The most prominent act in Jephthah's life was his vow to sacrifice to Yhwh whatsoever came first out of his house to meet him if he should return victorious. His vow fell upon his only daughter, who came out to meet him dancing to the sound of timbrels. Jephthah, having given her a respite of two months, consummated his vow. After this it became the custom for the daughters of Israel to lament four days in every year the death of Jephthah's daughter (Judges xi. 34-40). After the war a quarrel broke out between Jephthah and the Ephraimites, who reproached him for not having called them to take part. Having seized the fords of the Jordan, Jephthah required every fugitive who attempted to cross to pronounce the word "shibboleth." Those who betrayed their Ephraimite origin by saying "sibboleth" were put to death; in this manner 42,000 Ephraimites fell (Judges xii. 1-6).

Yeah.  YHWH wasn't like Molech or those other gods.  He wouldn't accept child sacrifice..right, Greg?

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/9/2012 5:18:47 PM (GMT-6)

She dead on point with this one.

Think about it.  You can trust someone's consistent dysfunction OR virtue (if it's consistent enough) and "relate" to someone on the basis of that.  But that is merely navigating your own world taking the other's consistency into account.  In the case of God, people bank on God being unconditionally, universally loving towards them...and use that as an excuse of not experiencing him PERSONALLY on a moment-by-moment basis.  Why should they need to?  They KNOW what he's gonna do, they KNOW he'll be there and KNOW how he's gonna act, supposedly because they KNOW what "love" is and does.  Supposedly. 

Think of that modern view of God, Tom, that we talked about on that other thread.  The one many young adults are taking now? Doesn't this fit RIGHT IN with how that works out?

Things are different when you are a sheep/creation struggling to hear his voice of your Shepherd/Creator as much you can and follow.  You gotta do that differently.  Can't predict or anticipate that.

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/9/2012 6:35:51 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Similitude) : 2/9/2012 7:19:08 PM (GMT-6)

The Real Motto: "Love Never Fails."

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/9/2012 10:06:02 PM (GMT-6)

Asher: ...in fact if that's who God ends up being...I'm pretty certain I'll end up being insane...cause nothing..literally nothing I know and believe now is real.

Tom: That would pretty much be my response. I suspect not so much rejection of God, but just going insane.

Asher: In fact, to seriously consider such an option...to me...is what constitutes a betrayal of the God I do love and am devoted to.

Tom: THAT is a good point, Asher. I wonder…do we honor the loving God we say we believe in by telling him we’d love him all the same if he were the author of evil in the Calvinistic sense? Is that really something a loving God would want to hear? I don't think so. I don't think we ascribe any real greatness of being to God by supposing him to be equally worthy of loving devotion whether he unconditionally loves and pursues all equally or (as Calvin believed) unconditionally determines the vast majority he hates for hell-fire just to provide a backdrop for the few he loves.

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D: I'm saying what Greg ain't saying: The character of the RISEN Jesus Christ is compatible with the Holy Spirit killing sinning believers (Ananias and Sapphira) and blinding others (Simon Magus).

T: Now we’re on a different issue. Because God’s judging sinful acts is eeeeeeasily reconcilable to God’s being loving. So let’s not drag Ananias and Sapphira into this.

Let’s agree, D, against Greg that the character of the risen Jesus is compatible with the Spirit judging Ananias and Sapphira. Fine. But let me ask a fundamentally different question (the one you asked Greg which is the subject of this thread): Do you think the character of the risen Jesus is compatible with unconditionally determining most human beings to eternal hell; i.e., creating people SIMPLY for the purpose of suffering in hell so that God will eternally have a dark background against which his love of the few will appear all the more glorious? Is that or is that not in your view compatible with the character of the risen Jesus? If not, then please tell us HOW you account for the willingness to devote yourself in love to such a God. You don’t appeal to compatibilism or determinism or anything—YOU want straight up to say RIGHT NOW that you’d love God “no matter what.” Ananias and Sapphira are easy to deal with. Eternally determining the mass of humanity for hell for no reason present in them is altogether different. You asked Greg about the latter. He basically said: "That kind of determinism is not compatible with the character of the risen Jesus, and I'm rejecting what is incompatible with the risen Jesus" and you judge him a rebell and idolater basically (i.e., he worships a God fashioned exclusively by his own moral sensibilities).

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/9/2012 10:30:38 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/9/2012 11:36:09 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/9/2012 11:37:02 PM (GMT-6)

Now.  Let's look at this for a moment, shall we?

Does this look like a situation where a Greg's moral sensibility is primarily leading his appreciation (of lack thereof) of how God MAY be?

Looks like that to me.

See, Greg and I had different experiences.  I've NEVER been like "the only God I can believe in has to be..." yada, yada.  I was CONFRONTED by a Being that NAMED Himself as "Christ" and my "Creator" after I mockingly and arrogantly attempted to pray a prayer for the baptism of the Holy Spirit AT WORK (expecting it NOT to work!)...and I went from there.  Not saying either experience is superior or inferior to the other. Just saying we had different experiences.  His faith was defined IN THE BEGINNING by moral adjudication considerations.  Mine wasn't...at all.  I was just SCARED OUT OF MY MIND by the experience...and determined to follow and obey the Voice. Then there was Job...

I remember my first words after the main experience to this day: "Oh my God.  There IS a God!" 

I honestly believe that without this CORE EXPERIENCE undergirding everything, I probably would have become an agnostic or atheist either in seminary or while on staff at Woodland.  One of my best friends in Sem became an atheist AS A RESULT of the seminary education.

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/10/2012 12:27:52 AM (GMT-6)

Yup.

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If you listen to Greg's talk starting at 36:54, he openly comes out as a kenotic theorist. And derides the orthodox persepctive as being "contradictory" and "nonsense."

Hmm...

Further notice what he said: God the Son "sets aside" all divine "prerogatives" and only keeps the character of God, meaning being "perfectly loving."  So, the one divine mind of God the Son effectively "sets aside" his uncreated, transcendent nature and keeps ONLY a perfectly loving character, localizing himself solely in the human reality of Jesus.

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From "Across the Spectrum".  The Kenotic View.

4. Who ran the universe during the incarnation? The Bible tells us that Christ holds all things today (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3). However, if Christ relinquished the exercise of his omnipresence and omniscience while on earth, there is no way he could have continued to perform this role.

In reply, the passages that celebrate Christ's role as Creator and Sustainer of the universe describe Christ's customary role. They do not rule out the possibility that Christ, for a season, set aside this function. The doctrine of the Trinity allows us to assert that God exists in three distinct ways at the same time. According to kenotic theorists, the second way God is God--The Second Person of the Trinity--emptied himself and became a full human. But (thankfully) the universe was not thereby vacated. The Father and Spirit continued to exercise their omnipotent and omniscient capacities.

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/10/2012 9:20:34 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/10/2012 9:33:15 AM (GMT-6)

Tom: Do you think the character of the risen Jesus is compatible with unconditionally determining most human beings to eternal hell…?

D: I think I've already explained where I'm coming from with this. I've explained my experiences and what I got from them. I had no problem being dedicated to Jesus when I believed that EDF and ECT for many was true, way back in the day.

D: I guess my experience with the Risen Christ just made that stuff kinda irrelevant to me; the Creator speaks, I listen, bottom line. AGAIN, Tom, I was determined to keep loving Jesus if he sent me to hell. I just want God HOWEVER God is.

TOM: I’m having trouble understanding you, because you DO judge events attributed to God (the problematic ones, like Ananias and Sapphira) as being compatible with the character of Christ. THAT I totally get. I do it too. But why even contemplate compatibility in this way if, as you say, you’ve been determined for years to love Jesus even if Jesus is the sort of person who would send you to hell? See? What’s it matter to you if an event is compatible with the character of Jesus if you’d love Jesus were he to send you to hell? That says to me that you don’t give a rip about compatibility. As you say, you want God HOWEVER God is. I read that as meaning, you want any KIND of God. In that case, you don’t need to bother yourself with questions of compatibility. Indeed, your thesis on all this is that questions of compatibility are inherently idolatrous. If that’s not your thesis—if questions of compatibility with Jesus figure in at all—then you’re RIGHT in the same boat with Greg and me.

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Tom: You asked Greg about the latter. He basically saiD: "That kind of determinism is not compatible with the character of the risen Jesus, and I'm rejecting what is incompatible with the risen Jesus" and you judge him a rebell and idolater basically (i.e., he worships a God fashioned exclusively by his own moral sensibilities).

D: You keep rephrasing him. Say what he SAID. He SAID that if he were to be resurrected and face-to-face with God...AND he were to find out that Calvinism was true...he said IT WOULDN'T MATTER to him that he was one of the "saved"...he would tell God 1) that he is morally compelled to reject God given his "moral wiring" and 2) to send him to HELL because he could NOT enjoy God's Presence knowing that God eternally predestined people for ECT. THAT's what he said. If you seriously mean to tell me that this is what it means to have God be one's supreme importance...to unreservedly, unconditionally love and serve God, I'd simply have to disagree.

Tom: I rephrased him as I understood what he ‘said’ to mean. But in the end, what it means is that Greg is doing exactly what you’re doing when you judged Ananias and Sapphira’s deaths as being compatible with the character of Jesus. Now, Greg may not always be able to see compatibility where you and I see it (in Acts 5), true. BUT that’s beside the point right now. The point is that we’re DOING THE SAME THING, i.e., engaging in the same compatibility assessment based on Jesus’ character.

Greg judges that Calvin’s view of God is NOT compatible with the character of Jesus. It’s THAT simple. You judge that God’s killing Ananias and Sapphira IS compatible with the character of Jesus. Different events (Calvin’s God decreeing & your essentially loving God taking Ananias’ life) yes. And perhaps in YOUR mind these are the same KIND of thing, but you’re both doing the same THING (assessing compatibility) even if you disagree on the compatibility. But I see now that given what you’re prepared to love and worship, compatibility with the character of Jesus is meaningless. As you say, you’re prepared to worship and love HOWEVER God turns out to be, which means you’re prepared to discover Jesus’ character is compatible with WHATEVER. Not exactly a basis for compatibility assessments.

But you did answer my question about whether Calvin’s view is compatible with the character of Jesus. And your answer (as I understand it) is “Yes, it is compatible,” for the risen Christ cannot do what is incompatible with his nature, and you can conceive of the possibility of God’s having predetermined you in hell just because it pleases him, thus you believe Jesus to have a character which is consistent with his doing so.

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D: I call it having a creature-centric possibility of rebellion against the Creator. If you want to call it idolatry, go right ahead.

TOM: After all we’ve said, I’m tempted to conclude that’s what you WANT Greg’s (and my, ‘cause I basically agree with him) view to be. But it’s not that, D. It’s a “Christo-centric possibility of rebellion against un-Christlike versions of God.” That’s what it is. Now, Greg might be misreading Acts 5 in light of this. But he’s not fundamentally wrong in the approach.

I mean, I could say you have an “Absolute-Creator-with-NO-character-centric willingness to worship anything” view. And that looks a bit like pagan idolatry—worship of sheer arbitrary and absolute power. But I don’t see that God wants an idolatrous kind of worship. Wouldn’t God want to be worshipped for who he’s revealed himself to be? Wouldn’t God WANT us to reject perverted visions of him? Seems a no-brainer to me.

D: And I don't see what the big deal is. You, Tom, and Asher would simply go crazy if God turned out evil...or be largely indifferent if Calvinism were true. I would ask God in each case "What's next?" and go from there. What's the problem?

TOM: The problem is you’ve judged Greg (and us who agree with him) as quasi-idolaters (“creature-centric rebells”) for not being willing to bow and worship what we believe to be a perversion of the Gospel.

Dude, you’re asking us to consider what our response would be upon meeting a God we believe doesn’t even EXIST and who I and Greg believe (given his CH work) COULD NOT possibly exist and who utterly contradicts the character of Jesus. You ask us to imagine ourselves meeting the unimaginable and then judge us for having imagined ourselves as treating him as unworthy of our love and obedience as our present disbelief in him is a REAL (and not imaginary) rejection of him as unworthy of love and obedience. Why the he** don’t you judge us for not believing in Calvin’s God now because we find him unworthy of belief? You’re making zero sense.

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D: I will say this: insofar as he genuinely believes that God is ESSENTIALLY pacifistically non-violent, I DO believe that he has fashioned a God PRIMARILY (not exclusively) by his own moral sensibilities.

TOM: D, come on. You’d have to say this about ALL pacifists who argue their passifism in Chriso-centric terms (MLK Jr., Stanley Hauerwas, Menno Simons and ALL Mennonites). Sheesh. Look, they may be reading and relating Christ wrongly to other stuff going on in the NT (like Ananias). But dude, that DOESN’T mean they’re just reading their own independently formed moral sensibilities into the text. They MAY actually have read Christ in such terms and so allow their sensibilities to be shaped BY their reading of Christ and then work out from there.

D: If Greg were to take ALL the biblical data, there's no way he could say that God is pacifistically non-violent ESSENTIALLY. No friggin way. He just refuses to do so, it seems to me. He will not admit that the Risen Jesus, via the Holy Spirit, KILLED and BLINDED some people.

TOM: Let’s say you’re right, OK? That still misses the point (the only point I’m in this thread for). Whether an essentially loving God can consistently be thought of as EVER employing violent means is one question. And you and I can agree against Greg on this (the whole Acts 5 thing). Fine. But whether this means that an essentially loving God can consistently be thought of as employing ANY violence conceivable is an ENTIRELY different question. For you these keep getting blurred into one and the same thing. They’re not the same question.

Forget the first question, D. Set it aside. It’s dragging this convo off subject. The question is the LATTER Q. Can one consistently believe God to be essentially loving and also believe God to be the unconditional author of all evil, to love a select minority and to have the majority whom he created for nothing but to be pleased to contemplate their eternal anguish. Give me a frickin’ break!

Dude, after railing against Greg, remember that in spite of his sensibilities, HE’S more prepared to deny UR and admit the possibility of irrevocable solidification and so annihilation.

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D: Nother thing. Remember in SATPOE how supposedly all animal violence/suffering and carnivorism on planet earth are ESSENTIALLY demonic because God would supposedly never have animals commiting violence to each other or eating each other? It's because of the supposedly pacifistically non-violent manner of God that Greg holds FORCES that picture. If God is pacificistically non-violent...and carnivorism is INHERENTLY violent...then he does the math: flesh eating and animal violence/suffering MUST be of the Devil!

TOM: Bro, let’s say you’re right. Let’s say Greg is TOO pacifist on these things. That doesn’t mean YOU’RE right to say there can be NO conceivable version of God-authored evil which is rightly dismissed as unworthy of our worship based on Christo-centric sensibilities. God conditionally killing Ananias and Sapphira or reigning fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah is NOT even in the same category as God unconditionally determining people to suffer in hell irrevocably. Gimme a break.

That’s ALL I’m interested in discussing…ONE question…the 5-point author of all evil who unconditionally determines the vast majority of people to irrevocable anguish for his own pleasure. Don’t talk to me about ANY OTHER God (the blinding a sorcerer God or the Ananias killing God) right now.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/10/2012 11:27:43 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/10/2012 11:51:36 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/10/2012 11:48:03 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/10/2012 11:48:27 AM (GMT-6)

It seems like the whole idolatry tag that you are taking upon YOURSELF on behalf of Greg is buggin' you.

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/10/2012 12:03:26 PM (GMT-6)