Relational Theology
Preface
This "little" article of 12,921 words, took me a while to write it. Not only write it, but to research it. This is a product of countless hours of listening to the Atheist Experience, to get into the mind of Atheist, as well as other online atheist channels.. I offer this, not so much a finished product, but where I am right now. I know the weaknesses of my theology, both on the Atheist side as well as the Christian side of the fence. I know most of either camp will find things to criticize in my approach.
I hope I wrote this well enough that you'll get to the end and wonder where the time went. But the big question always asked is "Does God Exist?" So I've developed this relational theology to answer that question. Here we go!
Introduction
Back
in the early 90s, when I attended Nazarene Theological Seminary, I
began to see the whole of the Bible and God’s plan to provide for
us salvation in a relational manner. I figured it would be “ground
breaking” because to my admittedly limited knowledge, I had not
heard of any systematic theology using that paradigm to organize, and
systematically evaluate one’s theology. I’m aware of people
talking about salvation as a relationship with God, but that was
about as far as people took it. Then I ran into Orthodoxy, which had
a relational theology built into it. So, I held off creating a book
about it figuring someone had beaten me to it. After all, as the
second largest body of Christians, there are more people who have
grown up with an Orthodox Faith than a Protestant one.
What
I hope to accomplish in this article is not to develop a full-blown
systematic theology, but to lay the ground-work for viewing theology
through the lens of relationships and what that would mean for the
ultimate question: can we “prove” the existence of God. A lofty
goal, no doubt. But a critical one in this day and age. I put the
“prove” in quotes above, because I’m focusing this more toward
knowing how we can prove to ourselves that God exists, rather than a
proof others might accept. In other words, my goal isn’t to prove
to an atheist that God exists, but to myself, as well as a method
others can use to prove to themselves.
Philosophy
My
philosophy is a combination of existential and rational. That is,
that we know reality through the existential lens, but use reason to
interpret what we experience of reality. It requires both to work.
All knowledge starts with experiences of reality, interpreted through
the lens of our rational mind.
Or,
to put it in more philosophical terms, all knowledge is a
posteriori while certain methods are a priori.
Epistemology
That
word, for those who don’t know, refers to the study of how we know
anything. As I said above, knowledge begins with experience and is
interpreted through our rational methods. However, both also have
their limitations. We must be aware of them, even though we have no
other rational means whereby we can know anything.
Existential Knowledge
Descartes
said “I think, therefore, I am.” Though a Rationalist, this
thought expresses the basis of all knowledge is experiential. I
experience thinking. But then he deduces from that premise that he
exists. The perfect confirmation of how the existential and rational
components of knowledge work.
All
knowledge flows from “I think.” It is from that foundational
experience of self, that we can know anything. But it is also true
that without our rational methodology, that is, our instinctive
and/or intuitive ability to see patterns, or as Kant put it,
“categories,” that can make sense out of our experiences, that we
can know anything as well.
To
state it another way, experience gives us the content, while reason
gives us the ability to make sense of that content, but provides not
direct content itself. It “interprets” the content.
Let’s
give an example of what I am talking about. Mathematics is often
given as an example of common rationalistic a priori knowledge.
It is said that it is self-evident, and a priori knowledge
that the sum of any triangle’s angles will come to a total of 180.
Yet, is it really that we innately or intuitively know that prior to
experience, and that it is derived not from experience but only
through the mind? Or is it more probable and true that the person or
persons who have measured the angles of any triangle have always, in
our experience, equaled 180 degrees? I’d suggest the latter.
And
the idea that 3 is a prime number, often cited by rationalist as not
derived from experience, have yet to prove that proposition, for it
is perfectly conceivable that it is only through experience that we
learn, at a very early age, that there are things that can be
counted, and through trying to reduce three, we have yet to encounter
anyone successfully doing so. Even the concept of a what a prime
number is could be said to derive not from knowledge prior to
experience, but from the experience of attempting to divide such
numbers into smaller units, and being unsuccessful, we call them
prime numbers.
Even
the concept and practice of morals can be said to derive from
experience. Because we experience events as either good, bad, or
indifferent. Based on those experiences, and the a priori
methodology expressed so well in the Bible—“Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you”—a
person derives their morals from rational inductions from their own
experiences of what they like and what they don’t like.
Still,
experience is the very foundation of our knowledge, and often the
basis of why we believe what we believe. I’m not claiming that any
beliefs derived through one’s experiences are right or wrong. Yet,
it is the basis upon which inductive reasoning tends to be used. More
on that, further down.
Rational Knowledge
Rational
knowledge is gained from a series of a priori methodologies
and abilities that allow the mind to see patterns, to inductively put
them together and reason to a specific conclusion about a thing or
event. They can come from either instinctive knowledge or
intuitive/innate knowledge.
For
example, a baby fresh out of the womb, has the ability to seek out,
latch onto, and suck to get substance from the mother’s breasts.
That would be an example of an ability derived from instinct. Some
would posit that God put that instinct there, others would say it was
through natural selection—that is, those without that instinctive
knowledge would have quickly died off.
The
strength of rationalism is in its structured and logical methods of
discovering truth. The weakness of the method, as the only or chief
manner to gain knowledge is that there are so many ways the
subjective mind of a person can cause a particular conclusion to be
invalid. One, any of the premises have to be sound. To be sound, it
means it needs to fall into a readily identifiable, non-contradicting
and truly self-evident truth. Two, one needs to have valid
reasoning—avoid falling into a fallacy, of which there are many of
them—to arrive at a valid and true conclusion. Three, one also has
to take into account the complexity of an argument. The more complex
an explanation is, the more likely it will be that error to find its
way into the ultimate conclusion.
It
is the subjective and limited mind of the person doing the reasoning,
which is often biased to a particular outcome, that rationalism tends
to fail.
My
philosophical combination of existential and rationalism is one way I
hope to combat the weaknesses in either method, in as much as can
possibly be done. I use experience as the starting point, rather
than some mystical “innate knowledge” we have in our mind, but
recognize the limits of purely existentialism by knowing that without
effective reasoning capabilities, we are driven by a very subjective
interpretation of the existential data before us due to our finite
and limited experiences.
By
way of example, let’s compare the old gravity experiment. Back
before the Renaissance in Western Civilization happened, most
everyone believed that: premise one—that when one drops anything
from a particular height, that it falls to the ground; premise
two—that objects with a greater mass are heavier, making them
harder to lift and move around than lighter objects. Those two
premises do appear to be self-evident and non-contradictory. Our
experience verifies both premises as true. The conclusion then is
when a heavier object is dropped from the same height, with the same
wind speed and air-resistance, that the heavier object would hit the
ground first. Sounds logical enough.
However,
it is not logical; it is a hasty generalization fallacy, and/or, a
causal fallacy. In other words, one cannot assume that the heavier
weight could cause something to fall at a faster rate than a lighter
object. That said, the rational argument appeared to be logical. That
is, until someone took a heavy and light object to the top of a
building and dropped them at the same time, only to discover that
the rational, deductive reasoning argument failed to be reflected in
real life, and was not a true conclusion.
Scientific Knowledge
Strictly
speaking, scientific knowledge refers to gathering some observable
data, and using inductive reasoning to arrive at a hypothesis that
would appear to fit the data. Then, a way to measure whether the
hypothesis is true or not—predictive truths—is put forth, and
tests are recorded and measurements obtained that will allow others
to repeat the “experiment,” and if others are able to do so, the
hypothesis becomes, in due time, a theory—that is, a high enough
probability of a “truth claim” that people treat it as truth.
This
is a refined methodology of using inductive reasoning, based upon our
experiences, in a more objective manner, to arrive at truth. This is
the method that has brought us the automobile, the airplane, the
internet, and the cell phone. When it comes to the realms of physics
and mathematics, that is where this type of knowledge prevails.
Where
it falls short, however, is in the following ways.
One,
while more people verifying a hypothesis will tend to result in a
more objective arrival of the truth than either individual
experiences or reason will allow, it does not totally get rid of
them. In truth, we know large groups of people can be swayed by money
to fund research or the potential loss of power or prestige that a
sort of group subjectivity can flow into such “scientific”
studies and conclusions. A good example of this is the nutritional
studies. For almost 90 years, we have scientific studies showing that
meat and dairy is the primary cause of cardiovascular disease,
cancer, diabetes, and hypertension, just to name the bigger heath
issues. Yet, this knowledge is not distributed for two main reasons:
1. because of all the conflicting studies, often funded by the meat,
dairy, and pharmaceutical industries, found in medical journals. 2.
Because doctors and researchers don’t believe that people will stop
eating meat and dairy. That’s despite the fact it is killing a vast
number of people every year. However, the big point here is all the
studies designed to show the opposite of what the other studies have
shown, primarily to keep selling product and make rich the
stakeholders. They confuse the issue and dilute the valid studies.
Two,
that it is still based on inductive reasoning. One can never reach an
absolute truth claim. One can not know with 100% assurance that a
truth claim will hold up, that tomorrow, some new data won’t be
discovered that will invalidate the theory that we currently hold
today. Does that mean we should throw out all theories? No, but it is
a limitation of any knowledge based upon Scientific Method.
Three,
while the scientific method is great for physics and the like, in
that it excels at explaining how something happens and the
ontological basis of our world, it is not a great method for
obtaining truth in other areas, in that it is either not applicable
to discovering truth in those areas, or only parts of it can be used.
An example of the latter is the historical sciences. In using geology
and archaeology, it is at home. However, in evaluating historical
text, a more subjective type of knowledge is required. Yes, there are
parts of the scientific method that can be applied to it, however, no
method can substitute for the gut-instinct of a person in determining
the veracity and the biases present in a writing. On top of that, it
cannot account for oral histories passed down, often making the
assumption that when something is written down, that is the first
time it has been said or thought, which is its own fallacy in that
most thoughts are said long before they are written down.
None
of this invalidates the findings of the scientific method. It may, on
occasion, invalidate specific points, but one should not call a
method invalid based upon those who may misuse it. However, we need
to be aware of its limitations in arriving at the truth and how to
evaluate truth claims made by science. Despite its better record at
discovering the truth about our world, it struggles when it comes to
more subjective, unmeasurable, metaphysical truths. How does one
measure how something makes a person feel? No two people are likely
to perceive a feeling in the same manner.
Faith-Based Knowledge
I
know what a lot people will be thinking here. “Are you saying I can
get truthful knowledge from faith? Without any evidence?” This is
often asked, especially from those who have come from Evangelical
traditions where people have taken Hebrews 11:1 out of its context to
say something it doesn’t say. Yes, it does say, “evidence of
things not seen,” but one must look at the examples given which
follow that verse to get at the gist of what the author is saying
there. This is most often the case with many atheists, in that they
grew up and came out of Evangelical traditions that taught that
Hebrews 11:1 essentially meant that faith was some kind of magical
wand one could wave, in which one could be granted all sorts of
things, not the least which was absolute certain knowledge without
any sort of evidence for it.
But
that is not what the Bible says faith is, nor does it even define
what evidence is, a term used well before the scientific method came
into use. If one looks at the examples following verse 1, one will
see a bunch of people cited who had faith in God, that is,
they believed and had confidence that what God said was true, was
true, even if they could only “hope” for it, without any outward
evidence that what God said, would indeed come to pass. In other
words, faith knowledge isn’t based on no evidence at all, but
because they believed that what God said would happen, would indeed
happen, they believed it would come to pass without ever having seen
it happen. So, “faith is the evidence of things not seen.”
So,
when I am talking about faith, I’m not referring to some
magical-energy one can possess, or a right to have something one
wants, but a firm conviction in what another “person” says is
true, or at least contains some truth in what they say. The
“evidence” comes in whether one can trust any particular source
of truth enough to put their confidence in what they say.
This
is where relationship comes into the picture. Because at its heart,
faith-based knowledge is relational rather than rational knowledge.
I’m not saying that faith-based knowledge is devoid of any
rationality, but that it is based more on the experience one has
gained with a particular person or persons. In other words, to have
faith in someone means you have a relationship with that person so
that you have enough history with them to know whether you trust them
or not.
It
is also a given that we all have to place our faith in someone in
order to live, practically speaking. No one person can scientifically
know every clinical trail, every study ever done, or every
experiment, in order to form their own thoughts on any given topic.
So for most people, most of the time, they have faith that their
hair-cutter knows what he/she is doing, what a specific scientist or
group of scientists say is the truth, that a person’s wife knows
what she is talking about, and yes, whether God is trustworthy in
what He is saying. One has to have a relationship with a person, or
God, to gain any knowledge from them, and their expertise.
It
should also be pointed out that faith-based knowledge, since it is
gained through a relationship, is not primarily skeptic-based at its
inception. There is, however, based upon experiences with certain
types of people, a skeptical element to faith-based knowledge. If a
salesman calls one on the phone, or you receive and email suggesting
that someone in Africa wants to send a few million your way, those
types of people should cause the skeptical meter to register a
warning not to trust them.
Most
people, though, start out a new relationship with a certain amount of
trust, in other words, the opposite of being skeptical. Only when
they say something that goes against your previous knowledge or what
you think to be truth, do you become skeptical with another person,
even if you trust their judgment on the best restaurant to eat at or
the best breed of dog to own. But one could not function in our world
or society being skeptical of every person you come into contact
with. We are forced to have a certain amount of faith in strangers as
well as those closest to us in order to function.
That
is the interesting thing about faith-based knowledge being founded on
relationships: the more experience one has with a person, either the
more or less we will trust them. Once we have a good amount of
history with a person, the more likely we’ll be able to trust or
not trust their view on different topics. So building a relationship
with anyone becomes key to gaining knowledge through faith.
The
limitations of this type of knowledge are the following.
One,
it becomes much harder to have an objective viewpoint on any topic.
Being it is relationship-based, it is inherently more subjective due
to our understanding and interpretation of the trustworthiness of
what one hears. One can apply some facets of the scientific method to
this process, but it cannot, in most cases, be verified by that
method. This is the type of evidence I would suggest one cannot have
with faith-based knowledge: scientific evidence. Only in a very
limited sense, such as when one says something that will happen, then
if it happens exactly as they stated, would that be some type of
evidence.
Two,
it is easy to come to the wrong conclusions with faith-based
knowledge. First, one can trust someone who isn’t telling the
truth. Second, one could misunderstand the one relaying information
or intentionally deceive oneself due to their own biases.
That
said, due to the lack of time, few, if any, cannot invest in looking
up everything offered to them as truth by those they already trust,
to gain most of our knowledge from other people; most of our
knowledge is derived based upon faith in another person.
But
God is different, is He not? Yes, He is. First, He would be someone
we don’t, often, have the same kind of direct evidence that He
exist, like I do, for instance, my wife. I can touch and talk to my
wife, and I will feel her and hear her voice as she communicates with
me. I have none of that with God. More on that further down, but that
would primarily be the argument that an atheist would make.
Second,
God, if He exists as defined by the Bible and Orthodox theology, as
being perfect in will, nature, and in perfect unity within Himself,
in such a way that He can say nothing but truth, mainly because He
defines what truth is, that is different from people in that people
can be wrong on some issues and right on others. God is right about
everything, by definition of Him being God.
The
issue of whether God exists or not, is hopefully going to be answered
below. So, more on that issue in a bit.
Conclusion to Epistemology
So,
I am working from the assumption in this paper that my epistemology
will be a combination of each of these methods: existential, a
modified rationalism, scientific, and faith knowledge. It is hoped
that with a mix of these methods, that we can gain knowledge enough
to answer the question for a particular person: does God exists?
Biblical Theology
Biblical Inspiration
Inspiration
of the Bible has various forms. Atheist tend to like the more rigid
and literal interpretation of the Bible due to it being much easier
to tear down. Evidence for them can only be based upon scientifically
deduced facts and rational syllogisms. So a “rational”—that is,
literal understanding of what the Bible says is true is the easiest
to deal with. They especially like the near “dictation”
understanding because that allows them to point out the many
inconsistencies found in the Bible. And there are more than a handful
of Biblical contradictions when it is taken as purely literal, and as
each word is in the Bible because it says exactly what God wants it
to say.
However,
when we focus on a relational understanding of Scripture, and
incorporate the goal of the relationships that God set up in Genesis,
how that relationship was destroyed, and how God made it that way,
the whole point of the Bible is the story of God’s relationship
with mankind. It is what I have termed:
Relational-Based Inspiration of the Bible
My
understanding of Biblical theology is that it is inspired by God, but
only those things pertaining to the creation, fall, and eventual
salvation of man and woman’s relationship between God, and
indirectly, between each other, are inspired. To put it differently,
God didn’t intend to write a science book—long before modern
science even existed—nor did God write through other people His
words, but allowed them to put their own words, cultural outlooks,
and their own thoughts on all other subjects other than those which
move the story forward where it concerns the saving of our
relationship with Him.
So,
with that laid out, let’s put this to the test, to see how well or
not the passages of Scripture will be predictive of what we would
expect.
Biblical Relational Context
First,
let’s tackle the big one, as that will prove most clearly what I’m
talking about when we approach the Bible from a literal/rational
standpoint rather than a relational-based one.
One
of the big problems that atheists have with Genesis 1 is that it
would be “impossible” for God to create light before He created
Sun and the Moon. Light was created on day 1, and the sun and stars
were reported as being created until the 4th day. It did
make me scratch my head the first time I read that.
However,
if you read this as Hebraic poetry, it all makes sense. What is
Hebraic poetry? Simple, it is more a rhyme of thought than it is of
words. This is most clearly seen in passages from the Psalms and
Proverbs. There are rhyme of similar thoughts, said different ways in
order to illuminate the thought better as can be seen throughout
Psalm 2:
Why
do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings
of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break
their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that
sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in
derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in
his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of
Zion. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art
my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give
thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of
the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of
iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Be wise
now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is
kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in
him.
Ignoring
the content, for now, focus on the pairs of similar statements: Thou
shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces
like a potter’s vessel.
Then
you have contrasting thoughts as in Proverbs 3:5-7:
Trust
in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own
understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct
thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart
from evil.
Notice
the contrast, with the similar thoughts sandwiched between them: Do
trust in the Lord, but do not trust in your own
understanding. Acknowledge Him; He will direct. Be not wise in your
own eyes. Instead, fear (respect) the Lord, depart from evil. It even
ends with a similar pair of thoughts as part of the contrasting
thought.
Those
are just some passages I pulled up quickly by way of illustration.
Those two books of the Bible are full of such examples. Why? Because
it is generally recognized that the Psalms and Proverbs are examples
of Hebraic poetry. Why poetry? Because, the strength of poetry is
that it is a relationship based method of communicating. It is the
relationships in poetry, both in the thoughts themselves and in the
real relationships it highlights, that it offers to us as knowledge.
It
is for this reason that it becomes clear that the first chapter of
Genesis is poetry, and therefore should be interpreted as such, and
not like a science textbook—which would be crazy when you think
about it since the modern concept of science hadn’t even entered
into the mind of man back when this story is told.
So,
if this is poetry, where are the couplets or triplets of similar and
contrasting thoughts? It is clear when you look at the periods of
time marked as days, which there are six days that creation takes
place, since God rested on the seventh, that there is a correlation
between them. If you pair up the first three days with the last three
days, you have an interesting comparison.
In
the first three days, you have an account of the creation of the
world, and on the last three days, you have an account of the
creation of all that would inhabit those environments. A quick
comparison shows how well they match up:
Day
one, God creates the universe, light, and darkness. Day four, God
creates the sun, moon, and stars that would fill that universe.
Day
two, God creates the water and the sky. Day five, God creates the
fish that live in the seas, and the bird that fly through the sky.
Day
three, you might be thinking, is the big “Ah ha! Your comparison
doesn’t hold up here, because in one day, you have both the
creation of the dry land and the creation of the plants that live in
it.” Strictly speaking, this is true. That is, until you compare it
with day six. Where first it talks about the animals that were
created to move about in this world, and then the creation of man.
For plants are part of the environment, just as much as rocks, and
earth and water are. Likewise, they are living things as well, just
as animals are. So in that regard they form a link between the world
and those that live in the world God created. Then you look at the
creation of man, as an animal and as divine. That he is also divine
at his creation is evident by the triplet thought (another indication
that what we are dealing here is poetry, and not a literal account of
how it happened).
27
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he
him; male and female created he them.
This
is the climax of the poetry verses. It is the culmination of what
this whole chapter has been leading to. That God created man
differently than He created the animals. He gave man his own image
and likeness. As the text indicates in Chapter two, he breathed the
breath of life into man, His own spirit. Thus, man was created to be
the bridge between the animals and the divine, just as plants were
created to be a bridge between the inanimate and the animate life. As
you can see, even on day three, it fits perfectly with what happens
on day six.
All
of this points us to one conclusion: that Genesis one was not written
to tell us how and in what order God created all the world, rather He
had it written to tell us why he created it all: To point out the
relationship he created man to have with Himself. That is our purpose
and the reason that all this was created, so that He could have a
relationship with us and us with Him.
So
the Bible goes on from there to show how that relationship was
broken. Actually, the coming of a sickness thanks to Adam and Eve.
The sickness which leads to death. So, again, chapter three answers
the why more so than it does the how it all happened. It uses
metaphors to indicate that Adam (literally, man) and Eve (literally,
mother of all living 3:20), or woman as she was called at her
creation by Adam, he named her Eve after the Fall had happened, in
order to show the why and how this sickness of death fell upon them.
It
does this by having as a metaphor the Tree of Life (Christ) and the
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (themselves) from which to eat
and not eat, respectively. That is, they either put their faith in
God by choosing Christ and obeying Him, or put their faith in
themselves and their own ability to know good from evil.
Now,
God tells Adam in 2:17, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die.” Yet, we know that Adam and Eve ate
of the tree, and still, they lived on long after that day. So, did
God lie when he told them that? Or was he simply being hyperbolic?
Or, did a form of death really take place that day? I suggest it is
the latter.
For
remember, that in creating man in Chapter 2, verse 7, it says, “And
the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” So,
it is the spirit of God that is breathed into man that made him a
“Living Soul,” and it is the death of that same soul that
happened on that day. Yet, Adam lived on? Yes, he lived then
according to his animal nature, as his link with the divine was
severed, it died on that day. So, like the animals, Adam and Eve
became subject to death. They both died on the day they ate of the
tree, and their death was finalized approximately 900 years later.
That
is how this sickness, passed down to future generations came about.
The rest of the Bible is concerned with the relationship of God with
the Israelites, the world, and finally, how that original
relationship was restored, through Jesus Christ’s death and
resurrection. That is, how that relationship was healed.
We’ll
dig into that more in the theology section, but for our purposes
here, it becomes obvious that the Bible is a collection of books,
written by men moved of God, with the purpose being to show how God
created the relationship to be, how it was destroyed by Adam and
Eve’s actions, and how it was to be restored.
So,
does that mean I don’t believe that God created the world in six
literal twenty-four hour days? No. But neither do I claim to know
that He did do it in six literal days. Why? One, it isn’t the
purpose of Genesis one to give that information. It is talking about
relationships, and should not be used to give us a “blow by blow”
account of what order and how long He took to do it all in.
Especially since it is poetry, we cannot know how long, exactly, that
a day was, as the word literally means a “period of time.” Two, I
wasn’t there at the time, like yourself. It could be speaking of a
twenty-four hour period of time, or a few million years. Who is to
say? Three, to use the text in a non-relationship manner, as an early
attempt at science, one will run into many inconsistencies that
atheists are happy to point out.
Inconsistencies
like how different the two accounts of the creation of man are. For
example, in the Genesis one account, it has the animals being created
before Adam and Eve. But in Chapter 2, Adam is created before the
animals, which God creates in order for Adam to name and find a help
meet for him. That and other inconsistencies between the two accounts
leads one to the conclusion that either one or both of the accounts
are fabricated and do not reveal truth, that God lied, or that the
purpose of either or both was not to document the order and
time-frame of creation. Thus the truths that they reveal is a
non-scientific truth.
Also,
it is important to know that people of that time, that God used to
write the books that make up the Bible, He didn’t override their
cultural biases, their way of looking at the world, their philosophy,
etc, all tend to come through. So any pronouncements on or inclusion
of things like slavery, that God ordered the killing of children,
etc, all of which are in the Bible, does not equate with God
approving of or participating in those activities. Why didn’t God
change them? I don’t know, but I assume that our ultimate
salvation, our final healing of death, took precedence over those
things, that God didn’t see them as important. After all, the Bible
isn’t a book on the morality of owning slavery, its primary concern
is about our relationship with God and how it is healed. Anything
contrary to the nature of God is either a cultural bias of the writer
of the Bible book under consideration, or us projecting our own
morals onto God and judging Him by them.
Relationships in Theology
Every
systematic theology has an organizing principle. While I am, as I
said in the beginning of this article, not purporting to write a
systematic theology, I am working from the foundations of one. And
its organizing principle is that of relationships. The whole plan of
salvation is based on relationships, restoring the damaged
relationship with God and our fellow man. It requires that love be
the governing energy for all relationships as God has defined them.
We
can even put the moral code into our relationships. “And as ye
would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”
(Luke 6:31) That is the whole of the moral code, if you don’t like
it, don’t do it to others. If you do like something, then do it.
Keeping in mind that you wouldn’t like someone to assume that your
likes are what they are for them. It is all relational.
Scientific Knowledge of Relationships
Now,
atheists like to equate scientific evidence as necessary before they
can believe in the existence of God or even a god. So, what, if any,
such evidence is there?
To
put it honestly, there is none. Don’t get me wrong, there is
evidence, but none that an atheists would accept. That is because
relational theology doesn’t conform God to this world. He is bigger
than that, and therefore beyond the reach of any scientific
knowledge. Such is the case with all metaphysical topics, by there
very definition, they are beyond this world’s nature. This is more
than a “god of the gaps” error, because if there is a God, he
would be behind everything, both natural and beyond natural.
What
we have here is a god who is beyond nature specifically because He
created it. He doesn’t go around changing the rules of nature willy
nilly, but he does help to keep the world constant within itself, so
science can be done. If the rules of nature were regularly violated,
science could not be done. Therefore, He avoids breaking the laws of
nature, which He set up, in order that we wouldn’t have a chaotic
world in which to live, never knowing whether the sun would rise the
next day or not.
To
prove this to be the case, consider the property of God commonly
ascribed to him, as being “omnipresent.” In other words, one of
the definitions of the Christian God is that He can pull back, being
outside of time, and be present anywhere and everywhere at once. Can
you even imagine what an existence outside of time would be like? No?
Then how on earth can one assume that they can even begin to
understand such a God, much less gain any “scientific knowledge”
about Him. Get back to me when you can adequately describe an
existence outside of time.
Genesis 1 – 3: A Study of Relationships
As
we demonstrated above, Genesis, Chapter 1 is Hebraic poetry that
illustrates the relationships God created us to have, with Himself,
the world around us, and with each other. Chapters 2 and 3 continue
this story, basically detailing how Adam (man) was created, as well
as his “help meet”, woman, which hints at their relationship.
Note, this was not to be a relationship of a servant to her master,
but as a help meet, that is, someone who was compatible.
This
is evident when God says, “It is not good that the man should be
alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” (Gen 2:18b) Note,
what God is saying here is that there was no one compatible with him.
By compatible, it is specifically speaking about their joining as
one. Adam, as the only person alive, was uniquely alone. He had no
mate with which to bond with, to produce offspring. The human race
would have begun and ended with Adam.
After
also creating the animals from the ground, without any mention of
breathing His life into them, yet they also become animated, there
was no compatible help meet for Adam. (Gen. 2:20) So then God takes a
rib from Adam and forms a woman from Him. Note how everything is
linked together into an organic whole. If God had created a new
creation from the ground, as he just did with the animals, they
wouldn’t have been human, but a new creation. In order to create a
compatible “help meet” for Adam, it had to come from him, even as
every human that we know of came from another human. That is also why
Jesus had to be incarnate of the Virgin Mary as well. But we are
getting ahead of ourselves there.
Then
right at the end of Chapter 2, we find both the purpose and
fulfillment of this relationship as well as a change noted in their
relationship. First, 2:24 tells us the “therefore” of the
relationship between the man and woman took place. “Therefore shall
a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his
wife: and they shall be one flesh.” That is, because of the woman
being created as a help meet for man, the two shall be joined into
one flesh, that is, it is speaking of a physical union here, that is,
to be married, and a man will leave his father and mother’s house
in order to form a new family. This is the purpose of marriage.
Without that physical union and the potential production of children
that it naturally, as created by God to accomplish, produces, there
would be no reason to have a marriage. It is only in the forming of
a new family that a marriage makes any sense at all.
That
is why in the next and last verse of the chapter, 2:25, it says, “And
they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
Two things to note here. One, that they were both naked and not
ashamed. While the Church Fathers say that this is because they were
both clothed with light of God’s glory and presence, which would
make sense of the consequence of the Fall in that they were then able
to see each other’s nakedness as they had never seen it before, and
we presume as we see it now; it also speaks not to the idea that
public nudity is alright, instead, it speaks to the intimate
relationship between the two. Even as it is to this day, a couple,
generally, are not ashamed to be seen naked around each other.
Two,
did you note the change in the way the woman is spoken of here? For
the first time in Scripture, she is called “wife.” Again, this
points to the fact that this joining into one flesh, this special
union, was considered to be the primary reason for the existence of
marriage. Here, before the Fall has even happened, we have the
fullness of marriage as God created it to be.
This
shows us the fullness of the relationships that God created. These
are stories that while not scientifically presenting evidence for
either God’s existence, or that He created everything in six 24
hour days, or that Adam and Eve were the first people alive and that
the entire human race came from them, these stories were not told in
order to provide modern scientists with “evidence” of anything,
only to point out the relationship He had with His creation, as well
as He and His creation with us.
Then,
the Fall, which changed that relationship. Most people reading this
will know the story of Chapter 3. Eve encounters a serpent,
apparently in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, tempting
her to eat of its fruit, claiming it would make her become like God,
knowing good and evil. Note: what he said was true, as is evidenced
later on, but it turns out it wasn’t the benefit that the serpent
had led her to believe it would be.
Indeed,
the Church Fathers indicate that eventually, after they had eaten
from the tree of life, they would have been permitted to eat from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Whatever was true, however,
what is critical here is the relationship between Eve, and then Adam
to God. They failed to have faith in what God said would happen to
them if they ate from that tree. Instead, they chose to put their
faith in a serpent and their own egos and pride. They believed what
the serpent said instead of what God said. That is the gist of what
sin is, it is trusting in our own wisdom rather than the wisdom of
God.
More
could be said here about the changed relationship man and his wife
had in the Fall, but the critical relationship that the Bible is
primarily concerned about is the change in the relationship of God to
Adam and Eve. And that relationship changed significantly, in that
the spirit of God which He breathed into them, died on that very day
that they sinned. They lost the connection of life that they had with
God. Thus, what we call the fall.
I
think if is important to define sin at this point. Sin is a violation
of God’s design specifications. God didn’t sit up in heaven and
say to Himself, “Hum. I wonder what kinds of rules I can make to
keep mankind from enjoying their fun?” No, God designated various
things as sin due to the damage they would cause to God’s creation.
So
God, who Adam and Eve failed to have faith in, caused His spirit
within them, that gave them life, to die. That is the essence of what
the Fall did, it broke the relationship between God and us. All flows
from this relational brokenness.
Salvation Understood as a Healing of Broken
Relationships
So,
how does one fix a broken relationship? Do they make it a juridical
thing? Do they make it a purely a sacrifice to atone for another’s
sins? That is what some would believe, and if a Christian does
believe that “God, in creating his rules, condemns us all to death
because we didn’t have a ‘chance in hell’ of living up to them,
and then by some transference of legal rights, sends His son in to
die in our place, that is, to apply the merits of His sacrificial
death onto us so that we will have a “get out of jail free” card
when the Last Judgment happens, then, indeed, the atheist have a
point in talking how ludicrous that makes our God out to be. That is
not a God of love, but a prideful and vindictive god. A powerless
God, who is forced by His own rules to kill us in an everlasting
torment, and cannot simply forgive us as the very Scriptures state He
is able to do.
If
my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and
pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I
hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their
land. (II Chron. 7:14)
Hum,
no mention of needing to satisfy His justice there. Let’s try
another.
For
thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest
not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a
broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. (Psalm
51:16-17)
Again,
no mention of a need for a sacrifice to satisfy God’s “wrath”.
Come
now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be
as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like
crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)
Nothing
there either. There is talk of doing good in that section, but no
mention of a need to appease God’s justice and wrath for past
misdeeds.
Oh,
I hear some saying that is the Old Testament, that the New Testament
makes it clearer. Okay then, let’s check out some New Testament
passages.
First
up, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, an often used passage on
forgiveness. In this parable of Jesus, which can be found in Luke
15:11-32. Most of the readers of this article knows the story, but
permit me to give a brief overview of it both for those who haven’t
heard it and to point out the reality I’m speaking of as it
concerns forgiveness and God.
A
younger son, out of two of them, ask for his share of the inheritance
from his father. Now, this was not totally off limits as some might
tend to portray it. However, such an inheritance was generally
reserved for when one would get married, when they would need it to
start a family of their own. It is what the son did with his
inheritance that was so bad, and once his money ran out, all the new
“friends” he had made deserted him, and he was left to earn
something to eat and a roof over his head by taking care of the pigs,
which incidentally, according to Jewish Law, would make him
constantly unclean so he couldn’t even go to “church” or the
temple to worship God or offer sacrifices. He grew so hungry,
however, that even what he fed the pigs looked good to him.
While
he was in this desperate condition, he said the following: “How
many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare,
and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will
say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,
And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy
hired servants.” So he does just that. But before he can get his
canned speech out, the Father instead comes running to him, restores
the relationship as the Father’s son.
But
the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put
it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And
bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be
merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and
is found. And they began to be merry. (Luke 15:22-24)
Notice
the reference to him being dead and is now alive? Let’s see. The
father, who represents God the Father in this story, requires nothing
of the son to be restored as His son. Where is the justice there? No,
that is the wrong question. The question should be where is the mercy
and forgiveness of God, for that is really, as an old Nazarene
preacher use to say, what this parable is about: about the prodigal
love of the Father, much more than the son who spent his inheritance
prodigally. Nope, no justice here that needs a sacrifice to atone for
the son’s past misdeeds.
Or
how about this one.
And,
behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed:
and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be
of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. And, behold, certain of the
scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. And Jesus
knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say,
Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power
on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)
Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. (Matt 9:2-6)
Why
did Jesus so readily forgive the man without so much as mentioning
the need for a sacrifice? As a matter of fact, in all the instances
that Jesus forgave anyone, I don’t recall one time Him ever asking
for a sacrifice. No indication that Jesus, who we believe to be the
Son of God, ever required a sacrifice before forgiving anyone. Pretty
much as God the Father did in the Old Testament. Oh yes, God did ask
for sacrifices as a proper means for someone to ask for forgiveness
from God. They were meant on one hand to be a meaningful and normal
method for someone to essentially say, “Hey God, I messed up.
Please forgive me.” But as the many statements that can be found in
the Old Testament, like the one in Psalms 51 above, sacrifices God
does not require.
So
what was the purpose of all those sacrifices, then? More on that in a
bit. Suffice it here to say, that all the atheists who have formed
their theology from Catholic and Evangelical Protestant concepts,
especially the Fundamentalist variety, have a wrong concept of why
the atonement that Jesus made on the cross was so necessary and
critical. And no, it had nothing to do with satisfying God’s
justice and/or wrath, and everything to do with restoring our
relationship with Him.
How
does it do that? More on that further down. However, we need to make
one other very important point. It is an obvious one that most people
don’t realize, especially if they don’t know New Testament Greek.
It is that the exact same word, sozo,
which is often translated as “saved” is the same word also often
translated as “healed.” That
is why Jesus, before healing the paralytic in Matt. 9, quoted above,
does so to show and demonstrate that He also has the power to forgive
sins. Forgiveness is part of the full healing process of
relationships, and of the person.
All that to point to the reality that salvation isn’t about
fulfilling the Law, even by Jesus on our behalf. No, that would be a
works-based salvation. It would be a salvation based on the
fulfilling of the Law, the very thing that St. Paul was so adamantly
against in both Romans and Galatians.
To
the atheist out there, no, God does not need to sacrifice His Son in
order to forgive us. Rather, it was a rescue mission, a mission of
mercy, a way constant within Himself and the creation and man. It
was a mission to give us the option to apply His forgiveness, already
freely given, to ourselves. It
was a mission He undertook to restore the relationship broken when
Eve ate the fruit from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
God sought to heal our relationship with Him, not punish someone, any
one, for us breaking His Law. How did He do that? That is for the
next section.
The Atonement
When
I attended college and we discussed the atonement, and in my readings
on the subject, they tend to list three main views or “theories”
on the atonement: classical, or to put it more directly, what the
Early Church and the Fathers believed was the case; the
Substitutionary theory of the atonement, and the Satisfaction theory
of the atonement. The last two “developed” as some apparently
didn’t think the classic view was sufficient.
So
what are these views? We’ll look at the last two first, briefly,
before getting into what the Church originally believed. Keep in
mind, that there are elements of truth in each one. It has, however,
been drawn out to conclusions that distort, if not pervert, the truth
of what Christ came to our world to do on the cross. We’ll point
out the truths in those two, otherwise, over-extended metaphors.
Substitutionary Theory of Atonement
This
idea came from a misunderstanding of the nature of sacrifice. It is
true that there was a specific ritual where the sins of the people
were “transferred” to a goat (Leviticus 16:21). The meaning of
this act, where the High Priest lays his hands upon the goat and
“confesses” the sins of the people, is wrapped up in a longer set
of sacrifices that the High Priest would preform once every year. But
if there is a something that illustrates the common understanding of
substitutionary atonement of Christ’s death on the cross, then this
is the ritual that would be pointed at as a biblical example of such
a sacrifice.
Though,
literally, it is not a sacrifice. The goat isn’t killed, directly.
It would be an indirect sacrifice since we would typically assume
that the goat would die, however, the goat dying doesn’t appear to
factor into the meaning behind this ritual. Instead, it appears to be
more important that the goat wander in the wilderness, carrying the
sins of the people.
Additionally,
there was no mention of that ritual being an atonement, except in a
wider manner. So, while it is an annual event, its importance within
the wider sacrificial system was not that important in defining what
a sacrifice does.
However,
the gist of this theory of the atonement is that Jesus, being the
ultimate sacrificial lamb, because it was His own Son, dies in our
place. We who were dead in our sins, He would take them for us and
therefore die for us.
So,
why is it a wrong concept for the atonement? Precisely in its
incompleteness. For even the Catholic/Protestant versions of this add
on the following Satisfaction theory, because while the Substitution
theory of the atonement explains how our sins are forgiven on the
front end, it fails to tell us why and how they are forgiven and how
that saves us. Instead, it creates the appearance of a circular logic
loop: There are sacrifices in the OT to point us to Christ, but that
Christ was sacrificed is somehow supposed to justify the whole
sacrificial setting.
So,
what is the proper understanding of the whole sacrificial system that
God set up? We’ll get more into it when we talk about it in the
discussion about the “classical” theory, however, what we have
shown is that, yes, there is a sense where Christ takes our place,
and dies in our behalf. Yet, the question still remains, why? And how
does that accomplish the atonement? Those questions is what the
Satisfaction and Classical theories attempt to demonstrate.
The Satisfaction Theory
What
is the Satisfaction theory of the atonement? It comes it two flavors,
the Catholic version which uses the debt metaphor, and the Protestant
version which uses the Law and a courtroom/judge metaphor. We’ll
start with the former, first.
Catholic
There
are, what Catholics would suggest, are seeds of this in both the
Bible and in the Early Church Fathers. However, the more developed
and the man who popularized this theory was Anselm. His stated goal
was to explain how Christ’s death atoned for our sins without using
the Bible so that the pagan could understand it.
He
took the debt metaphor that the Bible uses in Matthew 18: 23-25:
Therefore
is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would
take account of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one
was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. But
forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold,
and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be
made.
What
is the debt we owe to God? It is his honor, in that we have violated
His honor and justice due to our sins that the Law lays out. The
debt, like the servant in the above parable, is so great that there
is no way anyone could earn enough “money” or righteousness to
pay God back. Only one person can, and that is God Himself. So, God
the Son is incarnated in our flesh, in order to become one of us.
Then He dies, in order that He could pay in our behalf, His Father’s
honor back in full—that is where the substitution comes into the
picture.
I’ll
grant Anselm this, in that it does make some sense of why Jesus had
to die for our sins. However, there are some problems with this view
that make it problematic, some of which I’ve heard atheists use.
One.
And probably the biggest one for anyone who bases this debt metaphor
on the above passage, is that the master, representing the Father,
forgives the servant the entire debt, with no strings attached!
The
servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have
patience with me, and I will pay thee all. Then the lord of that
servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him
the debt. (Matt 18:26-27)
The
only other place in the New Testament that mentions a debt is Romans
4:4, “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace,
but of debt.” Obviously another place that would speak of salvation
as not being based upon owing a debt, but of grace, mercy, and love,
just as the man in Jesus’ parable mentioned above. But aside from
the Biblical arguments, there are some logical problems with this
view.
Two.
That our debt is owed to God the Father instead of death and the
Devil. This theory makes God the Father out to be “bad” guy, the
obstacle to our salvation. Which is crazy when you think of Him
creating us for a relationship; then not allowing Adam and Eve to
totally die off once they had sinned, because God couldn’t be wrong
in creating Adam and Eve the way He did, that is, He wouldn’t have
created them in the first place if He had known this broken
relationship couldn’t be fixed; then He sends His Son down to die
for us because He is too proud to forgive us—despite the fact that
every passage and example of forgiveness in the Bible doesn’t
require any of this paying back a debt of honor to God.
No,
we don’t owe any debt to God that He doesn’t stand ready to
forgive us for if we but ask, trusting that what He has said is true
and will happen (Rom 4:20-21). However, there are clear passages in
the Bible that place us, due to our sins, as owing a debt to the
Devil, being in bondage to the death.
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. (Rom
5:12)
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he
also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he
might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; 15
And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime
subject to bondage. (Heb. 2:14-15)
According
to the Bible, we are in bondage to Death and the Devil, not God the
Father, which makes more sense out of this. For otherwise we would
have God becoming man for the purpose of freeing us from His own
punishment. But no, God freed us from bondage to death and the Devil,
not from Himself.
Three.
It creates a demand outside of God for which He has no option but to
obey: His honor. This violates His omnipotence. For we are saying
that God has to kill us, due to our debt of His honor being violated.
That He is not free to readily forgive us, which violates all that
the Bible says about God being merciful, ready to freely forgive us
our sins in both Testaments, as we have previously laid out?
Four.
This view of the atonement creates a “works based salvation” in
that someone is bound to pay back the debt for God’s honor. Even
God’s own son must come and rescue us from His Father by paying the
debt that we owe due to our sins. Yes, the sinner doesn’t have to
do anything but believe in what Christ has taught (if He really
taught this), but all that means is that in order for God to satisfy
His honor, He has to do the work. Thus, it is still based on debt and
works. God is not free to simply forgive us outright.
Protestant
The
juridical view is based upon the same premise as the debt metaphor,
save it uses a juridical construct. Instead of owing a debt to God,
the sinner is guilty before the Father of breaking His Law. Instead
of Jesus’ death paying our debt to God, Jesus’ death takes our
punishment for us so we can go free.
Because
of this, the same objections apply. None of the parables, examples,
or passages in Scripture which speak of being forgiven are used in a
courtroom metaphor. Now, that is obvious with passages like the
Parable of the Prodigal Son, and the lack of any such requirement
listed before God would forgive someone their sins. But I know some
will bring up words like “Justification” and “imputing
righteousness” as legal type jargon. Yes, they can be used
juridically.
However,
they can equally be used relationally equally as well. I offer that
it is only because Protestants tend to look at the Scriptures through
the juridical lens that they take these terms with a juridical
meaning. For instance, take the term “justification.” It can be
understood as seeing a defendant as justified in doing what they did.
But in a relationship, which we’ve established is what salvation is
about, we are speaking of two people or entities being reconciled,
that is, their broken relationship is justified. Same for
righteousness. One can understand it in a juridical sense, but it can
equally be taken in a relational sense, that is, that to be righteous
has nothing to do with fulfilling the Law, but with fulfilling the
spirit of the law by reconciling one’s relationship with God.
Likewise,
the juridical understanding of atonement tells us that we stand
guilty before God of breaking His laws, that He has no option but to
kill us for it, that He is unable to simply forgive us for our sins,
that death is a punishment of sinning, that it boils down to
salvation is based in the Law, in that Jesus must fulfill the Law to
save each of us. That is despite passages like those found in Romans
and Galatians which make it clear that any theology which bases
righteousness upon fulfilling the Law, is antithetical to
righteousness deriving from a justified relationship with Jesus
Christ, that salvation is by grace, through faith, and not of any
works is key that this is about a relationship with Christ, not about
a courtroom.
I
need to point out, though it should be quite obvious, that there is a
place in a relational theology for the Law, and our breaking of it.
For in any relationship, there are often expectations, and unsaid
“laws” that one member, or both have. The relationship that is
broken because of the non-fulfillment of those expectations or
relationship Laws, is not reconciled to the offending party by him or
her then trying to fulfill those “Laws,” but by one party (at
least) asking and receiving forgiveness, for the past wrongs. Yes, to
“go and stop sinning” is an important part of receiving and
applying forgiveness offered, but before that can even happen, first
the relationship needs to be reconciled, needs to be justified for
past misdeeds. Once that relationship is restored, then one can begin
again to factor in the Law to one’s daily relational lives.
The
Classical Theory
The
“Classical Theory” or the “Victorious” theory of the
atonement basically says that death held us captive in Hades,
awaiting the Last Judgment, at which time God would be revealed in
all His glory, desiring to have a relationship with us. The only
problem is that God’s glory, being that He is light and in Him is
no darkness (1 John 1:5). Those who have become like Him experience
Him as light. Those that aren’t, experience Him as fire and
brimstone, essentially what has been termed as Hell.
Now,
Hades isn’t the same as Hell. It is, by no means, a pleasant place,
however, it is the holding place of the dead, that is, until Christ
came in and defeated “death, Hades, and the grave.”
So
when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal
shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the
saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death,
where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death
is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God,
which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (I Cor
15:54-57)
You
see this same theme in Romans 6, in relating baptism as a death to
the “old man” and a rising to new life. Christ had to become one
of us, to die as one of us, so that He might go into Hades, break
down its doors that have held us hostage since the beginning of time,
including Adam and Eve, so they could spend the remainder of their
time in Paradise with Christ. Then at the Last Judgment, when God’s
glory is revealed, those who have God’s life in them, will
experience God as “Heaven” while those who don’t, will
experience God’s glory as “Hell.”
That
is why God had to hide Himself from us, so that we would have time
for our uniting with Christ and God’s life. If He had revealed
Himself “face to face,” then the Last Judgment would have
happened then. Instead, God always uses intermediaries, because as He
told Moses, no one can see Him “face to face” and live. At least
not until they have been restored to the same state Adam and Eve were
created in.
Another
truth of this view is that the Law isn’t just a set of rules that
God decided one “day” to arbitrarily force us to live by, and if
we broke them, too bad for us. No, the Law was designed to support
the reason God created us. That is the definition of sin: those
activities and beliefs which go against God’s design specs for us
and our eventual reunion with Him on the last day, Judgment Day.
So,
Jesus wasn’t satisfying a requirement of God’s justice, other
than the injustice of our broken relationship with Him. Jesus wasn’t
sacrificing himself, acting as a scapegoat for our sins, except that
He did die because of our sins, in order to bind the strong man (the
Devil) and to defeat “death by death” since Hades could not hold
God.
That
is why I said earlier that Jesus was on a rescue mission. Sin had
made us sick, and we needed to be healed (saved) so that we could
enter into God’s presence with thanksgiving and joy, rather than
with fear and dread. The is a positive view of God the Father and of
the Son, and why He needed to become one of us, die on a cross, and
subsequently, rise from the dead. In order to defeat death, so that
we would not subsequently die ourselves, but could have eternal life.
Does God Exist?
Either
God (or gods) exist, or He (they) don’t. That is self-evident
premise one.
Now,
as agnostic atheists are prone to say, they are not suggesting that
they know that a God exists or not, but that they have no evidence
that there is a god that exists. By “evidence,” they are
generally referring to the scientific kind, where a testable
hypothesis is put forward, and then the test is done. Then based on
that, one could then potentially develop a “theory,” which
scientifically is the highest probability of being the truth, but it
is revisable based on new inductive knowledge coming to light.
Most
of them use what is called skepticism as a basis for seeking truth.
In other words, they will not believe anything until it has been
proven to them to have a high probability of being true. They feel
that this is the best method of determining truth. Note, that what
they have interpreted as showing what is true, may not at all be
true. It was once considered to be true that the sun revolved around
the earth, and that the earth was flat. Now, thanks to advances in
knowledge, we know that is not the truth. So, what will happen in the
future to show that what we think is true today, will not be in the
future?
That
is why we generally live our lives based on faith knowledge, or
revealed knowledge, in those that we trust to be telling us the
truth. Or, to put in a different way, each of us is forced to live
our lives either as if God exists, or He doesn’t, no matter what
degree of agnosticism one holds to. So, one could pragmatically be an
agnostic atheists, or an agnostic theist. The skeptic will choose to
live as an atheist. The non-skeptic can choose to live as an agnostic
theist.
Now,
I need to define what I mean by agnostic theist. Because, by
definition, it means someone who believes in God, but is agnostic
about His character and traits. However, that is not the kind of
agnostic theist I am referring to. Rather, that is what one believes
about God’s existence: both rationally and relationally. What is
critical is what one actually lives out in there life. That is where
the agnostic label goes away, and one either becomes an atheist or a
theist, no matter their belief on the matter. One can suspend one’s
belief that there is not sufficient evidence to know whether God
exists or not, but when it comes to how one lives out their life,
they are an atheist or a theist.
So
my definition of an agnostic theist is one who doesn’t know whether
a God exist or not, based on human reason and logic. However, one
lives as if there is a God, either due to Pascal’s Wager, or
because that’s what they were taught growing up and have decided to
trust in what they have been taught. They have faith in their
Church’s teaching, or their parent’s teaching and life, or
because of a personal experience that they attribute to a God. This,
more non-skeptical approach to life is based in relationships rather
than hard “facts.”
For
God is a supernatural being. Supernatural is that which is above and
beyond nature. He is supernatural, because He is uncaused and exists
outside of time and space. That is why there can be no scientific
proof or evidence for God’s existence. The only evidence we have
are His effects in our lives. However, these are subjective and not
testable. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is like the wind. We cannot
see Him, but we feel His effects on us. Yet, the effects of the
Spirit of God is filtered through each of us, making “objective”
testable truth unreachable.
Therefore,
we need to modify the question. One shouldn’t ask whether one
believes that God exists in truth or not, for no one, if they were
honest with themselves, could know that based on human reason. Sure,
there are plenty of “proofs” for God’s existence, but they all
have holes of one sort or another. Likewise, there are “proofs”
for the non-existence of God, but they also all have holes. All you
need to be able to do is to show that there is another possible
explanation for whatever the proof claims, and it is disproven.
Rather,
the question should be, who will you put your faith in to tell the
truth about God’s existence? That is something that each person
needs to decide for themselves. One may, being this is subjective and
relational rather than objective and testable, come to different
conclusions on this question, and that is okay. That means what will
convince one person may not convince another. One person may accept
the Jewish God as truth, or the Christian God, or the Islamic God, or
the Hindu gods, or the Buddhist of-no-consequence-gods. Or, they may
decide that the evidence that they have leads them to trust that
there isn’t a god, so that is how they live, as if God doesn’t
exist.
So,
for myself, I have placed my faith in the Eastern Orthodox concept of
a God. Yes, I know that there are contradictions in the Bible, and
issues with how we can know that He is there. Despite that, I can’t
help but to continue to believe He is there. As Matt Dillahunty said
on a recent episode of The Atheist Experience, you can’t so much
choose what you believe. You either believe it or you don’t. I’m
going to agree with him there. Not in any kind of predeterminalistic
way, but in that I am going to believe based on what I believe to be
true. As a non-skeptic, I am willing to have faith in the religion I
have decided tells the truth. I understand I could be wrong. I could
die and discover that the Islamic God was true, or that the atheists
were right, or that I was right. I have to make a choice of how to
live. Being I’m almost 60, it would be strange to change my beliefs
now. That said, I know that my reasons for choosing the Christian God
to believe in won’t be convincing for others. I believe that is how
it is supposed to be. That’s because if there is a God, and that
God is the merciful God I believe Him to be, that no matter who is
right among the religions of the world, He will give everyone a
chance to believe in the truth, whatever that might be.
So,
yes, I believe, at least in a practical sense, that God exists. I am
an agnostic theist, as I’ve described above. However, what I
ultimately believe is defined by how I live, more so than how I
believe defines how I live. They are more of a symbiotic
relationship. As Jesus said, I know that you love me if you do what I
say (John 15:10). Likewise, if you love me, do what I say (John
14:15). However, I would describe it this way, to get specific: What
I live out defines what I believe, whereas what I believe describes
how I live it out.
Your
mileage may vary, but for me and my house, that is what I believe.
