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D: And it's this intensity that not only aesthetically satisfies God, but also defines God as God. And it's THIS point that makes the God-Creation relationship one of GRACIOUS freedom.
T: And...to agree with Zizioulas...it's THIS unassailable intensity which grounds our confidence in God's ability to GUARANTEE our salvation from suffering, pain, personal loss, etc., as well as ground the promise of our personal fulfillment. If God's personal fulfillment can be 'lessened' by the world, how's God save the world from personal loss? (This is David Hart's big push, too.)
1) It's a product of despair.
First, God is happy because he delights in himself. God would be unjust if he valued anything more that what is supremely valuable. And he is supremely valuable. If he did not take infinite delight in his own glory, he would be unrighteous, because it is right to take delight in a person in proportion to the excellence of their glory. The Scriptures are saturated with texts showing how God unwaveringly acts out of a love for his own glory. "For my own sake, for my own sake I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another"
Now, let's do the math on this one. It looks pretty clear that God takes delight in himself as supremely valuable because it would be unrighteous of God to do. Why? "Because it is right to..."
Now...think about what we've said about LOVING RELATIONALITY being the ultimate ground?
Through the coinherence of eternity and existence in love, the ethical significance of relationality emerges. Without an extended examination of Kiekegaard's position on love (especially set forth in Works of Love), it is possible to describe the irreducibly relational nature of love. In the Great Commandment, there are no external standards to go by. After first loving God with our whole being so that "the God relationship [becomes] our conscience," then we are told to love our neighbors as ourselves. The command begins and ends in relationality, and it works because "if one must love his neighbor as himself, then the command, like a pick, wrenches open the lock of self-love and thereby wrests it away." In other words, since the eternal and the existential coinhere in love, there can be no other external criteria to justify love or to explain its duties which are not ipso facto less or lower than the relational reality of love itself. The very familiarity of the Great Commandment tends to obscure its radical ethical nature, but its basic power lies in the claim that relationality--not empirical fact, nor moral principle, not rational argument--is the irreducible nature not only of love's ethic but of human beings in themselves.
James Loder
The Knight's Move
Page 107-108
Hmm...
Piper makes God's loving mercy towards Creation (and his infinite delight in Himself) based upon a standard of RIGHTEOUSNESS, not loving relationality. Does everyone see that? God right relating to his rightful place as Summum Bonum is MORE IMPORTANT in Piper's system then the intensity of the LOVE relationship between the PERSONS of the Spirit. He ultimately justifies God's love (for Himself and Creation) by God's integrous conformity of rightness to belief in his own Supreme Beauty. It would be against righteousness for God not to be Supremely happy in Godself...and God will not be unrighteous. In his system, God the Father sees his mirror image in the Son and is so very pleased with what he sees...and it is "right" to think so about Himself. Now, remember this is the very CORE of Piper's belief of why God is infinitely happy (satisfied?) with Godself. And it makes sense that it would be...because this was kinda like Jonathon Edwards' view. (Think "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", ok? Yeah, there was some despair there...)
But there's one more piece of evidence. Long quote, but important...
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Second, God is happy because he is sovereign. Psalm 115:3 says, "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases." What this verse implies is that God's sovereignty is his right and power to do whatever makes him happy. Our God is in heaven—he is over all things and subject to none. Therefore, he does whatever he pleases—he always acts to preserve his maximum happiness. God is happy because his righteous acts, which are always done out of love to his own glory, can never be frustrated beyond his will. Isaiah 43:13, "I am God, and also henceforth I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?" Isaiah 46:10 "My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose." Daniel 4:35, "He does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What doest thou?'" We may be sure, therefore, that God is infinitely happy because he has absolute right and power as Creator to overcome every obstacle to his joy.
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.
The other observation that helps me with this question is that God's attitude toward tragic events depends on the focus of the lens. God does not delight in pain and evil considered simply in themselves. When his lens is narrow and focused just on that, he can be filled with abhorrence and grief. But when he opens his lens to take in all the connections and effects of an event, even to eternity, the event forms part of a pattern or mosaic which he does delight in, and which he wills. For example, the death of Christ was the work of God the Father. "We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted . . . It was the will of the Lord to bruise him and he has put him to grief "(Isaiah 53:4, 10). Yet surely as God the Father saw the agony of his beloved Son and the wickedness that brought him to the cross, he did not delight in those things in themselves. Sin in itself and the suffering of the innocent in itself is abhorrent to God. But according to Hebrews 2:10 God the Father thought it was fitting to perfect the Pioneer of our salvation through suffering. God willed what he abhorred in the narrow view because in the broad view of eternity it was a fitting way to demonstrate his righteousness (Romans 3:25f.) and bring his people to glory (Hebrews 2:10). When God in his omniscience surveys the sweep of redemptive history from beginning to end, he rejoices in what he sees. Therefore, I conclude that nothing in all the world can frustrate the ultimate happiness of God. He delights infinitely in his own glory; and in his sovereignty he does whatever he pleases.
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So, God's infinite happiness is grounded on His "righteous" integrous self-perception and His absolute sovereignty over everything. STILL not about love.
Y'all see this, right?
Greg, on the other hand, has God's infinite delight in Himself being grounded in unsurpassably intense loving relationality between the Divine Persons. And THIS makes sense...because one of Greg's favorite books is Soren Kierkegaard's "Works of Love"
Interesting coincidence, don't you think?
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2) He says the right things for the wrong reasons.
...God's happiness is the foundation of Christian Hedonism because his happiness spills over in mercy to us. Can you imagine what it would be like if the God who ruled the world were not happy? What if God were given to grumbling and pouting and depression like some Jack -and-the-beanstalk giant in the sky? What if God were despondent and gloomy and dismal and discontented and dejected and frustrated? Could we join David and say, "O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is" (Psalm 63:1)? No way! We would all relate to God like little children have to a gloomy, dismal, discontented, frustrated father. They can't enjoy him. They can only try to avoid him and maybe try to work for him to make him feel better. Therefore, the foundation of Christian Hedonism is that God is infinitely happy, because the aim of Christian Hedonism is to be happy in God, to delight in God, to cherish and enjoy fellowship with God. But children cannot enjoy the company of their father if he is gloomy and dismal and frustrated. And so the basis and foundation of Christian Hedonism is that God is the happiest of all beings.
Here is another way to say it. In order for a sinner to pursue joy in God, he must be confident that God will not shut him out when he comes seeking forgiveness and fellowship. How can we be encouraged that God will treat us with mercy when we repent from our sin and come seeking joy in him? Consider this encouragement from Jeremiah 9:24, "'I am the Lord who performs mercy and justice and righteousness in the earth, because in these things I delight' says the Lord." God shows mercy because he delights in it. God is not constrained to save by some formal principle or rule. He is so full of life and joy in his own glory that the climax of his pleasure is to overflow in mercy to us. The ground of our confidence in the mercy of God is that he is a perfect Christian Hedonist. He delights above all things in his divine excellence, and his happiness is so full that it expresses itself in the pleasure he has in sharing it with others.
It is true that God delights in Godself "above all things" and that "his happiness is so full" that it spills over into Creation. But Greg (and we) say that this happiness is based upon LOVING RELATIONALITY between the Divine Persons.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 11/8/2010 7:23:30 AM (GMT-6) |