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Post Edited (Similitude) : 2/6/2012 7:07:43 PM (GMT-6)

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REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEally think about it.

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/7/2012 11:13:12 AM (GMT-6)

Theodicizing (unto weighing "which God is more worthy of worship" in one's own mind) is the polar opposite of an humble silence/stillness before God, if you really think about it.   But thinking about it, both Greg AND Piper are about as WESTERN as they come, yes?

That's why Wurmbrand, who I totally believe experienced the Lord, said what he said about theodicy in general.

Yeah...

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/7/2012 11:02:41 AM (GMT-6)

http://www.christianpost.com/news/what-made-it-ok-for-god-to-kill-women-children-in-old-testament-68737/

By John Piper , Christian Post Guest Columnist

February 6, 2012

Why was it right for God to slaughter women and children in the Old Testament? How can that ever be right?

It's right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die. God is taking life every day. He will take 50,000 lives today. Life is in God's hand. God decides when your last heartbeat will be, and whether it ends through cancer or a bullet wound. God governs.

So God is God! He rules and governs everything. And everything he does is just and right and good. God owes us nothing. If I were to drop dead right now, or a suicide bomber downstairs were to blow this building up and I were blown into smithereens, God would have done me no wrong. He does no wrong to anybody when he takes their life, whether at 2 weeks or at age 92.

God is not beholden to us at all. He doesn't owe us anything.

Now add to that the fact we're all sinners and deserve to die and go to hell yesterday, and the reality that we're even breathing today is sheer common grace from God. I could make the question harder. As it was stated, it doesn't feel hard to me, because God was stated as the actor. My basic answer is that the Old and New Testaments present God as the one who has total rights over my life and over my death."The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21). How he takes away is his call. He never wrongs anybody.

How would you state it to make the question harder?

The part that makes it harder is that he commands people to do it. He commanded Joshua to slaughter people, okay? You've got human beings killing humans, and therefore a moral question of what is right to do. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not murder," yet God says to Joshua, "Go in and clean house, and don't leave anything breathing! Don't leave a donkey, child, woman, old man or old woman breathing. Wipe out Jericho."

My answer to that is that there is a point in history, a season in history, where God is the immediate king of a people, Israel, different than the way he is the king over the church, which is from all the peoples of Israel and does not have a political, ethnic dimension to it. With Joshua there was a political, ethnic dimension, God was immediate king, and he uses this people as his instrument to accomplish his judgment in the world at that time. And God, it says, let the sins of the Amorites accumulate for 400 years so that they would be full (Genesis 15:16), and then sends his own people in as instruments of judgment.

So I would vindicate Joshua by saying that in that setting, with that relationship between God and his people, it was right for Joshua to do what God told him to do, which was to annihilate the people.

But that's much more complex morally than saying that God does it. He can cause a flood and kill everybody on the planet except 8 people and not do a single one of them any wrong. But he didn't ask anybody else to do that. It gets difficult when he uses others.

An example of this right now is that God has given the sword to the government (Romans 13:4). Therefore I believe the government has a right to take a rapist and a murderer and to put him in jail. Or to kill him.

I think capital punishment is consistent with Genesis 9 and consistent with God's character, because of the value of man: "The blood of a man shall be shed for taking the blood of a man" (Genesis 9:6) But that's very different than saying that anybody can go around killing people.

So God has his times and seasons for when he shares his authority to take and give life. And the church today is not Israel, and we are not a political entity. Therefore the word we have from the Lord today is, "Love your enemy. Pray for those who abuse you. Lay your life down for the world. Don't kill in order to spread the gospel, but die to spread it."

From here... 

It's worth asking as a parenthesis here how a good God can be happy when the world is shot through with suffering and evil? It's a huge and hard question. Two things help me. One is that it doesn't help much to save God's reputation by saying that he is not really in charge. If someone had tried to comfort me in December 1974 when my mother was killed in a bus accident, by saying, "God didn't will this to happen. You can still trust him. He's good.", I would have answered by saying, "My consolation does not come from thinking that God is so weak he can't divert the lumber on top a VW van." My God is sovereign. He took her in his appointed time; and I believe now and someday I will see that it was good. For I have learned in Jesus Christ that God is good. The Biblical solution to the problem of evil is not to rob God of his sovereignty.

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/8/2012 4:51:05 AM (GMT-6)

Remember.  We've already shown Piper's despairing theology on another thread here. (Basically, he has God's love as a function of God's self-righteousness and control.)

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Post Edited (One Love) : 2/8/2012 4:44:12 AM (GMT-6)

"..."

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/8/2012 8:13:21 AM (GMT-6)

D: No. Focus on the bolded part. We are God's. Now put a PERIOD.

T: I can put a period, no problem. But I ‘mean’ something by “God” and something by saying we “belong to” God. In other words, the difference you and I are talking about now are there in the sentence before the period. So just SAYING we belong to God doesn’t tell us which God IS God, nor does just SAYING we belong to God somehow require us to bow our minds and hearts to BOTH Gods or to bow to ANY and ALL conceivable portraits of God. I can agree that I am God’s and bow to all he is and says and requires. No problem. But that does not mean we should be indifferent to what we bow; i.e., that we should right now be prepared to bow to just any and all conceivable Gods.

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D: 1) I think you know very well that I still believed in the Death, Ministry, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus as God's Messiah WHILE I used to be a double-predestinationist (like YOU were at one time, I'm thinking, right Tom?) Even when I didn't see enough EVIDENCE to believe in EUR, I still believed that Jesus was God's expression of concern for Creation. I'm sorry, bro, but I would NOT have looked Jesus in the face and been like "Well, your sacrifice means nothing to me because double predestination is true." Pretty much what Greg was willing to say.

T: Try to hear Greg’s point however awkward he might express it. And he did express it awkwardly. If Greg says, “I’d reject the Calvinisitc God to his face” he has to know technically speaking that if he were to meet up with the Calvinistic God, Greg would do exactly what that God predetermined him to do. Greg knows that. He’s just trying to place his presently FREE self in an imagined scenario meeting the Calvinistic God and then admitting what he would freely think and say about such a God. And I totally agree with him. My point is that what we would imagine ourselves freely deciding about such a God THEN is just a repetition of what we do NOW. I reject THAT God right now.

D: 2) I reject ECT as a possibility because, given all that we've said and done, it makes more sense than any of the other possibility and, as such, I believe it most likely to be true. That is NOT the same thing as saying that I would reject GOD (for whom ECT is true) face-to-face citing my God-given "moral wiring".

T: Oh, then we believe differently, because I can’t conceive of the possibility of the God of ECT. That’s big. I have to concede the ‘academic’ possibility that I could be wrong about this, yes. It might be that God doesn’t exist, or that Calvin’s God exists. But in the latter case it doesn’t matter what I think I would do or say upon discovering Calvin’s God exists. In that case I’ll discover that all I ever thought, felt, and did (including my response to him upon discovering he exists) was unconditionally predetermined by God. So asking us how we’d respond to discovering God is Calvin’s God is ridiculously beside the point D, and even self-contradictory. The only legitimate question to ask about Calvin’s God is whether or not in the absence of overwhelming evidence for his existence you believe in him or not. Personally, I can’t imagine his existence any more meaningfully than I can be an atheist.

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D: Tom, there is a difference between saying "I believe that the God who does double predestination does not exist" and saying (like Greg said) "If God does double predestination, I will feel morally compelled to reject Him because of my 'moral wiring."

T: I don’t think there’s any significant difference, D, because Greg (and I) believe Calvin’s God “does not exist” precisely because of our “moral wiring.” See?

It’s just being consistent, D. If I reject that version of God now on the basis of its ugliness (as CH called it), why wouldn’t I reject that version THEN upon the assumption that I’ll be as free and similarly wired THEN as I am NOW? How could our response be any different then? To offer a different response THEN would require some revelation that explains or makes sense sufficient enough to make worshipping him possible.

Remember Whitehead’s comment: “God’s power is the worship he inspires.” There’s something here for us. In other words, the word “God” in “God owns us” has to be (and always IS) defined. There’s some vision of WHO it is that owns us. If you’re saying, “It cannot matter WHO God is or what God is like, the simple fact that God—undefined and unrevealed—owns us should illicit our worship and obedience. I think there’s something seriously wrong with that.

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D: Greg's a rebel. He's BEEN said and admitted that. It's just that he is willing to rebel against God out of moral repugnance IF NEED BE. This is conditionality of obedience to God (and therefore, conditionality of love for God).

T: I rebel against the Calvinist God too. I need to. I must. I can’t deny that aesthetics is the biggest reason for my rejecting such a God. So yes, I confess: my love of God (obedience is just love—read the NT) IS conditional, it’s conditional upon God’s love of me, as Paul makes clear: "We love God because [upon the condition that] he first loved us." I cannot love Calvin’s God. I can love bin Laden BECAUSE I believe in a God of love. I can love my oppressor BECAUSE there exists a God of love. I can even love Satan because God is love. But in the absence of some being who is unconditional love, I cannot love unconditionally. So yes, our love of God is conditional in one incredibly important sense—it’s conditional upon God’s being unconditional love FIRST.

You want to pull that condition out from under our feet and then require us to love God unconditionally.

D: I cannot see Abraham, the father of faith, doing that. I can see him being silent before God knowing that God is God.

T: Dude, try reading the Bible then! Ha. ;l)  However silently Abraham stood before God, he believed God incapable of some things—like not judging justly, like failing to keep his promise, etc. It is BECAUSE Abraham believed God to be ‘this’ kind of God and not ‘that’ kind of God that he was able to raise the knife over Isaac. He knew that even if he took Isaac’s life, God would raise him from the dead. That’s what we see Abraham doing—offering to God an obedience made possible by his VISION of the KIND of God God I, not blind subservience to sheer power of ownership.

D: How can a person love God unreservedly and unconditionally (the 1st Great Commandment) while at the same time actively adjudicating not only whether or not he is worthy of worship...?

T: We cannot love what we do not know—at least know sufficiently enough to love it. It’s in coming to know and learn who God is and what God is like that we come to love him. And we simply cannot love all conceivable versions of God as you suppose must be the case. I take great comfort in this, for that fact that we love what is lovely, that we’re attracted to what is beautiful, is God’s own gift to us precisely to equip us in adjudicating between his own truly lovely self and all the counterfeits that masquerade for our attention. We’re MEANT to adjudicate, D. God wants us to find him, and beauty points the way. We're like compasses which an inbuilt attraction toward the ground of our being. The moral disgust we feel at the Calvinist God IS a function of God's own image in us. What you’re offering here is the utter denial of aesthetics and even love itself, all in the name of the sheer power of ownership void of all consideration of character.

Sorry.  I can’t see the Gospel in it.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/8/2012 10:03:44 AM (GMT-6)

D: 1) If God were totally "undefined" and "unrevealed", we wouldn't be talking about him right now, now would we?

T: Precisely. Now that you agree with this much, are you prepared to agree that SOME versions/visions of God are unworthy of the kind of love and obedience you believe God to be worthy of? I hear you saying, “It doesn’t matter what version we’re talking about. We should be able to pull up ANY version [let’s say remotely Christian version] of God that’s out there and willingly bow in love and obedience to it.” I’m saying that’s not possible ONCE you agree that God IS sufficiently defined and revealed, because “defined” and “revealed” already INCLUDES in it the adjudication process YOU want to leave OUT of the discussion.

D: 2) Calvinism is a CHRISTIAN faith.

T: It’s HISTORICALLY Christian. And I can love and obey Calvin’s God in so far as that God is the Christian God as I believed he’s “defined” and “revealed.” There are similarities. But there are, in my opinion, some very unchristian attributes to Calvin’s God, and I don’t see why my desire to love and obey God unconditionally must mean love all versions of him that are historically connected to the Christian faith.

D: Revelation is there (in Calvinism). Specifically, revelation of God in Christ is there.

T: Perversion of God in Christ and of revelation are also there. Does this get adjudicated BEFORE (i.e., SO THAT) we can bow our knee to the true God (as best we are able to discern his “definition” and “revelation”)? Or are we FIRST to bow our knee to and love anything that’s got historical ties to Christianity and treat as irrelevant to worship and obedience our FELT sense of divine beauty and religious affections?

D: It's [Calvinism] not some "undefined" idea of God. You know that, right?

T: I sure do. It’s because Calvinism offers a sufficiently perverted vision of God that I feel comfortable speaking in such general terms when I say “I can’t love Calvin’s God.”

D: Basically, Calvinists and Open View Theists AGREE that God incarnated himself in Jesus and, through the Incarnation, Ministry, Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension (uniquely as God's Word/Son), salvation is made available to humanity.

T: Um, Calvinists and Overs don’t agree on that. Calvinists believe God determines and executes the salvation of a small minority of humanity, unconditionally willing the irrevocable damnation of the majority “to the praise of his glory.” Do you think this inconsequential to HOW are hearts and minds are to be won to God and so worship him?

D: That's pretty good agreement. The disagreement is how much God directly controls providentially.

T: You’ve forgotten the heart and soul of Calvin my friend.

D: Remember, Tom, I got Greg to admit that there could be a quite large amount of divine determinism going on than many open theists would like to admit. (Greg is NOT straight process as he will allow for "unilateral" activity by God in Creation) Calvinists want to say that 100% is determined by God. Open view theists say that it can be less than 100% and God still be God. Tell me I'm lyin.

T: There’s a universe separating me and Calvin in that small percentage of human choices that I believe God leaves up to us. You might say all the agreements between us ultimately rely for their own meaning and perceived-beauty upon this seemingly small disagreement over whether or not God unconditionally determined all that occurs in the world. It matters little in terms of theological aesthetics whether or not we agree that God is triune, sole creator, incarnate one and resurrected IF in addition to all this the Calvinist views these in deterministic fashion. You think this a minor scratch on the surface. To me it redefines things radically.

D: 3) Tell me EXACTLY what's wrong with grounding our worship and obedience upon God's being Creator/Sustainer of us (which, as Jeff says, ACTIVELY DEMONTRATES his benevolence toward us)...along the Incarnation of God the Logos, Jesus of Nazareth, as expressing love to His Creation. I wanna hear what's wrong with it. Spell it out very, very clearly if you please.

T: Well, as you’ve just stated it, nothing is wrong with it so far as I can tell. Sounds good. But were somebody, say John Calvin, to qualify your “as expressing love to his creation” and argue instead that God in fact doesn’t love the vast majority of humanity enough to want them to live with him but in fact prefers and decrees unconditionally that they suffer eternal torment, I find myself unable to blow that off with, “Hey, that’s cool. We both still agree God created and incarnated and died and rose!” Everything is NOT the same once Calvin’s corruption is added. And now you can pretty much see EXACTLY what’s wrong (what you wanted to know).

It’s one thing to ask my kids to see in my freely giving birth to them so that I could love them a reason for loving and obeying me. It’s an entirely different thing to ask my kids to see in my freely conceiving and giving birth to them so that I could torture them forever a reason for loving and obeying me. This is HUGE, D. God’s being our creator and ground are inseparable from God’s PURPOSE for creating and grounding us. Don’t let them just float out there unconnected—“God created you. He owns you. Bow in worship.” Really? But what if he created and owns me ONLY to fry me forever? I hear you saying, “That shouldn’t make a difference. God is your source. That’s enough.” I disagree. A particular KIND of God is our source and ground, and that’s got to be figured into what we mean when we say “God is our source and ground.”

As you seem to agree anyhow, we ground  worship and obedience in God AS GOD REVEALS HIMSELF TO BE, and that means AS WE UNDERSTAND GOD TO BE, and THAT means post-adjudication (employing ALL our God-given tools—reason, aesthetics, moral sensitivities, conscience, history, experience). And in my process of adjudication, Calvin’s qualification (to trinity, creation, incarnation, redemption, glorification) perverts the revealed beauty of these events so much that I fail to see in them a beauty that drops me to my knees.

D: I would argue that the "unconditional love" that we get from God that empowers us to unconditionally love others is in the "sacrament of the present moment" when we experience the "grace-gift" of our own particular existence in Christ's World.

T: I would argue we get that empowerment primarily from first believing that the Cross reveals the very unconditional love you want to give to others and then incorporating that event as an event constitutive of my own self.

But what if I believe the purpose of the vast majority of those existing is to stoke the flames of hell forever because that just pleases God? In what sense is their existence a grace-gift? Sorry, D. Unconditional love has CONTENT to it. What makes your existence a “grace” gift and not a nightmarish expectation of hell (as for Calvin it was for the vast majority of people)? Only one thing can ground our conviction that our existence is a grace-gift of unconditional love, and that is interpreting the Cross as God’s declaration of unconditional love in Christ for all.

Now, a Calvinist denies that a person is justified in interpreting their existence as a grace-gift in the sense you mean. YOU interpret th sacrament of the present moment as indicative of God’s “unconditional love” as you say. But Calvin believed MOST to be unconditionally determined for hell. The only way you get to enjoy the sacrament of the present moment as unconditional love is by believing God loves you unconditionally in Christ! But how do you know that’s true of you if you also believe God has unconditionally determined the vast majority to hell AND if you believe (as Calvin does of God) that God determines a false sense of security of love and salvation in those he has decreed by God to finally fall away?

I’m sorry, D. I can’t ADD Calvin’s perversions to these doctrines we each name (creation, redemption, glorification) and still see them as fundamentally the same and so agree that since Calvin’s God is a God who creates and incarnates and dies that that IN ITSELF (apart from all consideration of the scope of God’s intentions) should be enough to win the love of my heart and mind.

D: I'm pretty sure that a Calvinist could do the Jesus Prayer and experience the "sacrament of the present moment" and the UNCONDITIONAL LOVE TOWARDS THEM in that, right?

T: Absolutely not. What right has a Calvinist to BELIEVE that she is in fact unconditionally loved by a God who unconditionally despises the vast majority of humanity including they who are decreed to falsely believe themselves unconditionally loved by God?

D: Instead of trying to figure out the "worthiness" of another person's view of God or your own, experience God "right here, right now" and live in that reality.

T: You’ve already agreed there is no “undefined” or “unrevealed” (i.e., uninformed) experience of God.

Bro, there is no experienced enjoyment of God apart from a sense of his worthiness. To contemplate and experience God is to perceive his worth. Listen to me scissor tale—to experience God right here right now, as you say, IS TO PERCEIVE GOD’S WORTH. And we CANNOT equally value (i.e., experience as equally worthy) just any vision of God, even if it’s historically Christian (or in Calvin’s case, if it goes back to Augustine but not before!).

D: And that's what gets me about Greg's answer. Think about it. Would a one-story person experiencing theosis and theoria SPEND TIME doing what Greg suggests he would before God?

T: Try—trrrrryyyy—to take Greg’s answer in light of the form and circumstances you forced him into. You created the scenario—What would you say to God if when you stood before him you then found out he’s Calvin’s God? Come on D. YOU constrained Greg into the ridiculous mode of his answer. You insisted he answer in terms of the scenario you had constructed. How could he NOT sound ridiculous given the constraints of your question. But I gotta say, your answer to the same scenario—You’re bow in loving obedience to the author of all evil—sounds JUST as ridiculous. So ask yourself—would a one-story person experiencing theosis and theoria possibly be surprised to find out on judgment day that God does not unconditionally love everybody? You can only press Greg for an answer in the terms you do by assuming the same two-storied worldview you believe he holds to (whether he does or not is beside the point; you know what I mean). If God is Calvin’s God, then your question to Greg is meaningless because Greg (and everything else that occurs) is God’s answer to his own question. Greg was just forcing his libertarian self into your scenario.

Tom

Is experiencing the Trinity through the "Prayer of the Heart" open to John Piper and others like him...or not?

Let's say I'm a double predestinationistic 4 point Calvinist who believes in unlimited atonement (and thus the possibility of EUR following purgatorial hell).

Now, what?

Can I still not pray the Prayer of the Heart with integrity?

Sheesh...

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/8/2012 3:03:31 PM (GMT-6)

I betcha Calvinists can do THIS...as a Christian "self."   Heh.  Repost...

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The Christian "self" can say this: