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JEE
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 11/1/2005 9:10 PM (GMT -6) |   | | http://www.luthersem.edu/faculty/fac_profile.asp?contact_id=tfrethei
From the faculty webpage: Terry Fretheim wants students to share his love for the "Godly Old Testament." He’s passionate about "a God who weeps, who gets angry, who rejoices . . . a God who is in genuine interaction with the world."
Fretheim believes that the Old Testament offers tremendous resources for teaching, preaching and counseling. "I see connections between the New Testament story of Jesus and the Old Testament imaging of God," he says. "The Old Testament understanding of God is the key to an understanding of who Jesus Christ is."
The Suffering of God: an Old Testament Perspective The comprehensive and thought-provoking study focusing on the theme of divine suffering, an aspect of our understanding of God which both the church and scholarship have neglected. The book seeks to broaden our understanding of the God of the Old Testament. _________________ What was this guy thinking?!?!  Doesn't he know about God's aseity?!? Is Frietheim a process theologian guy or what? 
And I say to myself...what a wonderful world...
http://www.revivaltheology.netPost Edited (JEE) : 11/1/2005 8:18:43 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 477
| Posted 11/2/2005 1:13 AM (GMT -6) | | I have this. It was excellent. I liked it so much that I've scavenged for every other Fretheim book I could find. Open theistic teachings woven throughout the work...and he's Lutheran, so this comes from a different perspective than other open theism fare I've read.
The book did not go about the Old Testament texts in search of ways to teach open theism, but rather in addressing his topic, the suffering of God, open theism is liberally applied.
Wholeheartedly recommend!
Rob | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/2/2005 4:24 AM (GMT -6) | | I have read the book. It's been a minute, but I remember the main perspectives of the work.
Here's where things get interesting...
It seems to me that what seeks to be reconciled are these things...
God genuinely has HEART CHANGES in response to human activity, positive or negative.
and...
God's emotional nature is in SOME WAY immutable with respect to human activity.
On one hand, we want to say that divine vulnerability really exists. Fretheim demonstrates wonderfully that sound Old Testament exegesis that doesn't foist a theological straitjacket on interpretation leads one to see God as being deeply affected by human activity. Almost to the point of being maudlin and giddy at times. The "anthropomorphisms" dealing with God's emotional dispositions towards us have to mean something. It's more than just merely appearances. The LEAST that can be said about these things is that God has opened up Godself to be genuinely emotionally affected by sentient beings.
On the other hand, we don't want to say that there is a completely SYMMETRICAL relationship of interdependency between God and Creation, emotionally speaking. Almost paradoxically, scripture continuously testifies to there being a serious inequality between God and creation (specifically human beings). God's knowledge, wisdom, ability to commit in covenant, and emotional constancy go well beyond the bounds of creaturely fickleness and change. The LEAST that can be said about these things is that God's emotional nature is, in some way, INDEPENDENT of human activity.
In my opinion, the thing that makes this work the best, metaphysically speaking, WITHOUT just going into the realm of mystery is the idea of the reconstructed process metaphysic. It shows how God's divine vulnerability to the world really is genuine, such that, in grace, God REALLY CAN be open to the world and incarnate Godself meaningfully into the world. It also shows how there is a dimension in which human activity truly can impact God's appreciation of the world and respond to human activity from God's "innermost heart" However, contra any other explanation that I've seen, it RETAINS the idea as coherent that God's act of creation was a completely free choice of divine grace. One can really see how...
1) God didn't create because God was lonely
2) There was NO necessary God/world relationship due to God "needing to interact with someone else"
3) God would have had loving interdependence and sociality, even without a Creation
I feel like divine grace is non-negotiable, biblically speaking. To remove this is to remove a huge pillar of Christian theology. But, given the huge amount of emphasis placed on the vulnerability of God due to God's desire for loving relationship by many modern theologians, it's hard NOT to come to the conclusion that God created out of some form of NEED, not purely out of free gracious choice. (Process theism HAS come to us from a context of rejecting the Actus Purus Unmoved Mover, you know!) I reject this hardcore!
I understand, appreciate, and agree with Fretheim's chief intutions. The idea of the utterly impassible, unmovable, emotionally unengaged God is NOT a biblically valid concept and should be repudiated. However, I do believe that the idea of divine relationality with Creation can be taken too far such that the ideas of God being "sovereign" or of God being "completely free" is emptied of all practical meaning. The relationship becomes completely symmetrical and one becomes hard-pressed to find ANY way of affirming the aseity of God besides an appeal to mystery.
It is in THIS tension that I wrestle. And I feel that any answer we have has to deal with ALL the right categories, those being affirming...
1) God's emotional experience is genuinely affected by us, positively and negatively
2) God's emotional experience has a dimension of constancy that demonstrates significant independence from us.
3) God's relationship with Creation is one borne of grace and freedom.
Thoughts?
Feeling this, Tom?
The newest mantra:
God graciously FINDS us meaningful when God doesn't need to do it and we, in ourselves, can't do it.
"Hmm. Why not? What the hell. Let's try it."
--God
Post Edited (MephEternal) : 11/2/2005 3:27:13 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 11/2/2005 6:42 PM (GMT -6) | | Meph: 2) God's emotional experience has a dimension of constancy that demonstrates significant independence from us.
Jeff: This wording is much easier to reconcile with Christ's passion for me. When we have grown into the fulness of God's love, we TOO will experience that same DIMENSION of CONSTANCY of emotional experience that Christ experienced--constant joy and peace EVEN during excruciating suffering.
But some dimension of the emotional experience of Christ DURING his extreme suffering would seem to have been qualitatively different than the BLISS that had been the normal state of affairs sans creation. Otherwise, it is hard to account for why Christ considered the joy set BEFORE him (i.e., future to his suffering) to endure. For a blissful state has no need of endurance.
Keep up the good work Meph. I like to see Tom work HARD!! 
Post Edited (jefscott) : 11/2/2005 5:58:48 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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