Again, I am going to cross-post from Tough Questions Answered I thoroughly encourage you to visit Bill Pratt’s site, and interact a bit, it is the best in its class that I know.
I was asked point-blank why I believe the Christian account is true, by a lapsed Christian calling himself “Willy G.” I think my explanation should be on this blog. Continue reading
Filed under ALL, Christianity, Heaven and hell, Theology, Uncategorized
There is a particular fact about the known life forms in this universe that I find very distressing in view of my assertion that there is a creator God, who is Good. I don’t know if it is currently in fashion in atheist circles or not, but it has always appeared to me a pretty strong point for their side. That point may be summarized thusly:
If creation is at heart “good” why is it that all animal life, and even some plant life, lives only by the destruction of other life? Continue reading
Filed under ALL, Christianity, Theology
For quite some time, I have wanted to write at length concerning a subject dear to my heart. I’ve been drawn into several discussions with Muslims, Christians and seekers that touch on the ultimate reality of God, what is He like, and why does it matter. A couple of these conversations are here, and here. Of course, it is meaningless to say that “I worship God” if I neither know nor care who He is or what He is like. It would be like saying “I love my wife” without knowing, or caring to know, anything about her.
I am referring of course to that absolutely bedrock assertion of Christians that God is triune, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. In its fullness, it is maddeningly beyond our grasp, and yet if true, it represents the core and source of all that is, seen and unseen. Continue reading
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In my reading this week, I came across the story of the sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham in Genesis. In my margin, I found a note I had scribbled sometime before:
Do I trust in the promises of God,
Or do I trust God Himself?
Isaac represented all God had promised to Abraham about the future; Abraham had been clearly told that Isaac was the child of the promise, and was to be his heir. And now, Abraham was being asked to give all that up. In addition to all the purely human issue of a father sacrificing a child, Abraham was faced with a splitting of ways. He could deny the instruction, and hold on to the “promissory note” that Isaac was “the child of the promise” and trust that the promise could be trusted and relied on. Or he could take that promissory note, take all the promises God had made to him, take Isaac, and lay it all on the altar, and give it up as an act of worship and obedience.
He chose to trust God Himself, to value God even more than he valued the promises of God.
When I went to Grandma’s house, she gave me good things. Did I value Grandma because I got the good things, or were the things especially good because they came from Grandma?
May I too value Him who delights to give all things far above any of the good things He gives.
Amen
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This Sunday, the gospel reading was the baptism of Jesus, and was used as a springboard into a discussion of the Holy Trinity, as it is one of the places where the Trinity is most explicitly seen in scripture. As in most contemplations of the nature of God, the ramifications can be a bit of a mind-bender!
Particularly in this story, as the Father sends down the Spirit upon the Son.
On of the pictorial explanations of the Trinity affirms rightly that the Father is not the Son is not the Holy Spirit is not the Father; while the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. None is 1/3 God, each is complete, and the Godhead is complete in each. We are not polytheists!
So, what does it mean that
The Fullness of God
Anointed
The Fullness of God
With
The Fullness of God
All present in fullness and undivided essence, yet each distinct and unconfused uniqueness.
Full of wonder!
(Hat tip to The Foolish Galatian for the image)
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See Biblical inerrancy -what does it really mean? for a nicely done overview.
My comments repeated here:
My own take on the Bible as the Word of God will probably satisfy few. It is certainly not philosophically rigorous, but it has the huge advantage of being fruitful for me.
Thomas Cranmer wrote a prayer for the Anglican Book of Common Prayer:
Blessed Lord, which hast caused all holy Scripture to be written for our learning, grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn ,and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of Thy holy word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our savior, Jesus Christ
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Browsing through the blogs, I found a very interesting blog from “St. Disillusion” on “Christianity is a Travesty”, with a post here:
I am so taken with the blog and the good saints comments, even more his questions, that I posted a rather extensive response to his remarks about the purpose of life. Since I have been mulling these ideas over for a post here, I decided to break protocol and cross post my own response, although I very much encourage you to go visit with Saint D. I expect to return often.
For the record, I thing God is greatly pleased when we ask such questions in the same spirit with which a child, having been wounded or undone by the actions of a parent, never less comes to that parent in faith to make his complaint. Think the book of Job.
Below is my response, which I hope to flesh out almost as a theme to these pages.
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Since I first wrote this post on the doctrine of damnation, and why it seems to me inescapable, I’ve stumbled upon a number of other conversations on the subject, with many voices from the universal salvation perspective. I have read defenses of that position from both liberal and conservative Christians, but to my mind, they all fall short on either or both of two fronts. Sometimes the view of Heaven seems not fully thought through. What is the nature of eternal life, and does it admit even the possibility of the admission of the unwilling? I contend that this would be like insisting that a circle be made with more corners.
The second error seems more peculiar. I contend that the universalist’s view of humanity is too low. For God to produce what I think He intends in us, it is necessary that we have a free will which is efficacious. God cannot trump it without denying and defeating His own purpose. A think that is a lot of the point of the story of Noah and the flood.
For those interested in the question, I suggest the following two discussions, along with my own post below.
-Blessings
http://interspiritualchristian.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/on-the-nature-of-scripture/#comment-3
and
http://chadholtz.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/the-universal-good-news/
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Mr. D. C. Toedt, who is a friend of mine from my church, writes a blog called The Questioning Christian
In a post entitled “The world isn’t broken, it’s just unfinished”
He suggests
1. Suppose hypothetically that God is still creating the world, using processes we’re only beginning to kinda-sorta understand — processes that entail generating lots of variations and keeping the ones that “work” as the starting point for later variations.
(These processes of the ongoing creation seem to include us as construction workers, incidentally: our powers of imagination let us generate new variations, while our powers of perception and memory let us see and remember — imperfectly — what does or doesn’t work.)
This hypothesis is not totally implausible, not if you take a long view of what we think we know of history. …
Now, D.C. (for whom I have a great deal of respect) and I disagree about much in the church, including what is the very nature of “church” and even what it means to be christian. I would argue that to be a christian means to accept Jesus as Lord, as being God incarnate who died in the flesh and rose again so that we might be released from the bondage of our sin. I will let D.C. speak for himself, which he does quite well, but he would more describe it as following the commandments of Jesus in that we are to love God and our neighbor, and teach others to do the same.
But in this post, I think he has it pretty much right. The main difference is that Continue reading
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More on the idea of universal salvation and personal choice Discussion on the nature of the Holy Trinity: Why only 3? This post prompted me to reply with what I intend to be a draft of a fuller post Starting with Anthroposophy, a very interesting discussion ranging from stained glass and mirrors and the invocation of Saints, to Jung and speculations about the existance of evil.
Random Musings 