Post Edited (TGB) : 1/8/2007 5:08:32 PM (GMT-6)

Exousia, I said on the phone the “light” turned on. Here’s what I was thinking. Let me first post a few bits of something from my thesis on prayer. Bear with me:

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Begin…

As noted earlier by Basinger, placing divine love at the center of our understanding of God and his actions in the world leads to one of the basic tenets of open theism: “God always desires our highest good, both individually and corporately.” Elsewhere Basinger restates this conviction as follows, “an omnibenevolent God is obligated to maximize the quality of life for those beings he chooses to creation.” Consequently, Basinger argues, “God would never refrain from intervening beneficially in one person’s life simply because someone else has failed to request that he do so.” For Basinger, then, the belief that an omnibenevolent God always seeks to maximize good and minimize evil (something on which all open theists appear to be in agreement) entails the notion that God would never refrain from intervening beneficially in one’s life simply because someone else failed to request that God do so.

I have noted responses to this supposed impasse by both Sanders and Boyd. Boyd affirms that God as love entails God’s always doing all God can do—given the creational variables he sovereignly established—to maximize good. Limiting certain outcomes to the petitions of believers is part of the morally responsible “say-so” believers must possess and exercise if they are to grow into their eschatological ends. Sanders adds to this that if the good we suppose God pursues as a matter of character includes a personal relationship with us, then God is properly speaking incapable of unilaterally achieving every possible good.

Basinger is unconvinced. He does “not believe that a perfectly good God could justifiably refrain from granting any believer’s essential needs, even if she has consciously decided not to request God’s help.”

Basinger’s claim seems excessive. It makes it difficult to affirm with James that believers “have not because they ask not” or any number of other essential goods we know God is desirous to grant but for which we are told to petition God. Basinger objects that none of the rationales offered thus far are the sort of goods that would justify a divine policy of making provision of essential needs sometimes dependent on our petitioning God for them.

I submit that Basinger’s essential concern expresses a sound conviction but that he has misconstrued the matter a bit. That is, God ought to be viewed as ‘maximally involved’ at all times, in all circumstances, seeking to bring about the most good possible given the variables that define each circumstance. Thus, it is never the case that God “refrains” from performing goods simply because he was not petitioned. Where I believe Basinger is mistaken is in limiting the “good” that an omnibenevolent creator would pursue to the good of “the individual” understood independently of other considerations. Along these lines I suggest that there is a “good” to be had in synergistically achieved aims that cannot be achieved by unilateral divine action, that such good is that for which the cosmos has been designed, and that our individual “goods” are implicated in the interdependence necessary to achieving this larger “good,” which is simply the consequent beauty of loving relationality, the relational (divine-human and human-human) synergy reflected in outcomes cooperatively achieved. Some good G achieved synergistically is essentially different than G achieved unilaterally. The contingent cooperation that freely offered petitions create shapes the identity of outcomes and makes them more aesthetically pleasing or beautiful to God. This is what loving relationships produce.

Consider the accomplishing of any task a person may want to undertake and introduce personal relations into the context, so that the task is transcended by the relations, that is, the greater task becomes the enjoyment of relational intimacy.

God’s purposes and agency in the world are best conceived cosmically and eschatologically, and no individual’s ‘good’ can be conceived of or realized independently of ‘the whole’. Since God always seeks on every occasion to maximize good (i.e., the relational beauty ‘of the whole’), synergy must be sought. This just is the good which open theism ought to insist God necessarily pursues. Basinger misses this point I believe. It is not as if God “refrains from intervening beneficially” when others fail to petition God. God is doing all God can do given the failure of prayer, so there is no “refraining” from doing what perfect love by definition does, viz., seek the highest possible good in every circumstance. Nor is “intervention” an appropriate description of God’s part of the divine-human venture we call prayer. That assumes that God is sometimes not fully engaged until we petition him. On the contrary, however, God doesn’t ‘intervene’ in this sense. God ‘supervenes’ as it were. He actively ‘inhabits’ every occasion and is thus always maximally involved, seeking to bring about the most beautiful state possible given what he has to work with.

…End

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Here’s my point, Exousia. As you’ve said, God is forgiving by nature. But the communication of its benefits, that is, our experience of that forgiveness, its effective power to heal the relationship, depends upon our (a) facing the truth about ourselves (which you’ve noted), and (b) confessing this truth to God and in turn appropriating that forgiveness. I personally think it’s helpful if this appropriation occurs in the form of our ‘requesting’ or ‘petitioning’ God to forgive us, not in the sense that our request moves God from an unforgiving state to a forgiving state, not in the sense that our request creates an opportunity for God to let go his grudge and move toward forgivness. I think there are explicit statements in the Bible that make God’s forgiveness of all people a GIVEN. Take 2Cor 5 for example, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself not counting peoples’ sins against them.” What is that if not a claim to the giveness of forgiveness?

So why petition God? Because the sort of relationship God desires is a mutually loving one. Just as much of what God desires and offers us is only appropriated by us through petitionary prayer, so with our appropriation of forgiveness, the healing of our despair. The healing is communicated when we encounter the truth, express it back to God, and petition God. Why petition? Perhaps because it’s the most appropriate form of self-disposing ourselves given our willful despair and the nature of the relationship God wants. When we request, or petition, we perform a particular kind of “act” (see speech act theory, right?). Vincent Brummer has some great stuff on what makes a “petition” a unique act. For starters, it is only in ‘requesting’ that we expressly acknowledge our dependence upon God.

I think your misconstruing the very idea of "requesting." It just doesn’t follow that because God is naturally loving we need never petition him for forgiveness or that the notion of forgiveness itself is no longer compatible with God’s being perfectly loving (as you earlier said). That doesn’t logically follow, especially if something about us is disposed by means of “petitioning” that isn’t disposed otherwise. The "request" creates a reality of its own that mediates the benefits of God's constant forgiveness.

So you’re right in what you affirm (that God is naturally loving and doesn’t hold grudges) but perhaps you’re wrong in what you deny (that the very concept of forgiveness misconstrues the divine-human relationship).

This also applies to your last post. You may be jumping too quickly from assumptions about mercy as despairing humans are known to offer and experience it to what it must mean for God to offer it. Obviously any meaningful notion of divine mercy will be grounded in our experience of it, but as I’ve tried to describe, what if the nature of the relationship God aims to have with us requires self-disposing on our part in terms of petition and request EVEN IF GOD IS NATURALLY DISPOSED TO LOVING US ANYHOW?

God may not need us to petition his forgiveness to move him to a state of forgiveness, but the relationship may require our petitioning his forgiveness to affect the desired healing of the social disposition.

Exousia: Can any sentient creature be considered undeserving of receiving perfect, unconditional love?

Tom: Absolutely.

Gotta go!

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 1/8/2007 7:02:48 PM (GMT-6)

God is not at WAR with a damn thing (at least not in God's HEART!)

God is in a FREEDOM/RESCUE/HEALING mission for EVERYONE...because EVERYONE and EVERYTHING is a contingent expressive form of God.

That's why Creation GROANS for the manifestation of the sons and daughters of God...so that it can be RELEASED and FREED from it's CAPTIVITY of DESPAIR!

Do you see it?

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