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So am I a liberal, because I disagree with Sharkshooter's Creed?

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Originally posted by Grits:
What are we to conclude from your proposed "evil God"? That this is all a game? That He intends to do the exact opposite of what He has promised? That He doesn't know the meaning of mercy and grace?

If God were evil, I would not change how I live. But I would hope that, in the end, there is only death.

Now, if I can answer yours to the point and in the manner you intended, why have some found it so difficult to just answer the original question?

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Originally posted by Grits:
"Drawing a conclusion" is not the same as "answering the question". I have drawn the conclusion that the idea of God that you support is not an "option" for me, yet I have been willing to discuss the possibility of it and the insuing ramifications it would have. You have not returned the courtesy. I have also proceeded to answer your latest obscurity about an evil God. I didn't make fun of it, nor pronounce it absurd -- I told exactly what I would do and how I would feel.

That is answering a question.

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Originally posted by Grits:
"Drawing a conclusion" is not the same as "answering the question". I have drawn the conclusion that the idea of God that you support is not an "option" for me, yet I have been willing to discuss the possibility of it and the insuing ramifications it would have. You have not returned the courtesy. I have also proceeded to answer your latest obscurity about an evil God. I didn't make fun of it, nor pronounce it absurd -- I told exactly what I would do and how I would feel.

That is answering a question.

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Uh...

Grits, I and many other people have said *repeatedly* what we would do and how we would feel. I don't think we were joking around--I certainly wasn't.

I HAVE believed in the faith of the OP. And finally ran away screaming.

If I were to become convinced again that the OP is The Truth, then my options would be exactly what I stated on the first page of the thread.

Believing that something is true *does not* necessarily mean believing that it is good.

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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")

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Originally posted by Justinian:
No, just that if he exists, he's a nasty bully. Fortunately I think that such a God is a serious misunderstanding (and I've met one Satanist who believes in the God of the OP and thinks that his only possible moral response is satanism).

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Originally posted by GoldenKey:
It makes God into a blood-thirsty monster. I can think of many deities I'd rather worship.

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Originally posted by Mousethief:
I think I'd blaspheme God and kill myself.

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Originally posted by Grits:
Telling someone that their God is evil, fueled by hate, and that you would rather spend eternity in torment with Satan than be in heaven with Him is just not very gracious way of selling your opinion.

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Originally posted by RuthW:
So it's just too bad if that's not nice, not gracious, not selling my opinion. It's my lived experience.

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Have you seriously considered it? What would you do/change if you were suddenly, somehow, convinced of it? How would it affect you?

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Originally posted by Grits:
So forgive me for inferring that there wasn't going to be a great deal of objectivity on your parts.

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Grits, it seems like you object to our answers because they don't agree with your beliefs.

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Originally posted by Grits:
Ya'll are still not getting my underlying point: It's not about agreeing with, it's about allowing. While my beliefs allow for your God, yours do not allow for mine. For me, that has been one of the biggest sources of contention in this thread.

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Ya'll are still not getting my underlying point: It's not about agreeing with, it's about allowing. While my beliefs allow for your God, yours do not allow for mine.

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But do you see the difference? In these answers and those? This time, you are answering without all the condemning and naysaying you offered with your first answers. You are just stating your beliefs, how they would or would not change with the OP, with just a tiny stab at how hideous you think the idea to be. I really think that's all that was ever expected.

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Telling someone that their God is evil, fueled by hate, and that you would rather spend eternity in torment with Satan than be in heaven with Him is just not very gracious way of selling your opinion.

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Now, tell me if I'm wrong, but what you seem to be objecting to is that people posting on the other side of the argument are professing to be repulsed, morally and spiritually, by the God you profess to believe in. Whereas you seem to say that you aren't repulsed by the God(s! - not polytheism, just a variety of God-concepts) they profess to believe in. And you feel that this is a fundamental imbalance in the argument. I'm not sure that I understand why, but I think I see what you mean.

Some thoughts. Firstly, this is a very liberal - in the non-theological sense - website; but who am I telling? You know this, your habitual posting style is tolerant and gracious, and it's only natural that you are shocked to find that in this argument your views are being treated in what must seem to you to be such an unbalanced and - let me use the word - prejudiced way. I suspect that this is why so many on the OP side of the thread accuse the opposition of "judging God by pre-existing standards and conceptions" (if I can so sum it up.)

Actually, I don't think they are. I think that's an 'optical illusion' generated by a number of things.

To start with, the Bible doesn't just form our understanding of God by telling us things about him in true propositions. It forms our understanding of God by offering us gems of highly memorable poetry and prose (ICor. 13, Ps. 23, the Beatitudes) which stay in the memory life long. And it - and very specifically Jesus - also offers us pictures, formed in our heads by words; the Good Samaritan, the Good Shepherd, the Prodigal Son et Pere, powerful images. All of these things stand out from their surroundings. They are, in the literal sense, more salient. It doesn't seem to me to be unBiblical to say that there is much more about our relationship to God in the Parable of the Good Shepherd than in the genealogy of Matthew 1. The understanding we have of God, for those on this side of the OP, isn't contained in the Bible. It's formed in us by the Bible. Yes, it's selective. But it's the Bible that does the selecting. We wrestle with the Bible - and the whole Bible just as much as you - but we don't come away with the understanding of God that you do.

And it's a very important criticism, from this side of the argument, that the God of the OP is just as much a selection or highlighting as is ours. You present the OP as the only way of reading the Bible, and implicitly (and some people much more explicitly and maybe a good deal less graciously) you suggest very strongly that your conception of God is 'objective' - just what the Bible says, nothing added, nothing ducked – whereas ours is defective, leaving some things out, emphasizing others. Well, I suspect we cop to that – but our point is that that’s exactly how you read the Bible too, that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that, and that the only problem is when you deny that this is what you’re doing. Which is, by the way, exactly how the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy operates – to assert that the Bible says all one thing, and to deny that you’re in any sense other than the trivial interpreting it. But from our point of view, that’s just an assertion, and a meaningless one at that.

Anyway, back to where this little excursion into Terre des Chevaux Morts

The point I’ve been aiming at is that of course we have pre-formed ideas of God. Many of us are Christians, all of us have had a lifetime’s immersion in a culture which is still saturated in Christian influences.

And it’s precisely these Christian understandings of God that generate the violent reaction against the God of the OP.

In other words, and to restate, the Bible doesn’t just teach us directly, in propositions. Its influence is mediated by our whole culture. Yes, the images of the condemning God of Hell and Damnation are out there – and they are at war with the images of the God of Love, and I don’t just mean Jesus Teaching Children In The Galilean Meadows. I mean Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, which hung in reproduction in Karl Barth’s study. All of these gigantic images and perspectives and truths about God demand interpretation, and without decisions about how they fit together, how we are to understand them, how we make sense of them – which is the proper work of the great Christian traditions, but also of every Christian believer – they are just a chaos, a pastiche. And our accusation against your side of the thread is that that is how you leave them. A chaos. Out of which this God of rage and spite and malice, and bullying power emerges, inevitbly, out of a refusal to do theology – which is itself generated by what seems to us to be , not reverent fear, but simple timidity. Should we be doing theology at all?? Should we not rather just lick God’s boots (a metaphor which has cropped up several times on this thread.)

Now all of this may seem terribly harsh, and no doubt some of it is, in the way it’s been expressed. But we on this side of the argument are worried, and appalled, at the consequences of your chosen reading – and again I say, it is a chosen reading - of the Bible and the Christian faith. Although you feel – and I am certain, absolutely genuinely – that this is the God, and the truth about God, that you are stuck with from what you believe is a straight reading of Scripture.

And the real trouble, the real cause of such harsh division, on this thread, it seems to me, is this.

You guys seem to feel that our moral outrage at the portrayal of God that you are so ‘stuck with’ is our prejudice, grounded in our human, ‘liberal’, moral standards.

We say – well, many of us - that our sense of moral outrage takes its rise in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, to which the New Testament is the Apostolic Witness, and which isn’t just explained by, but itself decisively re-interprets the Old Testament.

Maybe this explains the point that you find so mystifying:

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But do you see the difference? In these answers and those? This time, you are answering without all the condemning and naysaying you offered with your first answers. You are just stating your beliefs, how they would or would not change with the OP, with just a tiny stab at how hideous you think the idea to be. I really think that's all that was ever expected.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

Speaking of which, exactly what does: "Until you are willing to accept that God will hold all men accountable and separate sin from Himself, I don't believe that you can truly accept the work of Christ on the Cross. " mean? If it means what I think it means, we can discuss it in the Hot Place.

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Psyduck, you've been gathering a lot of s lately, and your last post gets you another from me.

I was struck also by an image you mentioned in passing, but that I think will stick with me all day -

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Jesus Teaching Children In The Galilean Meadows

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:
It strikes me that if the OP is true, then in his mind he was thinking all the time, "... and if this child does not confess me as Lord, I will throw it into fire where it will burn forever."

As I said - lovely image, isn't it?...

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I think of God's judgement a lot more like the end of Matthew 23

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There is a real Hell. Satan lives there - it is not a nice place. Anyone who does not acknowledge that Jesus is Lord here on earth will endure eternity separated from God.

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Now, tell me if I'm wrong, but what you seem to be objecting to is that people posting on the other side of the argument are professing to be repulsed, morally and spiritually, by the God you profess to believe in. Whereas you seem to say that you aren't repulsed by the God(s! - not polytheism, just a variety of God-concepts) they profess to believe in. And you feel that this is a fundamental imbalance in the argument. I'm not sure that I understand why, but I think I see what you mean.

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you are shocked to find that in this argument your views are being treated in what must seem to you to be such an unbalanced and - let me use the word - prejudiced way.

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It doesn't seem to me to be unBiblical to say that there is much more about our relationship to God in the Parable of the Good Shepherd than in the genealogy of Matthew 1. The understanding we have of God, for those on this side of the OP, isn't contained in the Bible. It's formed in us by the Bible. Yes, it's selective. But it's the Bible that does the selecting. We wrestle with the Bible - and the whole Bible just as much as you - but we don't come away with the understanding of God that you do.

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And our accusation against your side of the thread is that that is how you leave them. A chaos. Out of which this God of rage and spite and malice, and bullying power emerges, inevitbly, out of a refusal to do theology –– which is itself generated by what seems to us to be , not reverent fear, but simple timidity. Should we be doing theology at all?? Should we not rather just lick God’’s boots (a metaphor which has cropped up several times on this thread.)

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And the key to the real untenability of an inerrantist position, because such a position involves you guys in breaking off debating with us periodically, and saying to the Bible “Shut up! We’’ll tell you what you mean!!” And the problem you have is that the Bible won’’t shut up, and stop undermining your own positions! The Bible is only the Word when the Living Word speaks through it, and the idea that you can sum up what He says in a paragraph in an OP is…… well, for the sake of Christian charity let’s not go there.

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the sheer arbutraryness and injustice and amorality of this God.

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In other words, the outrage is moral information. It’’s part of the argument. And I would have thought that it would have to mean something to the OPers that their being greeted by such a visceral response to what they say is what they believe would have constituted important information for them too.

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I can understand your astonishment and hurt. But can’t you maybe look at where it’s coming from, and why?

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Posted by Custard123:

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I think of God's judgement a lot more like the end of Matthew 23

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You may think that, but the OP doesn't -

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There is a real Hell. Satan lives there - it is not a nice place. Anyone who does not acknowledge that Jesus is Lord here on earth will endure eternity separated from God.

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(My emphasis.)

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Originally posted by Grits:
For pysduck:
Yes, that is what I mean. Why? Because in order to complete your concept, God can only be one way, the way you perceive Him to be. I just think our concept – of sovereignty, omniscience, beyond human wisdom – allows God a little more flexibility. However, I don’t believe He will flex beyond what He has revealed to us through His word.

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I would certainly agree with this. But the parable of the Good Shepherd is also the parable of the lost sheep. He is not willing that any of His little ones “perish”. From what was He trying to save them? Physical death? He cannot save us from that. Jesus came to save us from spiritual death. The God of love is evidenced, not just in the seeking, but in the saving, as well.

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This does not strike me as harsh, but I do think you have finally orated my feelings about this. Some folks just love to “do” theology. It has to be constantly static, which, to me, creates a much more chaotic effect than my acceptance of things.

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It is the inability to truly humble ourselves – intellect and reason included – and allow God to be God.

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I do believe the Word is living, but I also believe it has been revealed.

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My God does not rage nor spite nor malice.

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He watches and waits. He runs to meet those who seek Him. He basks in our praise and elicits our prayers. He wants us to recognize and appreciate the gift of His love – Jesus – and He keeps His promises. I feel no fear nor timidity in a continual study of His message and asking for the Spirit to guide me and continue to reveal to me the truths that are there. And I will bow and fall prostrate before Him. He is God.

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This struck me as a little humorous, as it sounds like something I would say about you! It will always seem that you are ignoring the obvious teachings in the Bible of a literal and eternal hell, spoken of and warned about by Christ Himself, and deciding that isn’t really at all what is meant. It's just hard to see it any other way.

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Once again, this comes across as being based on human-bound definitions of those characteristics – not giving credence to a God who transcends them.

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It is important information. It helps me see how people take the personal, the human, this present life and the “moral information” we are fed from these sources, and try to apply it to something that is beyond the barriers and understanding of said sources. And, simply speaking for myself, it's just something that I cannot do.

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Originally posted by Psyduck:
And our accusation against your side of the thread is that that is how you leave them. A chaos. Out of which this God of rage and spite and malice, and bullying power emerges, inevitbly, out of a refusal to do theology – which is itself generated by what seems to us to be , not reverent fear, but simple timidity. Should we be doing theology at all?? Should we not rather just lick God’s boots (a metaphor which has cropped up several times on this thread.)

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I feel I must take issue with this portrayal of OP thinking, Psyduck. Are you suggesting that OPers are all fideists/theologically inept/propositionalists/fundamentalists/any other undesirable epithets?
I for one agree with the OPer position, and therefore I regard your argument here to be a caricature of my position. I agree that OP and non-OP positions are selective, either out of inconsistency or error or simple distaste. However, I have not seen any greater consistency in non-OP theology, with respect to biblical hermeneutics or theological considerations. Moreover, I find little evidence in this thread to suggest that even a majority of OPers could be accused of naively attempting to read off the "plain meaning" of Scripture, without engaging their brains, and engaging with the text. I have worked on, and struggled with, my OPer theology for a number of years - it is not some pastiche of randomly-culled biblical motifs. I do not suggest that non-OP thinking is either, as the articulate posts from your good self and others have ably demonstrated. If you deem OP thought to be inherently inconsistent with other biblical concepts or with human reason (and I don't mean that pejoratively), well and good, but this has yet to be demonstrated - it is not apodeictic. Believe it or not, it is possible to engage honestly and thoroughly with non-OPer positions and still come back to an OP position!

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I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle

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1) Adam and Eve were real live created (sans bely button) people who sinned and caused humanity to need salvation.

2) Old Testament people were saved by following the guidelines set out in scripture, specifically regular sacrifices for their sins.

3) Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, died to pay the price for sin and is the only way into Heaven.

4) Heaven is where we praise God for eternity.

5) There is a real Hell. Satan lives there - it is not a nice place.

6) Anyone who does not acknowledge that Jesus is Lord here on earth will endure eternity separated from God.

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fideists/theologically inept/propositionalists/fundamentalists/

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This does not strike me as harsh, but I do think you have finally orated my feelings about this. Some folks just love to “do” theology. It has to be constantly static, which, to me, creates a much more chaotic effect than my acceptance of things. It is the inability to truly humble ourselves – intellect and reason included – and allow God to be God. I do believe the Word is living, but I also believe it has been revealed. My God does not rage nor spite nor malice. He watches and waits. He runs to meet those who seek Him. He basks in our praise and elicits our prayers. He wants us to recognize and appreciate the gift of His love – Jesus – and He keeps His promises. I feel no fear nor timidity in a continual study of His message and asking for the Spirit to guide me and continue to reveal to me the truths that are there. And I will bow and fall prostrate before Him. He is God.

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In Matthew 23, we see God grieved over the fact that Jerusalem rejected him and therefore that they would not be taken under his wing.

How is that different to the OP, except to add that God is grieves over those he judges?

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Very different indeed. The OP says that those who do not acknowledge Jesus as Lord in this life will spend eternity in Hell. Matthew 23 says Jesus is grieved over those who were not willing to be gathered under his wings.

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do not believe in Adam and Eve as literal beings: Check! nonetheless, I feel the description of the Fall is an inspired theology to teach us the meaning of our sense of alienation from the world, and the reason for the divine wrath that faces us all. Broadly, but unequivocally yes - though I suspect I'd probably feel freer in using non-theological perspectives, such as psychoanalysis and approaches like Girard's to eke out this understanding. And I'd also feel quite free to acknowledge, use and critique the typological relationships between, say, Genesis 3 and Paul. Not sure where you'd stand on this.

I cannot say that Satan lives in Hell, because Hell appears to be the eschatological punishment for Satan. If we accept that Heaven and Hell are timeless, then we might say that Satan has already received this punishment. I've explained elsewhere my preference for "the Satainic" over "Satan" - but my position is that there's truth articulated here which is profoundly human and theologiclly necessary.

Hell is the continuance and intensification of the separation and alienation from God that we all originally face, Yes. I have a partly empirical attitude to Original SIn. You look for it by watching the news and reading the paper, and by asking yourself "Why did I -a nd how could I do that?" But it is there as a sundering, alienating reality, of that I have no doubt., as envisaged by the fate of those who must remain outside the heavenly city in Revelations. Revelation - hmmm! Unignorable but fraught with danger! Handle with Extreme Care... On the question of eternal punishment for the unbeliever, I believe the Bible provides evidence not only for election, but for double predestination, although this is a theological construct. I believe that the predestination of the elect is to be found in Paul, but I can't see reprobation, not even in Romans 9, as other than the shadow-side (! Yes, I know where that comes from!) of the assurance that "You, hearing this, are safe!" On the other hand, just as Calvin found this doctrine very difficult, so do I, and therefore whilst I hold to the belief in Hell I hope that St. Peter has a bigger guest list than I can find evidence to construct a more universalist theology on. If Double Predestination is a theological construct, then so too is universalism - and of a closely related kind. I'm not a universalist, and as I've said elsewhere, my understanding here is pretty much what I undrestand Karl Barth's to be. Classical election - perhaps followed by space for the repudiation of salvation. But then there's Origen - God is love: God is omnipotent: All must ultimately be saved. I hope that's true. But I don't profess it, I just reiterate it with admiration.

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I've explained elsewhere my preference for "the Satanic" over "Satan"

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I realize this could seem very misleading!!!

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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Originally posted by Psyduck:
Theologically inept no, absolutely not but - and intending nothing pejorative by this - a conspicuous number of OPers have happily asserted their suspicion of anything approximating to a regular theological method;

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How do you understand Romans 9?

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Originally posted by Custard123:

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Very different indeed. The OP says that those who do not acknowledge Jesus as Lord in this life will spend eternity in Hell. Matthew 23 says Jesus is grieved over those who were not willing to be gathered under his wings.

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But I'd then say that being willing to be taken under Jesus' wings is just another way of saying the same thing as acknowledging Jesus as Lord.

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But I'd then say that being willing to be taken under Jesus' wings is just another way of saying the same thing as acknowledging Jesus as Lord.

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:
I'm still haunted - and, frankly, disturbed and upset - by the image that came to me yesterday: Jesus blessing a child, smiling and with his hand resting gently on its head ... while all the time thinking how his glory and majesty will one day be displayed by his throwing this child into a lake of fire, if it does not confess him as Lord.

[

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Originally posted by contouredburger:
...and therefore whilst I hold to the belief in Hell I hope that St. Peter has a bigger guest list than I can find evidence to construct a more universalist theology on.

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Yours in Christ

Matt

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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)

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Preliminary and trite response - "what if that child grew up to be Hitler or Stalin?"

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