and/or just makes things worse or leaves things unresolved is decidedly wrong (which is one of the reasons why eternal punishment makes no sense to me, by the way)… but any punishment (or correction) that ultimately leads to repentance, that leads to healing and to freedom and to a better life is worth whatever temporary pain and discomfort, no matter how extreme in the moment, it may bring, at least IMO…
With that said, it may well be that God does not bring bad things upon our heads personally, does not orchestrate suffering… I don’t know… it may well be that that’s just how life is because mankind is broken and fallen… it may be that most pain and suffering is that which we either bring upon ourselves or we bring upon one another… though the question remains of why God allows that… whatever the case, God, like you have said, can bring good out of evil, light out of darkness, can work within the mess and bring about wholeness from the inside out…
And that’s what the cross is all about, I think, or at least is a very big part of it… bringing good out of evil, and light out of darkness, working in the mess and bringing wholeness from the inside out… and that’s really beautiful to me, like poetry, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m drawn to Jesus.
I think there are layers to the atonement, to what happened at the cross, what happened when Jesus died, what it was all about and what is was all for… but my general outlook is that the cross is where God showed His love to humanity, and that the resurrection is where God showed His power to humanity… so it is a sign that shows us, a story that tells us, that we can trust in His love, and we can trust in His power… but the life of Jesus, His story, is meant to illuminate both His death and His resurrection… because His life was full of love and full of power (power to heal, power in weakness, power to restore), and full of grace and truth…
With all that said, honestly, I’m a guy who doesn’t feel like he knows very much… most of my faith involves more longing and aching that can’t be expressed in words than anything else, as wordy as I am… but I believe that there is Someone there who hears all that longing and aching, and can answer it… and I believe that I’m not alone, that I’m loved, that we’re all loved, and that something extraordinary is possible, because, as Jesus said, with God, all things are possible… and I believe the day will come, after judgment, after any needed punishment or correction or purification or cleansing or whatever is required so we can truly live and love and walk with God, when we will finally know, and understand, just as we are known, and understood, and will find our reasons for being in our home, our home being in our Father’s arms…
Well, that’s all for now, I think. Maybe I can throw in some more thoughts once I’ve had a chance to read your book.
Blessings to you Derek, and blessings to you all, and peace
Bob, saying that God is not about being almighty power that he can use to coercively bend all things to his will by threat or force is not to say God is in anyway finite and therefore impotent. Rather, God who has the infinite resource of Himself: his Life that he empties into the creation (kenosis) to fill all the places of darkness, suffering and death with his healing, life giving presence. Power is not overcome by greater power but by the life of God (agape) freely given without limit to those in most desperate need of it.
The Life of God is far from finite, it can create whole universes from the void; it can inundate the graves of all the dead and gusher forth a vast, unbounded ocean of resurrection that will fill the universe with life across the billions of galaxies in the universe. There is a steep price to pay: God has given all that He is to all that there is freely, at sole cost to Himself, because by doing so He is true to Himself and faithful to the creation. This will be His eschatological sabbath rest forever and ever.
P.S. The first century Christians were frequently denounced as atheists by the Romans. Why, because they were irreligious in an empire that was saturated by all manner of religions and they refused to acknowledge the supreme power of the Emperor as the Kryios. Instead they acknowledged the powerless crucified Jesus as the true Kyrios of God. Why, because the resurrected Jesus demonstrated that the life of God can overcome all the powers of the world, political and religious–even the almighty power of death itself.
Bob,
I too struggle because on one hand people affirm punishment is permissible such as a time out for a child then says God cannot punish. then suddenly the word punishment gets replaced with the word abuse or violence and then the “punitive god” is immoral.
Derek,
I applaud the ends - God hates violence, but I need a more careful nuanced argument. It seems gauging God’s ability to punish by defective human efforts would only lead to a view that God’s punishment it will be no different; defective. But that seems dubious to me.
I also want to comment that I (like Matt) am uncertain of my own views, even the atonement. So I want to ask you these two questions.
A) If turning the other cheek (non-retribution) is the means of making everything whole, then why does a lack of resurrection mean that our faith is useless or that we’re still dead in our sins? (1 Cor 15)
B) If there is no God how can anyone be made whole. For arguments sake, lets say there is no God and that a woman mourns the abduction and awful death of her child. Why would her forgiving the killer make her whole if in fact she will never see her child again and the murderer is set free to murder again? Perhaps I’m missing the real thrust of your argument, but I don’t think I am. I understand your post to mean that even if there is no God (atheism) it’s still better to live like this (non-retribution) for man.
) their thesis seems to thematically overlap yours in important ways.
Especially since you’ve got significantly more experience than they do.
