THE PROBLEMATIC ABSTRACT GOD

A motivation behind some of my posts has been to counter the problems of an abstract God.  Too often, popular Christian theology treats God like an impersonal, auto-response machine.  Behind this treatment lies abstract definitions of God.

Long explanation.  I noticed that NET2 translates Rom 4:3 (Greek) quotation of the OT Gen 15:6 as "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."  There is a note at “credited” (logizomai) citing a reference to it being a commercial term in secular Greek.  But, the same reference source continues to note that this word was used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible for a more personal, subjective term and that this subjective nuance influence later Jewish use of logizomai!  And, Paul had just used it in the subjective sense of “consider” in 2:26 and 3:28!  (I would translate, "Abraham entrusted himself to God, and that was considered [by God] a right relationship."

[Note: accounting terms are used in the Bible as one symbol of forgiveness, for example the forgiveness of debts in the Lord’s Prayer, to which I will return below.]

So, why the impersonal accounting term?  Although I do not know the mind of this particular translator, an impersonal God goes back to a trajectory in Christian thinking that was influenced by Neo-Platonism in which God is defined “from the bottom up” (by our reasoning) and which used abstractions in an absolute way: God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, apathetic (not moved by emotion), etc.  So, for God to be absolutely just, salvific images had to be viewed literally: Jesus’ death was a literal ransom (Origen; one might ask, paid to whom?); Jesus’ death was a debt payment necessary to satisfy a feudal God (Anselm); Jesus’ death paid the criminal penalty for our sins (e.g. Calvin).

However, that is not the picture we get of God when we move from “the top down” (from the revelation of God in Scripture).  There God is not an abstraction ruled by definitions, but very personal.  Rather, this gracious, merciful God even asks us to be merciful and to forgive debts as God has done for us; that is, not demanding payment!  "And forgive us our debts, as even we have forgiven our debtors" (Lord’s Prayer, Matt 6:12).  (This is why I recently wrote that "God is not just" in an abstract sense, 8/31/23.)

Application:  Once again, my heart is moved by the mercy of the personal God who seeks relationship with me, a debtor.
Lord, may I learn to be more appreciative of your grace and grow to be as merciful to others as you are to me.  Amen.

WHY "FREE WILL?"

A student asked me why God would create humans with the freedom to not accept salvation: “If He loves us and want us all to receive salvation, why did He create us, knowing many of us wouldn't?  If He knows everything, then He knows that.  If He knows the future, He knew that.  Yet He created us anyway.  Why not create humans who only choose Him?  This weighs on my mind VERY heavily.”

I have three suggestions about how to think about this topic.  The first suggestion is that we have to be careful about defining God in rationalistic categories “from the ground up.”  When we define God on our terms as omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, etc., we then run into conflicts among those abstract categories.  One silly example, but to the point: “If God is both all-powerful and can create anything he wants, can he create a rock so big that he cannot lift it?”  Another example, frequently raised by atheists: “God cannot be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent and allow evil to exist.  Either God is not all good or not all powerful – or, by implication, there is no such god!”  The problem is created by us defining God with abstractions as well as by trying to answer questions not answered in the Bible (e.g. Why is there respectively pre-existent surd and moral evil prior to creation and prior to Adam and Eve’s sin?)  Instead, our understanding of God should be based on what He reveals of Himself, “from heaven downward.”  For instance, we have to be careful about foisting onto God our notions of what it would be like to stand outside of our conception of time or to be all-powerful or to be all-knowing.

Secondly, we need to accept the biblical portraits of the nature of humanity.  A couple of key biblical portraits (Gen 1 and 2) show us that God created humanity in God’s image with the ability to exercise sovereignty over the domains of the earth and with the capacity to enter into a life-giving relationship of submission to our Creator.  Another portrait (Gen 3) shows us that “evil” in the figure of the serpent (an image of chaos) pre-exists without explanation and that humanity has the freedom to choose self-rule (“be like God”) and reject the proper creature-Creator relationship.  The “curse” that follows shows chaos encroaching into and damaging the spheres of the ideal God-human, human-human, and human-earth relationships.  (Paul will speak of all creation coming under the reign of sin, chaos, death.)  Having chosen self-rule, man is removed from access to the Tree of Life and has to face his mortality.  We see a human propensity to choose self-rule and its consequences, BUT I find nothing here about a “Fall” (a non-biblical term) changing the will/nature/freedom of humanity as is often assumed.

The third suggestion is to focus on the biblical portraits of God as present to us, as unilaterally condescending to offer renewed relationship, as willing to lift/bear our sins, as patient and long-suffering with us, etc.

Some reflections: 1) Abstract theologians want to qualify how humans have a “capacity” to move closer or away from relationship with God, based on assumptions about origin of evil, the human condition (bound or free), forms of graces of God, etc.  I try to stick with the biblical portraits as we have them.  2) Had we not been created with, and somehow maintained, the capacity to choose between self-rule and God-rule, we could not be relational beings able enjoy life with God.  3) Given that God created us with the gift of being able to enter relationship with God, and it is God’s desire that we will all enter a life-giving relationship with Him, I find no inconsistency in the character of God.  God is good.

Lord, I celebrate your goodness and thank you that you extend your offer of relationship to me.  Amen.