This post is part of the Credo Blog Series. For some basic information about the series, go here. Photo Credit.
I believe in one mighty and all-powerful God, creator of the heavens and the earth and everything in them. God is Good and God is love. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever” (Psalm 118:1). God is all-knowing (omniscient), all-present (omnipresent) and all-powerful (omnipotent). God is perfectly just, and his ways are pure, holy and righteous. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8). God is sovereign and in total and absolute control over everything in his creation. God is holy and worthy of all glory and honor and praise forever and ever.
In December of 2000 – this is how I summed up my beliefs concerning God. Looking over this statement, there are a couple things that stand out to me, but I don’t know that my core beliefs about God have changed too much since 2000. I do believe that God is the creative, creator God. I do believe that at God’s very core, God is good and God is pure love. Psalm 118:1 sums it up quite nicely: “God’s love endures forever.”
However, I had to chuckle a bit when I started throwing out all the omni- words in the next sentence. It reminded me of this line in Jake Bouma’s Sovereignty of God post: “I’ll try my best to avoid theological jargon, especially words beginning with omni-.” In some sense, yes, words like these do help to communicate some of our core ideas – but they also certainly fail to totally be able to describe who God is. Of course, the part of me that leans more toward open-theism or even some process theology might question the idea that God is totally and perfectly all-knowing, but in the end, any language and words we use fail to describe the creator God.
I think the use of Isaiah 55:8 is both appropriate and borderline cliché: it seems to be one of those verses people always throw out when bad things happen to people and they are trying to comfort them. Someone’s child dies unexpectedly – “Well, God’s ways are not always our ways…” This use of this verse (and any scripture) shows a real lack of pastoral care, but I can understand the reasoning behind it. And in the end…it’s true that God IS going to work in ways that we cannot understand, and we can never fully know the mind of God. So, while it has the potential to be misused, I think I would still probably incorporate some of this idea in a 2009 Credo of what I believe.
My second to last line is pretty clear about where I stand on the issue of God’s sovereignty – and it’s a little different from where I came down in this post. Far be it from me to try and pinpoint the level of sovereignty to which God acts and lives in this world – but I wouldn’t use words like “total” and “absolute control.” While I do believe that God, as creator and sustainer of God’s creation, could exercise total and absolute control if God wanted to – I don’t believe that’s the way in which God has chosen to interact with God’s creation.
I think the overwhelming thing I noticed when reading my Credo on God from 2000 was that it didn’t leave much room for what we don’t know about God. Almost all the statements began, “God is…” and seemed to be very definitive. They say that when people graduate from seminary, they generally end up leaving with more questions than answers (and I think that’s probably the mark of a good seminary education) – which was definitely true for me. I also left seminary with a strong pulling towards apophatic/negative theology. It’s not that I think we’re unable to make ANY positive affirmations of who God is – it’s just that I think we need probably make less, and make them with a spirit of humility.
Credo 2009: God
I believe in a very big God. A God who cannot be confined or defined. A God who has been active throughout history from God’s initial encounters with God’s people, Israel, to God’s encounters with each and every person today. This God is a passionate God – one who deeply cares for God’s creation and desires a relationship with creation. This relationship isn’t one marked by absolutes and total control (as perhaps I once thought) – but is more an organic, living relationship – a relationship of give-and-take. As is clear from scripture, God’s mind can be changed…we can change God and God can change us.
It’s not so much that God “needs” us – but I think God chooses to “need” us in a way – God chooses to partner with us in the world today. We partner with God to become co-creators, and through that partnership, we help to bring about a future that is filled with hope, grace and love.
I can get behind your new creedo, I greatly appreciate the last part about becoming partners with God, I think that’s a valuable aspect of our relationship with God that we tend to ignore.
On the other hand, I would tend to shy away from the usage of most *is* statements, as my own view is any theistic expression fails to actually do anything more than show one aspect of God. I think it was John Shelby Spong that said (something like) “I am a trinitarian, but I don’t say that God is trinitarian, it’s only that I experience God in a trinitarian manner.” In other words, all of our descriptors are seemingly theistic expressions of one experience of/with God.
When asked a few months ago to summarize my thoughts on God in under ten words my thoughts went to: “God is Ineffable, therefore, I won’t try” I think that still holds strong for me.
In other words, all of our descriptors are seemingly theistic expressions of one experience of/with God.
So we should just put God in quotation marks then. Try that in your next sermon on the environment: “Hey folks. ‘God’ (use air quotes here) loves you and ‘God’ (again air quotes) loves the environment. So recycle!” Why bother with God? Why not just go on preaching environmentalism without having to worry with all the air quotes?
If you don’t think you can talk about God, don’t. And if you don’t want to talk about God, stop confusing people in churches who think you do or at least might want to.
Adam – is there a reason your Credo doesn’t say anything about Jesus or the Trinity? Is that purposeful? Also, it doesn’t seem fully consistent to say God is one who “cannot be defined” but then you go on to tell us about Him. Maybe you mean “exhaustively defined/fully?” What about all the Scriptures that define Him as “love” or “Father” or where Jesus claims He is One with the Father?
Matt – complete ineffability doesn’t seem to make sense with the Scriptures. Does Scripture not tell us anything true about God, just about human experiences? (Sounds like John Hick’s religious epistemology, do you affirm his pluralism too?) That’s certainly not what it claims for itself.
I’d like to say that 1) God has revealed Himself, therefore we can know Him really, truly, accurately but 2) we are finite, fallen humans who distort the truth of everything, therefore have a long history of mis-representing God. These two points entail real humility, but not silence about God’s nature.
Ben, my sense is that Adam is dividing his Credo up into separate blogs posts regarding God/Jesus/Holy Spirit, and that this is only one section of a larger whole.
Your last points strike a chord with me. I believe that we do know and can know God in the world, but at the same time, knowing God is not necessarily the same as being able to explain God, quantify God, or presume that we can “get inside God’s head.” I think that Adam gets at something with which I myself struggle: how to make real statements about a real God without making it sound like I have God all figured out, or without inadvertently trying to fit God into a box. I agree that the “solution” is not silence about God or God’s nature, but perhaps more and more talking about God and God’s nature, and encouraging more people to speak up about the ways that God has acted and continues to act in our lives and in our world.
‘As is clear from scripture, God’s mind can be changed…we can change God and God can change us.’ i think people tend to forget this or their selective memory is in full swing! Thanks for sharing.
Interesting stuff, and I think that it will become more so as the credo develops and the other parts interact and help enhance/define the others.
Interesting how our ability to make judgments that are sure of their completeness goes down as we go on. (Although I have noticed that for some people it is the opposite.) But I do think it is important to remember that lack of completeness does not mean lack of accuracy. If one believes in the Christian scriptures at all, then one can make positive claims about God. One just can’t ever allow oneself to make the leap from “This I believe is true” to “This is all that is true.”
Sovereignty is a tough nut to crack. Personally, I tend to think of sovereignty as not being entirely synonymous with “making every decision that is made.” The sovereign of a realm is in charge of it, and has full power in it, but may or may not choose to overrule or let stand the day-to-day decisions of his or her subjects. I’m not sure the Abraham story is quite as unreadable any other way as you suggest, especially given the way God seems to interact with Abraham (think of the Isaac near-sacrifice), though it is certainly strongly suggestive of a God who can be persuaded.
You do hit on one other thing that has been on my mind from time to time, though. It has become the conventional wisdom that statements about God’s will are poor pastoral care. Well, as I eventually do with anything that I hear too much, I’ve started approaching that seemingly-true-on-the-surface claim with a little bit of questioning.
Basically the problem is this: Consider a serious loss or painful event. Either that occurrence is something God is using in the person’s life, or it is not. The first one makes God sound mean…but only if we assume from the start that God really can’t be trusted with things that are beyond our ability to comprehend. The latter option, however, is worse– it means God is irrelevant to our pain, that the pain means nothing at all. Either God is a frustrating God with whom we can’t help but be severely angry at times, or God is just a bystander who lets us go through horrible pain for no reason whatsoever. The latter is easier to comprehend and often easier to believe, but it is also far more devoid of hope (it also renders “pastoral” care pointless, because we don’t have anything special on offer that other, non-believing caring persons might not).
The idea of a God who is active, but whose “ways are not our ways,” is in the end a far more reassuring notion, however maddening it might be. So we need to keep offering it up. The way in which we do so, and the tenderness with which we do so, is of great importance, but I’ve come to realize that there are certain things people expect to hear from their pastors, that they need to hear from their pastors, especially at times of loss and pain, and if we don’t say them nobody will. If the pastor doesn’t point out that God is still sovereign, that, however impossible it may be to see, there is still hope, because “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,” then who will? Who will be the one to reassure, if everyone, even the one whose job it is to point out God’s presence in a world where sometimes that is pretty unbelievable, is too defeated by the existence of pain and stands around uncomfortably looking at his or her shoes with nothing to offer? We also should realize that if we don’t take up the work of offering God’s sovereignty in a careful way, it may yet be encountered– coming from the insensitive and over-zealous friend or relative who offers it in a self-righteous and not-so-careful way.
I don’t know always how best to do so, and those thoughts aren’t fully formed yet, but it’s just something I started noticing a while back, particularly after realizing that for some reason nowadays pastors tiptoe around such things, whereas once upon a time they used to just boldly and baldly assert them…and yet the people of those time periods were not turned off to God by them, while we are. Made me start wondering about how maybe it has more to do with our level of trust making us willing or unwilling to hear (or say) certain things than it does with the pastoral care itself.
As is clear from scripture, God’s mind can be changed…we can change God and God can change us.
One passage deserves another.
Thanks for the post! I’ve always loved reflecting on the nature of a God who co-creates, who is not unchanged by us, by creation. Reminds me of part of a Rilke poem which has always touched me…
What will you do, God, when I die?
I am your pitcher (when I shatter?)
I am your drink (when I go bitter?)
I, your garment; I, your craft.
Without me what reason have you?
…What will you do, God? I am afraid.
Οὐ γάρ ἐστιν προσωπολημψία παρὰ τῷ θεῷ.
He doesn’t care what you think.
Adam – Great idea for a post. Up until a few years ago your Dec 2000 belief statement would have been something that I could have hung my hat on – but like you, today it sounds to definitive for me to be comfortable with. As time goes on I find myself more and more uncomfortable trying to describe God. One of the reasons is that (again, like you) I believe that God is a big God but I would also go a step further and say that what complicates the process even more for me is that God is a living being, a person, someone who thinks and acts and feels and creates and plans and has passions and emotions. To me the fact that he is a person doesn’t just make it more difficult for me to describe him but it seems sort of shallow to try to use a set of descriptive words to tell someone about him. For instance, I could use some descriptive words to tell you about myself, but it wouldn’t help you know me very well – but if I told you some stories from my life or if you spent some time doing life with me you would begin to know me better.
Having said all that – there are a few things that I believe about God – as I said before I believe God is a person (not a human – but a person), the creator of heaven and earth (although this doesn’t mean that I have ruled out evolution), I believe he is alive and actively involved with his creation and that he loves what he has created, I believe that he is love and that love is at the center of everything he is and everything he does. His sovereignty is a mystery to me – I don’t understand it and I have a lot of questions about it but I am interested in hearing, thinking and talking about different ideas and beliefs concerning his sovereignty. I do believe that God wants to be in relationship with us and lately I have been thinking that somehow the way we have relationship with God is by us having relationship with each other. I can’t really give you a scripture to support that but I do think it is biblical. I would love to get some feedback on that.
@Amos & Adam,
So what are we to do with ALL the contradictory passages of scripture? i’d LOVE to hear from both of you on this since the scriptures you BOTH present make sense.
Thanks!
EP
It was my intention in posting that passage to point out that there is a strong tradition of divine immutability already in the Hebrew Scriptures. The idea that “we can change God” is a suspiciously modern idea, perhaps even a decidedly Hegelian idea. However, as Adam suggests, there are moments in YHWH’s history with Israel that suggest some kind of “give and take” between God and humanity. The question is which set of passages (passages depicting YHWH as deliberative or passages depicting the will of YHWH as from everlasting to everlasting, etc.) one ought to privilege as normative in a doctrine of the Christian God. Ultimately, that project boils down to an important philosophical question, not answerable by simplistic appeal to either set of Scriptural passages: what is deity and how can deity best be imagined? As mutable or as immutable?
Adele and Amos – Hope you don’t mind if I chime in hear… I was taught for years that God was immutable in every way but over time I began to have questions about this as it seemed that there were things in scripture that contradicted the idea. As I studied I found that the scriptures that spoke about God not changing seemed to be concerned with God and his relationship with his people. For example in Malachi we read “I the Lord do not change” – but when we read the whole book/story there we see that what God is saying is that he is going to always be faithful to the covenant he made with those people. He wasn’t describing an attribute of himself, he was telling them that he was going to be faithful to keep the promise. So I came to the conclusion that these scriptures used to claim that God is immutable were not meant to be ontological. So I guess what I am saying is that I think we have taken scripture out of context and assigned it to saying more than what it actually says.
I meant to say chime in “here” – not chime in “hear” :>)
He wasn’t describing an attribute of himself, he was telling them that he was going to be faithful to keep the promise.
Okay. But self-same fidelity is but a species of the genus “immutable.”
Amos – It could be but IMO it isn’t – IMO the context reveals that he wasn’t speaking ontologically – he was speaking relationally. Either way, we have to admit that neither of us knows for sure. I have to lean away from immutability because of the conflicts/contradictions in scripture. I think if he is immutable it must be in a way that is different than what we can imagine. Still, after studying scripture in regards to this idea I come away thinking that immutability is not an attribute of God. But – I really am not trying to convince you – just chiming in about how I understand the scriptures that seem to contradict each other.
I think if he is immutable it must be in a way that is different than what we can imagine.
Okay – granted. Any good theologian would naturally agree: God’s being and the divine attributes are and are not (i.e., are in a transcendent way) what we think they are. So if God is “wise” he is certainly wise, but he is also not merely wise in the way we imagine. And so with other attributes, like “loving” and “good” and “true” and “beautiful.” But to admit this still begs the question: what are the divine attributes? And does “immutable” count as one like “wise” and “good” and “true” and “beautiful”?
I think that based on the Bible’s repeated accounts of God’s self-same fidelity in the face of human rebellion (see Genesis through Malachai!), the Lord of Israel is indeed unchanged and unchanging: his love endures forever. That such a Lord would and did become a human being, subject to the throes of time in the flesh of a man, is the mystery and the wonder of Christian faith.
(Furthermore, I’m not sure how one judges when God is speaking “relationally” as opposed to “ontologically.” What’s that distinction mean? And how would we know if God is so speaking?)
I consider the context that the scripture is found in. In Malachi the context is God talking about keeping his promise/covenant. So two questions for you: Do you think that God could be a someone who always keeps his promise but is not necessarily immutable? And…Is it possible that God could be immutable when it comes to his character/traits but at the same time be someone whose mind could be changed and if not does this affect how you think about prayer? (does prayer cause God to do anything?)
Do you think that God could be a someone who always keeps his promise but is not necessarily immutable?
Sure, I guess that’s possible. But I don’t think God is “a someone.” And it makes more sense to me that God would keep his promise and be immutable. The concepts of fidelity and immutability are not mutually exclusive, logically.
(does prayer cause God to do anything?)
That’s a tough question. I’m tempted to say that God, as Cause of all, cannot be thought of as being “caused” to do things by prayer. On the other hand, the tradition definitely knows of the worth of petitionary prayer. Why? Suffice it to say for now that I think we could imagine a reasonable answer (worked out perhaps along the lines of the distinction between time and eternity) to this question without resorting to the ridiculous idea that God changes or is mutable.
And we were having such a nice conversation and you had to go and call my idea “ridiculous”
Liz,
Thanks for taking the time to jump in here and give your thoughts as they make sense to me. i had to look up mutable and ontological as i know what they are but with the Lyme often forget! ;)
Amos,
i am with Liz – You all were having a nice conversation then you called her idea ‘ridiculous’. Please be respectful and recognize NONE of us has all the answers. Thanks!
Warmest regards to you both!
Adele
Adele – thanks for your support.
Amos – I have thought about it for a while and can only come to the conclusion that you think the idea of God being mutable is ridiculous because you are boxed in by your beliefs and cannot really consider that you may be wrong about something you believe. Because when you think about it, if you had never believed one way or the other, immutability is probably more strange than mutability. One thing that I have learned in the last couple of years is to hold my beliefs loosely and I think it has created a space in my life that gives God a lot more room to work in my life and teach me.
Liz,
YOU are welcome. i loved what you said here:
‘One thing that I have learned in the last couple of years is to hold my beliefs loosely and I think it has created a space in my life that gives God a lot more room to work in my life and teach me.’
That is so very true for me as well!
I think perhaps the idea of what immutability consists of, exactly, might be necessary in arguing whether or not it is a characteristic of God. Consider that a God who is susceptible to change is also, or certainly would seem to be, corruptible, in the sense that anything which can be changed can be damaged or worsened. (Can God change for the worse? For the better?) Furthermore, anything which can be changed by outside forces is not fully in charge of those forces– the idea that there could even be such a thing as “outside forces” that don’t fall under God’s authority, but rather act on God as outside forces act on us, is not very easy to swallow.
At the same time, immutability also suggests a static nature, a God who is like rock– not in rock’s ever-reliability sense, but in the sense that it never does anything. It just sits there. Forever. (Leave aside geological timescales in the analogy.) A God like this can’t “become man,” because immutable things can’t “become”.
So I don’t think we can either assume an understanding of God’s immutability that flows from a particular abstract philosophical notion of what God “must be like”, or one that flows from our usual understanding of things in the world and how they work and are worked upon. Neither quite jives with the scriptural witness, at least. God at least _as seen in the world_ does change. He was a guy who was born a baby, grew up, and went through the process of death. But that doesn’t necessarily imply that God’s _nature_, or God’s being in the eternal sense outside of the universe, changes. I don’t entirely know how to reconcile the two, but I think we have to understand that both qualities are there, change and unchange, at least from the perspective within the created universe.
It makes me wonder if there is a difference between God “being changed (being susceptible to change)” and God “choosing to change.” It would be, indeed, disturbing to think that God could be changed from the outside, against his will, susceptible to corruption, etc. like you mentioned. But in terms of God’s ability to change, I, too, find it hard to believe that there is no possibility for change, so perhaps it is a matter of God choosing to change. This, of course, gets into harder and harder questions about why God would choose to change, and how this affects our understanding of God’s justice, etc.
But in some earlier comment, the question was brought up about why we bother praying if God can’t/won’t/doesn’t change. I firmly believe that God hears prayers and acts in the world. I believe that God responds to the ever-changing needs of the world, and that God’s ability to change and move are central to God’s ability to act.
So…is it a useful distinction to talk about God “being changed” as opposed to “choosing to change?” Or is this just further splitting hairs?
And we were having such a nice conversation and you had to go and call my idea “ridiculous”
I reserve the moral right to call ideas ridiculous. The idea that the world is flat is ridiculous. With all due respect, if you’re going to get into an intellectual conversation, you ought to be prepared for your ideas to be challenged. I said one of the ideas you mentioned was ridiculous (and I have my reasons for saying that). I never said YOU were ridiculous. You are not the same as your ideas.
I have thought about it for a while and can only come to the conclusion that you think the idea of God being mutable is ridiculous because you are boxed in by your beliefs and cannot really consider that you may be wrong about something you believe. Because when you think about it, if you had never believed one way or the other, immutability is probably more strange than mutability. One thing that I have learned in the last couple of years is to hold my beliefs loosely and I think it has created a space in my life that gives God a lot more room to work in my life and teach me.
Now I think this is actually more offensive than calling any particular idea ridiculous. You assume that I have not been open-minded about the idea of divine immutability because, of course, only a simpleton could still believe such an antiquated notion. I suppose it couldn’t be the case that I have spent several years contemplating this problem, and that I even spent a good deal of my life thinking that God must be mutable, only to come to the tentative conclusion now, at this point, that God must, in fact, be immutable. But that IS the case. I am an open-minded person – I just haven’t been convinced on the basis of reason and Scripture that we ought to confess that God’s nature is mutable. I don’t think God’s being a “a someone” is ridiculous because I’m too narrow-minded to think otherwise. I don’t think it makes sense to worship “a someone.” At its worse, this ends up functioning too much like idolatry (Feuerbach).
And to your last line, that you hold your beliefs loosely and think such holding has created a space for God to teach you. Same here. And I think God has taught me, though doubting and thinking, that divine nature qua divine nature doesn’t change.
Amos,
Thanks so much for clarifying your thoughts. Much appreciated!
EP
Amos & Liz – thanks for the conversation – but if you two want to keep writing back and forth – perhaps it’s time to take the conversation to email or your own blogs. Thanks.
Adam,
Maybe it would make a great post, but i really would love to hear your thoughts on contradictory passages in scripture.
Much thanks!
EP
Adam,
I think our conversation bears directly on what you have written. Why not weigh in?
In other words, you said that Scripture “clearly indicates” that God is mutable. I challenged this position with Scripture that “clearly indicates” otherwise, and then I offered reasons for thinking that God is immutable. Do you really think that this isn’t relevant to your beliefs about divinity?
I can only speak for myself here, but to be honest, solving the question of God’s immutability/mutability doesn’t really affect much in terms of my beliefs about God and divinity. I think that there are many things that I believe about the nature of God that would become contradictory if I tried to extrapolate those characteristics into general rules about the nature of God.
I often have to resist the temptation to confuse theology and logic. I tend to want to use logic to fill in the gaps in order to come up with a water-tight description/explanation of God or God’s nature. But the harder I try to define God, the more that I risk filling in the gaps and the mysteries with purely human notions that are likely neither accurate nor appropriate. Does God demonstrate elements that would suggest immutability? Yes. Does God demonstrate elements that would suggest mutability? Yes. Is there the possibility that we cannot come up with a logical, consistent explanation that reconciles these two notions into a definitive statement about God’s mutability or immutability? Yes.
So while the question of God’s immutability might be interesting to discuss, and while it might be relevant to a larger, more philosophical conversation about divinity in general, when it comes to my “everyday beliefs” about God and that which I know about God from the Bible, from theology, and from my own experiences, I have to say that the larger question of mutability rarely enters my mind.
I think Amos and Liz are very much on topic. and since when has a blog thread become, well, immutable? Aren’t you pomos supposed to be all about [French accent] ze differance?[/French accent]. How scholastic of you Adam, demanding that your readers conform to such a rigid format as that of “staying on topic.”
Why don’t I help Amos and Liz a bit with the format:
“it would seem that a topic on pomomusings should be mutable. . .
Scripture is silent. . .
But I say, ‘the grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of Adam will endure for a good ten or fifteen minutes until a genuinely theological topic starts to steal the thunder from his seminary term paper.’”
As far as divine imutability goes, it seems to me to follow directly from the notion of God as the greatest good. A mutable God, no matter how good his various “states” may be, even if those states were, say, to get progressively better ad infinitum, such a god would still not be as good as the God who possesses all of his goodness at once and in a single possesion which lacks nothing past or future, not even the least “state” of perfection.
Yes, process theology and the Greek notion of the Good beyond being are incompatible, and well if you need me, I’ll be in Athens.
Melissa, you make an excellent point. Any conception of Divine immutability that speaks of God as unable or unwilling to act on history must certainly be rejected as contrary to the abundance of scriptural evidence that says otherwise. Classically, however, immutability was not thought to entail inactivity, because immutabilty did not mean stagnation, ennervation, or lifelessness. Instead it meant something like the possession all at once, in one eternal act, of all activity, life, and motion. A motion that moves all at once beyond eternity and therefore is at rest. The perfect still Life.
This conception moreover is pre-Christian. You can find it in plato’s Parmenides or perhaps Sophist, and if not there then certainly in the neo-platonists, pagan and Christian.
“Pomo Bruisings” – this is certainly an open space for dialogue – but I do not allow anonymous comments.
Please read the commenting policy and I’d ask that you adhere to the policy.
Amos – thanks for the conversation – I am not going to respond so that I can respect Adam’s request.
Adam – sorry if I crossed the line – I enjoy your blog and I wouldn’t want to do anything that would make me unwelcome here.
Liz – you didn’t cross any lines. I think that it’s just basic blog etiquette that if a conversation ends up being primarily only between two people and it keeps going back and forth – it is better that conversation take place between email or on one of those persons’s blogs.
You are certainly welcome here – and I do welcome and encourage dialogue.
Adam,
I’ve posted here for awhile as Πωμω Βρυισινγς (pomo bruisings, teehee). I like my handle, since it relates my friendly neighborhood e-thug disposition a bit more than a dull set of initials, so I’d like to keep it if possible. That is a valid email address that I’ve listed.
Adam – Thanks a lot. I understand what you are saying.
Adam,
I don’t understand how our conversation wasn’t relevant.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adam, I twittered you and you told me to check our your creedo. Well, I guess I’m not surprised to say the least. “I believe in a big God”. Ok, how big? Like 100′ tall, 3400 lbs? That won’t fit in a box, but maybe a crate. Sorry. My personality has a bit of sarcasm to it. I’ll keep it down.
The term big is confining. The term God to you is defined, but rather more out of philosophy than scripture. It has a very hegelian feel, which i don’t find is very heretical, but a hegelian isn’t about being rational or care if challenged on rational lines. Hegelian is about creating something different. I thought that your 2000 is much closer to a biblical model. “God is” is not confining. God is love (1 john 4:8), but love is not God. God has nothing that He needs from us.. God does not love everyone. How can He love what has the wrath of God already on (John 3: 36)?. Everything is about His glory (1 cor 10:23). God loves some and hates others and Does to us what He sees is best to have His glory magnified (Roman 9). God doesn’t need us one bit, except to have His glory be given to Him by something other than Himself (Rev 14:7)
We are not co-creator with God. God is creator and Him only (Gen 1:1) And the future is with a new heaven and a new earth that Jesus Christ reigns over all of His followers and those who rejected Christ will be in eternal torment. Forever. (Rev 20,21)