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Statement of Faith II: The One True God
In The Jewish Approach to God, Rabbi Neil Gillman cited that Jews believe that God is echad, which means “one.” He spent an entire chapter discussing that concept at great length, and I will touch on a few brief points in this post.
First, there is the shema. Jewish men recite the shema daily. It is Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The word for “one” in that passage is the Hebrew word echad, which implies more than just a number. It means more than, “God is a single unit,” although it means that, too. Echad means that God is uniquely God. God is unique because he is God.
So, now my atheist readers are raising an eyebrow and saying, “Ha! You worship three Gods: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! How does that jive with ‘God is one.’ Christianity loses, atheism wins!” Well, dear atheist reader, I’m going to try to explain it to you. Wipe the drool from your lower lip and continue reading.
I have outlined in this post that there is a fundamental difference between the polytheism of Indian religions like Hinduism and the monotheism of Christianity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each echad–uniquely God–while retaining their individual identities. Some atheists assert that we are worshiping three Gods in One. We are not: we are worshiping three Persons in one God.
Nothing about “personhood” suggests that it must be unique to an individual essence or soul. One could easily make the argument that an essence or soul could have multiple persons attached to it. That is not the case with humans, God’s image-bearers. Our essence contains only one person attached to it. Not the case with God; his essence carries three Persons attached to it: Father, Son, and Spirit.
Why, if we are God’s image-bearers, then do we only have one person attached to our souls while God has three? Would it not make sense that we should have three persons attached to our soul? Well, that is actually a very good question, and tough to answer. Scripture is silent in this regard, so we must be careful when attempting to draw inferences from it. The best, and most reasonable, explanation is that God chose to attach only one person to a human soul instead of three. That is our ontology, the way that God made us, and why he didn’t make us another way is simply a mystery.
One last point bears touching on before I close the discussion of the Trinity. As Richard Dawkins put it in The God Delusion, rivers of ink (and blood) have been wasted trying to explain the Trinity and Dawkins complains that much of it remains a mystery. So I ask, “Why the double standard?” Science accepts abiogenesis as a potential theory about the origins of life, despite failing in every way to substantiate it. The origin of life remains a mystery. Yet many hold out that one day, we will substantiate abiogenesis and solve the mystery of life. Why, I ask again, are you allowed to have mysteries of science, but I am not allowed to have mysteries of faith? I am doing the same thing as you are doing with abiogenesis, but for that you label me a “fundie” or “deluded.”
In The God Delusion, Dawkins explains that a certain agnosticism is warranted when the evidence is scant. Just like atheists can remain agnostic about the origin of life and still be called reasonable, we can call the Trinity a mystery and still be reasonable.
God, though three, is really one (echad). This is one of the great mysteries of faith, and instead of filling us with skepticism it should fill us with wonder. The wonder of echad is that God is the only God (see Is 44:6).
Jewish Approach to God
I’ve been reading Rabbi Neil Gillman’s interesting book, The Jewish Approach to God. My initial impression was that Jews and Christians approached God in much the same way. Jews believe that God is echad, which is a Hebrew word meaning “one” or “unique.” God is, as his name suggests (YHWH, Hebrew for “I AM”), uniquely one. This is definitely similar to the Christian view of God as eternally self-existent.
Here the similarity ends. First, Jews don’t view God as sovereign over the natural world, nor over human free will. Where the Christian view is that God is always in control, even over our free will decisions, the Jewish view is closer to open theism in God having no control or even knowledge of our free will decisions.
This has stunning implications for understanding early Christian philosophy and theology. Were the early Christians open theists? This throws conditional election out the window, since God can’t know the free will decisions of his creatures ahead of time that means that he can’t know who would choose Christ. That means Arminianism is wrong; but stripping God of his sovereignty over human free will decisions means that Calvinism is out as well. That leaves either open theism or Molinism as the two main alternatives.
Second, the Jews don’t view God as omnipotent. They view him as self-limiting. They believe that he has limited himself by not affecting human free will, that he is limited by his “public image,” and that he is bound to his covenants and promises of the past. This is consistent with open theism.
So, what to make of all of this? If I am to stay true to early Christian philosophy, it means that I must renounce Reformed theology and look more seriously at Molinism or open theism. It also means that I may have to finally admit that Beowulf2k8 is right–original sin simply doesn’t exist.
Am I ready to admit that I am wrong about Reformed theology? Well, I have been slowly swayed toward the dark side of Arminianism for some time now, since all of my friends and family are proud Arminians, and my church actually preaches against Calvinism. Let’s just say that, for now, I’m ready to admit the possibility exists that I’ve been dead wrong this whole time, and that much more serious study is required to find out what God has revealed about himself.
In the coming posts, I will attempt to find out just what it is that I believe in a systematic theology. I will attempt to run out the implications of open theism and Molinism in early Christian philosophy and try to arrive at a systematic theology that is true to the original intent of the New Testament writers.
I want debate and interaction with my Reformed readers as well as my Arminian/open theist readers. E-mail me, challenge me, and debate me. I want to learn what God wants me to learn, and I can’t do that without friendly discourse from the people of God.
How God Identifies Himself
It’s interesting how God defines himself. He told Moses that he is the God of your fathers; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He did not define himself by his omnipotence or his omniscience but by his personal relationships with these common men. (source)
So reflects Albert Cardinal Vanhoye, leader of the Roman Curia’s Lenten retreat. I think that is absolutely fascinating because for many skeptics, God’s omnipotence and omniscience are not only God’s defining characteristics, but the logical basis by which many of them reject Him. The presence of an omnipotent and omniscient being can only lead to fatalism in their minds, regardless of the number of times that I’ve seen Christians refute this notion.
This is the ontological argument in reverse. Because the skeptic cannot conceive of how an omnipotent and omniscient being could exist within the framework of this universe, no such being can exist. Since God would be such a being, God does not exist.
But God doesn’t identify Himself on the basis of these characteristics. He identifies Himself on the basis of His relationship to His creation. How much more should we, then, identify ourselves on the basis of our relationship to Him. I think that the real problem is that the skeptic is ruled by his sin–and his sin is how he defines “fun.” Drinking, gambling, drugs, premarital sex–all of these things are “fun,” but all of these things have consequences.
Defining oneself on the basis of one’s relationship to God will have consequences, too. One must focus his thoughts on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable (Phil 4:8)–and it is easy to conclude even without a Bible (cf. Gal 5:16-24) that those things I just defined as “fun” from a secular point of view do not fit with that mode of thinking.
Defining oneself on the basis of a relationship with God brings with it freedom from sin (cf. Rom 6:14). Paul exhorts us not to use that freedom for sin, “but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Gal 5:13-14).
So, brothers and sisters in Christ, if God identifies Himself on the basis of a relationship to His creatures, why do the creatures not identify themselves on basis of a relationship to Him?
FSM used by God?
Sometimes, I do work that doesn’t require a lot of mental engagement. While I’m doing that, I come up with some weird thoughts and those can occasionally turn into blog entries. This is one of those times.
Let me back up to when I was a manager at Wendy’s. I had purchased a lot of books that showed how to build a team by tactics mined from Scripture. These included The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell and Teach Your Team to Fish by Laurie Beth Jones. I used a lot of the tactics I learned, but one thing I never did was give Christ the credit. Neither in prayer nor to the people I managed.
I think that that was a very bad move. Scripture says that “whoever denies me [Jesus] before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:33). I was a coward; I thought it was more important to not offend people by bringing religion into the issue than to give any credit to where the techniques I was using came from.
And so I met with little success.
Now, I’m using the same techniques at Burger King, but I’m acknowledging their source–God–proud and loud. Not surprisingly, I’m meeting with much more success.
My point is the Scripture I quoted above: “whoever denies me [Jesus] before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:33).
As I understand Intelligent Design, it is merely a scientific expression of the creation account of Genesis without naming the entity that created. It acknowledges a supernatural creator without defining that creator. Sounds an awful lot like what I did with the leadership techniques. I acknowledged that I got them from the Bible, but did not acknowledge God.
Intelligent design does the same thing: acknowledges a creator without acknowledging God. “[W]hoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:33).
The problem is that God is inextricably tied to His creation. To know His creation is to know Him: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Rom 1:20, emphasis added).
The Flying Spaghetti Monster has been used by atheists to shoot down intelligent design. Or has it? Perhaps the Noodly Master has been used by God to shoot down intelligent design because God doesn’t appreciate being taken out of the equation by otherwise well-meaning scientists.
Let’s be honest: Is intelligent design really how we want to preach God? Do we really want to leave the possibility of other creator deities open for discussion? It doesn’t seem as though that is how God would want it. Did He not say to Moses:
You shall have no other gods before me. . . . You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Ex 20:3, 5-6)
Why on earth would we think that intelligent design is God-honoring? Leaving open the possibility of other deities invites people to worship and serve them. But what is the Great Commission? Is it to get people to think that the universe has a creator, and it might be the Christian God, and you can serve Him if you think that He is the creator?
No! It is to “Go . . . and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19-20, emphasis added). Note that Jesus doesn’t talk about possibilities; He gives concrete commands. He tells us in no uncertain terms that we are baptizing these people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: the triune Christian God, the creator of the universe. There are no maybe’s with Jesus.
There should be no maybe’s with us either. We should be able to stand up and say what Paul said to the Ephesian elders: “Therefore(A) I testify to you this day that(B) I am innocent of the blood of all of you, 27for(C) I did not shrink from declaring to you(D) the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:26-27). We, too, should not shy away from preaching the whole counsel of God. Like Paul, we should not be ashamed of the gospel (cf. Rom 1:16; 2 Tim 1:8-12).
Look at Ken Hamm compared to ID proponents. I’m not saying that I agree with a 6,000 year old earth and dinosaurs living side-by-side with humans. I’m starting to lean back toward a more scientific view, which includes evolution. But, I admire people like Dr. Hamm much more than I admire ID proponents because Ken Hamm is preaching the whole counsel of God! He isn’t afraid of the gospel.
ID proponents should spend more effort to put God’s name into their work. Maybe it would become more recognized. Maybe even accepted in scientific circles. It doesn’t sound likely, but neither is Christianity. Putting God’s name back into the tips and tricks I learned certainly worked for me, and I believe that it can work for ID.
Romans 11 and Geocreationism with Conclusion
I have consolidated, edited, and updated the preceding three parts of this series here. Since it has been a while in posting (mostly due to serious computer issues that have crippled my Internet access) it may help to familiarize yourself with what has come before this so that you will be up to date. As sometimes happens, in writing and researching this piece I have changed my mind about the necessity of no physical death prior to the Fall, I now believe that it is possible the Fall only brought on spiritual death. However, I am not at all convinced that God merely breathed a soul into Adam, who prior to that had evolved from the ground up (so to speak). I have made some changes in the articles to reflect this new conviction.
The seat of Mike’s argument is Romans 11, which he says is the model for God allowing changes to occur on their own without removing his meticulous sovereignty. Unfortunately, this is difficult to reconcile given its proximity to Romans 9, which is the premiere Bible passage teaching election/predestination and the Calvinist view of soteriology. The ultimate passage in meticulous sovereignty would never be placed right next to the ultimate passage for letting things go and coming back later to see how they worked out. Paul wrote the to the Romans his masterwork letter, and he plotted its structure far too carefully to let two such contradictory notions slide in side-by-side.
There is a way to reconcile these points with each other, and for that we need not go any further than our own logic. Read the rest of this entry
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