Two Out Of Three - Christians And The Atonement

Blogger and pub theologian Bryan Berghoef recently had a series of posts on his site Musings Of A Pub Theologian about atonement, the foundational Christian belief that Jesus’ death and resurrection secured the reconciliation of humanity to God.  This got me thinking again about the larger picture of Christian soteriology and how the various theories of salvation within the protestant Christian ethos reveal the nature of God and reflect on his character. 

New Testament scripture has a lot to say about the relationship between God and man, God’s plans and purposes, and the ultimate destiny of humanity.  But since the Bible isn’t a textbook with clear and precise information but rather a collection of writings gathered over a very long period of time, Christian denominations across the world (approximately 30,000 denominations and sects) emphasize different concepts and prioritize various ideas as seen from a number of perspectives.  Yet, when the whole of the New Testament narrative concerning God’s salvific purpose is distilled to its essence, three propositions emerge:

Proposition #1:  It is God’s will – his plan and purpose - to reconcile all of humanity to himself through Jesus.

Proposition #2:  It is within God’s power to fulfill his will, his plans and his purposes.

Proposition #3:  Not all of humanity will be reconciled to God.  Some will be consigned to eternal punishment without the possibility of release or redemption.

Each of these propositions appears to have support in scripture.  In support of proposition #1 – that it is God’s will to reconcile all of humanity to himself through Jesus -  the following scriptures might be noted:

“The Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” – 2 Peter 3:9

 "This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." - 1 Tim 2:4-6

"For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive”.  - 1 Cor. 15:22

Colossians 1:20. 19 “For in him [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,  and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. – Colossians 1: 19-20

"But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." John 12:32

In support of proposition #2 – that it is within God’s power to fulfill his will, his desires and purposes -   the following scriptures might be noted:

"He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?" (Dan. 4:35)

"The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying, surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand".   Isaiah 14:24

"Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;" Isaiah 46:10

"I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear, surely shall say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength."  - Isaiah 45:23-24

In support of proposition #3 – that some will be consigned to eternal  punishment  -  the following scripture might be noted:

"These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." – Matt 25:46

The curious thing about these three propositions is that although each appears to have support in scripture, they aren’t consistent.  Only two of the three statements can be true.  It isn’t logically consistent to say that God desires and wills to reconcile all of humanity (as proposition #1 asserts), that he has the power to fulfill his will and purpose (as proposition #2 asserts) , and yet some among humanity will be consigned to eternal punishment (as asserted in proposition #3).   It is transparently obvious then that all three propositions cannot be true.  One of these three ideas must be rejected in order for the other two propositions to be valid. 

And in fact, that is precisely what different Christian groups have done. The tension between these three propositions can be seen in competing doctrines among the various protestant denominations.

 Let us suppose that proposition #1 and #3 are true and proposition #2 is false.    This is what denominations like Methodists, Churches of Christ, Assemblies of God, most Holiness denominations and others do.  Their reasoning, called Arminianism, goes something like this:

“It is God’s will to reconcile all humanity to himself.  He doesn’t want anyone to spend eternity in hell and it is his sincere desire that everyone should be saved.  The offer of salvation is available to everyone equally.”  So, proposition #1 is true.

 “Unfortunately, it is not within God’s power to fulfill this desire because of man’s freewill.  Even though God has chosen to save everyone, some people decide to reject God’s saving grace and thereby go to hell.  It is their freewill choice. God cannot prevent this.” So, proposition #2 is false.

“Therefore not all of humanity will be reconciled to God. This means that some people will spend eternity in hell.” So, proposition #3 is true.

This approach places the emphasis on an all-loving God who is unable to fulfill his desires, in order that proposition #3 can remain true.

Or, we can suppose that proposition #2 and proposition #3 are true and proposition #1 is false.  This is what denominations like Southern Baptists, Presbyterian and other Reformed churches do.  Their reasoning, Calvinism, goes something like this: 

“It is not God’s plan to reconcile all humanity. Sinful man is spiritually blind and incapable of approaching God.  In order for at least some people to be saved, God must choose to save them himself.   These people are chosen – or elected – to salvation freely by God’s  grace and not because of anything they have done.  It is his will to reconcile those that he has chosen but he has not chosen everyone.” So, proposition #1 is false.

“It is within God’s power to fulfill his will.  In fact, God’s will is irresistible and cannot be defeated.  Whatever he decides to do will come to pass.  All of those he has willed and chosen to be reconciled, without exception, will be reconciled.” So, proposition #2 is true.

“This means that some people (those who are not chosen by God) will spend eternity in hell.” So, proposition #3 is true.

This approach emphasizes the all-powerful will of a God whose love is limited in scope, in order that proposition #3 can remain true..

Lastly, we could suppose that proposition #1 and #2 are true and proposition #3 is false.   This is what Christian Universalists believe.  Their reasoning goes something like this:

“It is God’s plan and purpose to reconcile all humanity to himself.  He doesn’t will that anyone should spend eternity in hell and it is his choice that everyone should be saved.  Therefore, the offer of salvation is available to everyone equally.”  So, proposition #1 is true

“It is within God’s power to fulfill his will.  In fact, God’s will is irresistible and cannot be defeated.  Whatever he decides to do will come to pass.  God’s plans and purposes cannot fail. All of those he has willed and chosen to be reconciled, without exception, will be reconciled.” So, proposition #2 is true.

“Since proposition #1 is true (God has chosen to reconcile everyone) and proposition #2 is true (God’s plans cannot fail and everyone that he has chosen to reconcile, without exception, will be reconciled)  it is inconsistent and illogical for proposition #3 to be true. Therefore no one will spend eternity in hell.  Eventually, at some point in the future ages, all people will ultimately be reconciled to God.”  So, proposition #3 is false.

This approach places equal emphasis on God's all-loving nature and all-powerful will.  Because God is all-loving and all-powerful, proposition #3 cannot remain unchallenged.

(Notice something interesting?  Christian Universalists agree with the millions of Methodists, Church of Christ and others that proposition #1 is true.  Christian Universalists also agree with the millions of Baptists, Presbyterians and other Reformed churches that proposition #2 is true.)

Every Christian believer is faced with these three propositions, only two of which can be true.  The implication of this is that scriptures which support the proposition you reject will need to be “fudged” or de-emphasized or interpreted in a way that doesn't interfere with your doctrine.  This is what all Christian denominations do.  

The question I pose is this:  Since only two of these three propositions can be true, which two of the three propositions more clearly permeate scripture through-and-through?  Which two of these three more accurately reflect the nature and character of an infinitely wise, infinitely just and infinitely good God?  Proposition #1 implies that God is unlimited in his love, sincerely desiring the salvation of all mankind. This is an overwhelming theme of scripture.  Proposition #2 implies that God is unlimited in power, able to accomplish whatever he desires.  This is also an exceedingly strong biblical theme.  Proposition #3, however, seems weak in relation to the other two, and open to various interpretations, and is found in texts that often contain parable, hyperbole, metaphor and symbolism.  

In order for proposition #3 to be true at the expense of either propositions #1 or #2, the biblical warrant for everlasting punishment would need to be much stronger than the biblical theme of God’s unlimited love and God’s omnipotence.  And that, I think, is a case that is not easy to make.

Postscript:
(There is no word in the New Testament that actually means "timeless" or "forever". The concept of a  timeless eternity is a philosophical idea that intrigued Augustine and especially Thomas Aquinas and found its way into their writings, which in turn became the standard interpretation of orthodoxy.  The words that are translated "eternal" in these New Testament scriptures are the Greek words aion and aionios, which mean "age" or "lasting an indeterminate time" - from which we get the English word "eon", which has a beginning and an end.   There is no word in the New Testament that means a timeless eternity). 

 

Thoughts On Christmas

I love the extended end-of-year holiday season.  I enjoy everything about it.  Given a choice between the two major cultural-Christian holidays of Easter and Christmas, I’d take Christmas every time.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying “humbug” to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.  In the framework of western philosophical and religious thought, Easter – or its equivalent – is inevitable.   Humanity is inexorably drawn to reminders of our imperfection and alienation, our struggle to define the sacred, our emptiness apart from something greater than our self.  Easter is the perfect complement for such ruminations.  .

By contrast, the advent season is the antithesis of that.  Christmas reminds us that the story of humanity need not be bound up in the existential angst of uncertainty and despair.

It’s about innocence, new beginnings, gifts and celebrations. It’s about family and community.  When distilled to its essence Christmas is a proclamation of the good.  It’s a reminder that humility, truth, love, compassion - and all else that defines what is good and honest and true about us -  is worth celebrating.  It begins with an announcement from an other-worldly choir heralding “peace on earth, good will to all people”.  Angelic messengers usher in this season, their joyous song a reflection of what Deity thinks about us and envisions for us, and what we should envision for ourselves. It is not a time of doubt and estrangement but of faith and community.  Fear not, we are told, for this is an occasion of good tiding, a time of great joy. 

The miracle of Christmas may lie not so much in the fact of incarnation as in the expression of worth revealed in its effect - that the manger’s babe is a child of humanity.  Our merit, indeed our intrinsic value is revealed not in that God has come to visit with us but that He has become one of us, and more importantly, that he has become one of the least of us, a helpless child.  By this simple yet profound act God affirms the value of who we are.  Christmas is a reminder that life is pregnant with purpose and meaning and that each of us independently and as an organic whole is favored and deserving of good will and peace.

Biocentrism

 

I have a fascination with consciousness, which is why I was excited to read Robert Lanza’s book,  Biocentrism.  The premise offered a tantalizing promise of further investigation into the nature of this mysterious aspect of the natural order.  And since Lanza and the co-author were recognized experts in their respective fields (biology and astronomy), a logical, analytical approach with strong supporting arguments was sure to follow.

Not so much.

Biocentrism is the idea that life and consciousness are fundamental aspects of reality, forces upon which the universe – and existence itself - depend.  That sounds intriguing.  Unfortunately, Lanza falls flat when it comes to offering any meaningful support for this concept.  While I didn’t expect a grand theory, it would have been helpful if the author had offered an opinion about the most basic questions the book presupposes, like “What is the nature of consciousness?”, “How does consciousness arise?”, “How does consciousness create reality?”   Instead, Lanza assumes all of these notions a priori, without offering any explanation whatsoever.

Lanza believes that quantum theory holds the key to understanding consciousness and he spends a great deal of time reporting on the results of quantum particle experiments.  He never manages to connect the dots, however, between these experiments and his general premise, instead making broad assumptions that one is necessarily correlated with the other simply because he wishes it to be so.

The one area of the book which holds promise is his treatment of the anthropic principle and a specific reference to physicist John (of "black hole" fame) Wheeler's concept of a "participatory universe".  But even here Lanza fails to use this to his advantage.  

Wheeler has stated that " every item of the physical world has at bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."

Yet this remarkable comment by a giant among scientists, which fully supports Lanza's thesis, appears nowhere in his chapter on the anthropic principle.  This kind of sloppy, colloquial approach quickly diminishes the book's authority.

Although passing itself off as a book based on the science of quantum theory, invoking Einstein’s name every third or fourth page, and repeatedly asserting that he has no interest in philosophy per se,  this is essentially a work of philosophy, not science, and poorly constructed philosophy at best.  Lanza’s premises are a superficial rehashing of George Berkeley’s Idealism, with a dash of Spinoza and (an apparently accidental) shot or two of Kant’s Transcendental views on space and time. 

All in all, Biocentrism is a muddy mishmash that left me completely dissatisfied and fails in its attempt to offer insight into the beautiful mystery that is consciousness and subjective experience.

Redefining Primary Care

This is a guest post by Jennifer Brennan, a nurse practitioner in Southeast Texas (and my daughter) on the merits of advancing and expanding the role of Nurse Practitioners as primary care providers. Enjoy!

 

Redefining Primary Care

By Jennifer Brennan, RN, MSN, FNP-C

 

Jeff Guillory, a Family Nurse Practitioner practicing in Lumberton, Texas, has owned and operated his primary care clinic, NP Health Clinic, for over 8 years and sees approximately 100-150 patients per week. He manages a variety of health conditions-both acute and chronic- including, but not limited to, colds, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, well-woman and well-child examinations, and annual recommended screening tests for both children and adults. He performs labs tests, EKGs, suturing, immunizations, and sports physicals in his office.  Mr. Guillory is one of a limited number of primary care providers in Hardin County, a relatively rural county of 54,635 people which has seen the ratio of medical providers-to-population decrease a whopping 33% since 2001.  (source: Texas Department of State Health Services).   

Mr. Guillory is typical of  Nurse Practitioners, having practiced for years as a Registered Nurse, developing and sharpening clinical skills and knowledge, before attending an accredited graduate school, completing a rigorous masters degree program in Nursing and passing a state board examination in order to be credentialed as a Nurse Practitioner

Each state has different laws governing the specifics on what a Nurse Practitioner can do.  In Texas, Nurse Practitioners must have a collaborating physician and must have a Prescriptive Authority Agreement in place, an agreement between the physician and the Nurse Practitioner, describing the delegated categories of drugs and devices a Nurse Practitioner can or cannot prescribe. In the United States, 19 states and The District of Columbia have passed legislation giving Nurse Practitioners Full Practice Authority, meaning NPs in those states work as independent medical providers. They can deliver primary care commensurate to their education.

Last week, an article featured in the Texas Tribune and NY Times illustrated a story about a Nurse Practitioner in Katy, Texas facing difficulties keeping her primary care clinic open due to state regulations not allowing NPs to be reimbursed by insurance companies unless the delegating physician has a contract with those specific insurance companies.

Mr. Guillory is facing similar hardships in his primary care clinic as are many Nurse Practitioners in the state of Texas. Because NPs in Texas must have a collaborating physician to practice, when that physician does not have a contract with certain insurance companies, the Nurse Practitioner cannot see patients with those specific insurance plans. This has left many patients unable to see their chosen Primary Care Providers, and especially in rural settings, may leave patients with no primary care at all.

So, what exactly is a Primary Care Provider?  A primary care provider (PCP) is a health care professional who sees people that have common medical problems.  This person is your main health care provider, the “gatekeeper” who coordinates care and provides referrals to specialists when appropriate.  The role of a PCP is to:

Provide preventive care and teach healthy lifestyle choices

• Identify and treat common medical conditions
• Assess the urgency of your medical problems and direct you to the best place for that care
• Make referrals to medical specialists when necessary

Mr. Jeff Guillory, NP, is a primary care provider.

Increasingly, a PCP is not limited to physicians.  In practical terms, NPs have been acting in the role of primary care providers since the 1960’s. Whether the associating physician works alongside the NP on a day-to-day basis or visits the clinic periodically in an oversight capacity, the reality is that NPs carry their own patient loads, assessing, diagnosing, and prescribing in a setting that is essentially independent of all but cursory supervision.

With the burgeoning patient base introduced by the Affordable Care Act, a broad range of medical professionals is needed to provide adequate and affordable services. Nurse Practitioners are capable and prepared to fill the void caused by the projected shortage of primary care physicians in the United States.

Nurse Practitioners have been proven for decades to be safe and effective healthcare providers exhibiting positive outcomes and satisfaction in patient care. This is not the issue nor is comparing NPs to physicians and debating which is better. Often patients have a clear preference for one or the other, and for those who prefer to see a Nurse Practitioner for primary health care needs, making access and reimbursement easier and more accessible is key. It is time that the term “primary care provider” encompasses both physicians AND nurse practitioners and that current state regulation and insurance companies delineate and recognize the role that NPs play in society’s health care needs.

 
By appropriately redefining the primary care provider terminology, patients throughout Texas can have easier access to their chosen PCP, avoiding unnecessary constraints in their health care needs and ultimately improving the common goal of centering patient care as priority. Nurse Practitioners are and will continue to be PCPs and should be fully integrated into health care delivery.

The Secret Lives of Bats and Martians

Although evolution as it is presently understood involves a very long process of natural selection (among other arbitrary processes) without an overarching goal or forward progression toward a pre-defined or predictable result, this is not always appreciated. Some tend to believe, or at least act as if they believe, that evolution has accomplished its goal and reached its pinnacle, the end result being a species we’ve self-classified as homo sapien. Perhaps that is to be expected given that we are the only species capable of writing  On The Origin Of Species  and similar books that aim to explain the evolution of ourselves to ourselves. This hubristic tendency to think that evolution has done its work and the mantle is now passed to our capable hands (with opposable thumbs!) to mold reality as we wish engenders another false narrative, namely that we can figure everything out.

Because we comprehend many things, there is a tendency to think that we can eventually comprehend all things.  This, however, is most likely not the case.  It is more probable that there are facts beyond the grasp of human beings, facts which can never be represented or comprehended by us, no matter how much we believe the opposite.

Forty years ago the philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote an essay titled “What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”. The thrust of the article concerns questions of consciousness and specifically the mind-body problem of consciousness, but at the periphery of the discussion Nagel touches briefly on another topic, which he describes as “the relation between facts on the one hand and conceptual schemes or systems of representation on the other.”  It is this line of thought, coupled with the notion of subjectivity, which prompted him to invoke a “belief in the existence of facts beyond the reach of human concepts.”

Nagel writes, “Indeed, it would be foolish to doubt this, given (human) finiteness. There are facts which could not ever be comprehended by human beings, even if the species lasted for ever – simply because our structure does not permit us to operate with concepts of the requisite type.”  Nagel uses the example of a bat and what it is like to experience reality as this strange, nocturnal mammal as a way of highlighting the difficulties in a reductionist theory of conscious subjective experience. This example is also useful when considering our inaccessibility of certain facts.

Nagel chooses bats because they are mammals like us, a higher order vertebrate that doubtless has experience. Bats, although sharing our mammalian heritage, are nevertheless a species that Nagel describes as a “fundamentally alien form of life” since they “present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem  is exceptionally vivid.”  Most bats perceive the external world by using echolocation, a form of sonar. Bats emit high-frequency sounds that reflect off objects within range.  Their brains then correlate these outgoing and incoming impulses to gather information that enable them to determine size, distance, movement and other factors which effectively correspond with our sense of vision. 

Even though we can understand and describe the principle of echolocation and recognize that it is a form of “bat vision”, our ability to conceive what such an experience would be like is “restricted to the resources of our own minds, and those resources are inadequate to the task.”  It is, according to Nagel, “not similar in its operation to any sense that we possess, and there is no reason to suppose that it is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine.”  It will not help my case to think of myself hanging upside-down from a cave by my feet, or growing webbed wings and eating insects in the night sky by locating them with shrill sounds.  These images tell me only what it is like for me to behave like a bat. What we want to know is what it is like for a bat to be a bat.    

The same difficulty arises when we consider what it would be like for an alien species (a race of intelligent Martians, let’s say) to form a conception of what it is like to be us.  As Nagel suggests, “the structure of their own minds might make it impossible for them to succeed, but we know they would be wrong to conclude that there is not anything precise that it is like to be us: that only certain general types of mental state could be ascribed to us (perhaps perception and appetite would be concepts common to us both; perhaps not). We know they would be wrong to draw such a skeptical conclusion because we know what it is like to be us.”  Similarly, it might prove as improbable for us to conceptualize or comprehend the subjective experiences of alien beings vastly more intelligent than ourselves, since it could be the case that dissimilar structures of our respective mental processes would create an insurmountable barrier.

Nagel argues that “the fact that we cannot expect ever to accommodate in our language a detailed description of Martian or bat phenomenology should not lead us to dismiss as meaningless the claim that bats and Martians have experiences fully comparable in richness of detail to our own.”  The case that the subjective experiences of bats and Martians are facts from which humans are excluded from understanding does not invalidate the proposition that they nevertheless constitute a set of facts.  An extension of this rationale is the idea that since it is impossible for humans to represent or comprehend facts that our limited structure (and the limits of our technological inventions) prevent, the possibility exists that facts which are clearly evident to other creatures remain unknown to us.  “After all, the nature of beings with access to humanly inaccessible facts is presumably itself a humanly inaccessible fact”, Nagel suggests.  Only those facts to which we have access are meaningful to us.  This limited set does not constitute the whole.  It is merely the set to which we can gain access.

In summary, Nagel offers this thought, “It would be fine if someone were to develop concepts and a theory that enabled us to think about those things; but such an understanding may be permanently denied to us by the limits of our nature. And to deny the reality or logical significance of what we can never describe or understand is the crudest form of cognitive dissonance.”

On A Divergent Path - Christian Reconciliation

[This post is a continuation of my previous one, on the subject of universal reconciliation within the framework of Christianity.  I invite you to read the earlier post for context HERE.]

ON A DIVERGENT PATH

These are my reflections on the gospel message, the “good news” that God is reconciling the world to himself through his son, Jesus Christ.  By “reconciling”, I mean God’s plan and purpose to return everything that is out of balance into harmony and to repair and restore every relationship that has been broken. 

Why is God doing this?  The short answer is because we can’t.  The record of human civilization is measured by the wars we fight, the people we conquer, the misery we spread.  We kill, lie and steal.    We’ve had thousands of years to learn to live peaceably with one another, but we’ve squandered the time by erecting walls built of religions and cultures designed to ostracize, alienate and obliterate our fellow man.  Our monstrous leaders have murdered tens of millions of their own countrymen, our industrialists have perfected greed and our religions have replaced the sacred with fear and oppression.  Today we live in the richest, most technologically-advanced world since the beginning of mankind, yet every single day 22,000 children die from poverty.  We are slaves to our narcissism and hubris. This is our corporate sin.

If there is to be any hope for harmony and restoration, for a world of peace where love and compassion are the norm, it needs to originate somewhere outside the human race.  And so it does. 

The good news of the New Testament resounds with a message of love, restoration and hope.  It is a powerful and glorious vision of divine love, of an almighty God that has both the will and the power to bring reconciliation to all of those whom he has loved into existence in the first place.

THE BOOGY MAN IS GONNA GET YOU

Unfortunately, this gospel of hope, the “good news” as Jesus described it, has too often been twisted into a message of fear and condemnation, a death-centered tome that envisions God as a schizophrenic monster who loves each of us with infinite benevolence one moment and yet is willing to abandon us to a fiery pit of eternal conscious torment the next.  This aberrant doctrine leaves adherents anxiously scrambling to avoid an endless existence of horrible torture for themselves and their loved ones.   Jonathan Edwards, prominent Calvinist minister and intellectual during The First Awakening that swept the United States in the 18^th century, describes our fate in “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” (arguably the most famous sermon ever preached in America) as follows:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.  You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.  There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship.  Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why do you not this very moment drop down into hell.

Hardly the gospel of hope, the “good news” that Jesus commanded his disciples to preach, is it? And this, believe it or not, represents a more subdued approach than that utilized in the imperial church of Justinian, through St. Augustine and John Calvin and into the Anglican and Puritan ethos.  Why such a horrid deity should be worthy of worship at all is the greater question.  I refer to my previous post and the passage by C. S. Lewis, “If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall obey, if at all, only through fear – and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend….and thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.” 

How the message of love and reconciliation presented in the New Testament morphed into contemporary Christianity’s doctrine of an angry God who tosses his creation, one by one, into a fiery hell to endure never-ending conscious torment is a tale all its own that begins in the fifth century of the church’s history and winds its way through Christendom into today’s seminaries and pulpits.  But for now, let’s leave the legacy of fear and see what the Christian scriptures actually say about Jesus’ mission, God’s plan and purpose and his goals for the fate of humanity.

Let’s temporarily suspend what we’ve been told by preachers and teachers and leaders who may have been blindly regurgitating the same doctrines their elders taught them or perhaps lacked the imagination, skill or intuition to exegete scriptures about hell and judgment and condemnation  without casting God into the role of a sadistic monster.  For these reflections, let’s look at the scriptures with a fresh perspective, with an open heart and with a keen awareness of what sort of plans and purposes one should expect of a God whose nature is infinitely wise, infinitely just and –most important of all – infinitely good.

JOY TO THE WORLD, ALL THE BOYS AND GIRLS

1.        We begin with the announcement of Jesus’ arrival on earth by an angel to a group of shepherds saying, “I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.  For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10, 11)  The curtain opens on the gospel story with a celestial visitor proclaiming the event as one of “great joy to all people.”  A savior is born, for all people, not just some.  The great joy that will be experienced because of this savior is intended for everyone.  What a wondrous way to usher in God’s plan of reconciliation.  A joyful promise for all mankind.  “Therefore with joy will you draw water from the wells of salvation.” (Isaiah 12:3)  These wells of salvation must be meant for all mankind, for only if all people are saved will all people know the great joy of which the angel speaks.

2.       We next visit the last great prophet in the scripture narrative, John the Baptist.  “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” (John 1:29) As the messenger whose purpose was to announce Jesus’ mission, to “prepare the way of the Lord”, John’s message regarding Jesus was very clear and very simple.  Jesus’ purpose was to take away the sin of the world.   “Sin” is singular, not because Jesus was to take away one sin or perhaps “a sin here and a sin there” but rather the totality of sin, the set of all sin, everywhere.  “World” is the Greek “kosmos”, meaning the created order.  Jesus’ mission, then, is to remove the totality of sin from the created order.  To eradicate sin everywhere.  If sin is taken away from the cosmos, how can any sinner remain?  For as long as sinners remain eternally and forever in hell, to that extent sin is not taken away, but remains.  Indeed, an endless hell would ensure eternal sin for imagine the hatred against God from those tormented forever.  The logical alternative that coheres with the idea that the totality of sin is to be removed from the created order is that ultimately all will be reconciled to God through Christ.  There can be no eternal sinners without sin.

3.       Jesus himself confirms this purpose at various times.  In his conversation with Nicodemus, a Pharisee who sought his counsel, he says, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17)  Jesus’ words reflect those of the angel and John the Baptist, that he had come not to save a few or many, but the entire world, again the Greek “kosmos”, the created order.  And later to a group in Jerusalem, he says, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me". (John 12:32)  These words are direct and plain and offered without qualification.  The statement is definitively unconditional. Everyone will be drawn to Jesus.  Everyone will be gathered into him.  There is nothing in the context of the angel’s announcement, John’s proclamation or Jesus’ own words that would lead one to believe that his purpose was limited or restricted to a few or a select group.  Instead, the opposite sense is given by all of these passages, that this is to be an all-encompassing, transformative work, a cleansing of all sin, joy for all people, a rescue of mankind from itself.

4.       Jesus’ disciple, John (not to be confused with John the Baptist), who penned Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in his gospel letter, later reiterated to the church at large this same message in the first of his three epistles.  John writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.  (1 John 1:1-2 and 2:2).  Nothing could be clearer than the words of this disciple that Jesus’ work is intended to atone for “the sins of the whole world,” not just a select number.  John goes to great length emphasizing his own credentials as evidence of the trustworthiness of this assertion by affirming that he had personally seen and heard Jesus.  We are to understand that his testimony of this truth is direct and not hearsay.  From these and many other passages, it is clear that Jesus came to save sinners, all sinners, to take away the sin of the created order, the sins of the whole world.  

IT’S ABOUT THE WHOLE THING, NOT THE HOLE THING

1.        Paul picks up where the gospel narratives leave off.  His letters to the various churches of Asia Minor paint a rich and glorious tapestry of God’s plan and purpose through Jesus’ life and death.  This vast canvas stretches as far and as wide as creation itself.  God is reconciling everyone and everything – all that is – into a restorative unity to himself through his Son.  Jesus becomes the catalyst and channel through which harmony and restoration will be achieved throughout the universe at large.  In his letter to the Roman and Corinthian churches, Paul lays the foundation for understanding God’s work of reconciliation as he details the philosophical and conceptual dynamics upon which this divine work is based.  He writes, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive". (1 Cor. 15:22) and  “Just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. (Rom 5:18, 19). Here we find that pesky word “all” again, and this time it forms a very important bridge between two experiential realities:  the world of estrangement and death following Adam and the world of reconciliation and life following Christ.  Paul informs us of something quite profound.  From God’s perspective, there is an organic unity to the human race.  As all are in Adam, so all are in Christ.  As all are fallen in Adam, so all are reconciled in Christ.  This organic unity is the idea that the whole functions as an expression of the interdependent components of which it is made.  The “whole” does not cohere without each and every part of which it is comprised, and cannot properly be considered the thing it is if one or more of those component parts is excluded.  Paul uses this exact same analogy when he discusses the concept of the church.  In 1 Corinthians 12, he writes, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.  For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body.  Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.  Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”  Just as a body is an organic unity, a “whole thing”,  only in the sense that it is an expression of its interdependent parts (the head, the limbs, the internal organs) and without each of those parts it no longer functions as a body, so too the body of Christ as a spiritual entity, and the human race as a holistic creation of God, is an organic unity, “a whole thing” in the sense that it is an expression of each and every member that comprises its organic set, and only if each and every member that belongs to that set is included. 

2.       Because the human race functions as an organic unity, each and every one of us is an interdependent part of the whole represented in Adam.  No one is excluded from the corporate body of death and estrangement evidenced through him.  We are, each of us, individually and collectively, irreversibly tied to Adam in every way that it is possible to be connected.  There are no exceptions.  In exactly that same way, Paul tells us, each and every one of us is an interdependent part of the whole represented in Christ.  No one is excluded from the corporate body of life and reconciliation we are given through him.  We are, each of us, individually and collectively, irreversibly bonded to Christ.  There are no exceptions. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive". (1 Cor. 15:22)  The “all” in Adam is identical to the “all” in Christ.  All equals All.  And the “all” is the whole of the human race.   

THE BEST NEWS YOU’VE NEVER HEARD

1.       Thus Paul shares with us the philosophical and conceptual dynamics behind God’s plan of reconciliation, the organic unity of the human race.  But how pervasive is God’s plan?  Is it truly inescapable?    Paul thinks so.  He writes to the church at Colossae, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him (Jesus), and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Col 1:19, 20). This pivotal verse encapsulates the theme of the New Testament as regards God’s plan of reconciliation.  Jesus Christ is the conduit through which “all that is”, whether things on earth or things in heaven, will be restored into a harmonious balance and brought into a restorative relationship with God.  The phrase “things on earth and things in heaven” is archetypical for all creation, all-inclusive.  Similarly, Paul expresses the same sentiment to the church at Ephesus.  “And this is the plan:  At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth.  (Eph 1:10).  There could hardly be a clearer statement of God’s plan and Christ’s position it.  The words are so obvious that it’s hard to twist them into anything other than what they are: a definitive statement of God’s intention to reconcile absolutely everything to himself through Jesus Christ.  How, then, does eternal damnation fit into this scenario?  If, as Paul declares with vigor and clarity, God intends to restore everything (which would obviously include every person) to himself, how can there be souls in hell forever?  For as long as there are enemies of God (and by enemies, I mean those as Paul notes in Colossians 1:21 who remain alienated from God in their minds) then God has not brought everything together under the authority of Christ.  As long as evil exists, as long as humans rebel, as long as death and hell remain, to that extent God has triumphed in merely a partial way, which is to say, in no way at all.

2.       The only possibility is that evil, rebellion, death and hell are not eternal but temporary, and indeed the scriptures bear this out. God will triumph completely.  Universal  reconciliation, the restoration of each and every human being to a loving relationship with God and with each other, is the ultimate reality in a universe where everything is brought together under the authority of Christ. Paul is clear about this idea in his letter to the Philippians, “ For this reason also, God highly exalted Him (Jesus), and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:9-11)  John the disciple echoes this exact same sentiment, a  parallel thought to that of Paul,  "And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever". (Rev. 5:13) Here is another instance of the "common periphrasis" of the New Testament writers for “the universe”.  Every creature shall at last pay divine honors to God and the Lamb.  Contrary to some suggestions, the phrase “every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess” does not imply forced compliance, as if God is breaking the will of every creature to his own and forcing worship against their will before casting them into hellfire.  Such an idea hearkens back to the legacy of fear, of a power-hungry, self-absorbed deity void of genuine love and mercy and seeking only his own devices.  Indeed, the scriptures teach that confessing Jesus Christ as Lord to the glory of the Father is predicated on the following idea:  “No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3) and "If we confess with the mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in the heart that God hath raised him from the dead, we shall be saved." (Rom. 10:9) The clear and obvious sense of these passages is not a forced compliance but a genuine outpouring of love for one another and honor to the God who has reconciled all, wiped away every tear, destroyed death, defeated hate and despair, and imbued humanity with a sense of their true value. It is a sea of voices shouting honor and glory to the One who has opened every eye and changed every heart so that all of us, every single person who has ever lived, can finally understand who we are, and why we are, with each of us beginning to realize the truth that will take the rest of eternity to fully understand, the truth of the fathomless, infinitive love of our God.  As one theologian has said of this scene, "If this be not spiritual worship, I am unable to produce a case, where worship can be called spiritual and divine".

This scene of all humanity loving one another and loving the God who has always loved us and patiently waited for the time when each and every one of us embraces that truth and shares the unspeakable joy of such knowledge is a good place to end these reflections.

[The scriptures speak not only of God’s love and mercy but of his judgment and wrath as well.  I’m not so naïve as to disregard these themes or consider them unimportant or unworthy of consideration.  Perhaps in another post, shorter than this one(!) I can share what I believe the scriptures tell us about hell and judgment, sowing and reaping. ]

On A Divergent Path - Some Opening Thoughts

Some years ago I reached a spiritual crossroads in my journey through life.  It was not an epiphany or a sudden enlightenment but rather a long and arduous climb up a difficult path to a point where the way diverged.  At that fork in the road I knew that I could no longer embrace many of the beliefs that I had been taught as part of my religious heritage.   It wasn’t that I was rejecting Christianity or my belief in God.  I had stumbled my way through that minefield of doubt and disbelief earlier in life and emerged with a firm conviction in the purposefulness of the universe and its inherent intelligibility – attributes that presuppose intentionality, which presupposes intelligence, which in turn presupposes….ultimately…..God.

The question at issue as I paused on my spiritual journey wasn’t about the existence of God but rather about the existence of a particular kind of God.

I discovered that it’s not an easy task to deconstruct and examine ones beliefs.  Cultural and religious ideas are, in many ways, an indoctrination into a set of principles and behavior that define the very essence of how we see and measure ourselves and others.  Taking that apart and looking at it under the lens of objectivity and disinterested reason is well nigh impossible. Yet there is great value in examining our beliefs.  Socrates said that “the life which is unexamined is not worth living” and the apostle Paul wrote that one should “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you.”  If we haven’t carefully considered WHY we believe as we do, if we simply take for granted that those who taught us our ideals and values were themselves without fault or error, we do ourselves a disservice.  We can only claim our beliefs as our own if we’ve weighed their validity, trustworthiness and - most importantly - veracity and found that they ring true for our purposes.  Only then can we understand the deeper meaning of Jesus’ declaration that “the truth shall set you free”.  

Spreading open one’s core ideals on the table for inquisition, even for the purpose of revalidating them, can be unsettling and disconcerting, engendering a sense of nakedness and exposure.  Some might suggest that it’s imprudent or arrogant or even sacrilegious to do so.  As someone once suggested, “It’s just word-games and mental gymnastics that really don’t matter.  If you believe in Jesus, you go to heaven.  If you don’t, you go to hell.  End of story.”  And that is exactly where I decided to begin  – at the end of the story.  Because if anything matters, it should be the kind of deity to whom we offer our fidelity and his plans for our ultimate destination and that of our loved ones. 

**********************

Having been raised as a protestant fundamentalist, I could never quite understand why God was so mad at me and the rest of the world.  Even more perplexing was the notion that God was willing to condemn a portion of humanity (perhaps a large portion) to eternal torment.  I was taught that God is infinitely beneficent, that he loves us more than we can imagine, that in fact, God is love.  Despite this, God’s anger is kindled against us for sinning, for missing the mark of perfection.  This imperfection justifies an eternity in fiery torture.  There is an escape from this fate, however, by acknowledging that Jesus, who lived in first century Palestine and was executed by crucifixion, offered himself as a substitute on our behalf to satisfy God’s anger against our sin.  If we believe this, it will save us from hell and, by extension, secure for us an eternity of bliss in heaven.  Because God loves us so much, he has provided this means of escaping his wrath, although not all people will believe.

Here, then, is my initial question, where I paused on my journey:  Since it is human nature to be imperfect, what could God logically expect from human beings, other than that we behave according to our nature?  Indeed, no other option is available to us.  It would seem odd for a farmer to plant an orchard with oak trees then destroy them all because they failed to produce apples.  Just as it is the nature of oak trees to bear acorns, not apples, it is the nature of humanity to struggle with moral deficiencies rather than exhibit perfection.  Why then does the fact that our nature is inherently imperfect justify eternal torment? 

I wondered how it could be that Christ is the Savior of the world, as orthodox doctrine teaches, yet he is, in fact, the Savior of some whom he does not save.  And why doesn’t everyone qualify for heaven?  If Jesus’ sacrifice has satisfied God’s anger against sin, why would anybody need be confined to eternal damnation?

I wondered why orthodox theology portrays God as having a kind of bizarre schizophrenia, someone who professes absolute, perfect love for us while we are alive but at the moment of our death casts us forever into endless punishment.  How can any rational being love someone with infinite benevolence one moment, yet reject them the next moment and consign them to eternal torment?

I wondered how a God of perfect justice could condemn someone to an endless existence in hell for wrongdoings that occurred during the few years of their earthly life or sentence someone to an infinite punishment for a limited number of sins?  And how is it reasonable to conclude that while God expects obedience and righteousness from us here on earth, if he cannot have it, he will be satisfied with eternal disobedience and sin from us in the hereafter as a substitute.  This God seems unable to accomplish what most human parents do all the time:  integrate the virtues of justice and love into a balanced relationship for the ultimate good of his children.

None of it made sense and none of it seemed to cohere with the nature and attributes of an infinitely wise, omnipotent, beneficent being.  So, I asked myself, “What must God be like?” if he is indeed infinitely wise, infinitely powerful and infinitely good. 

**********************

C. S. Lewis, in his book The Problem of Pain offers this interesting insight:

“If God’s moral judgment differs from ours so that our ‘black’ may be His ‘white’, we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say ‘God is good’, while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say ‘God is we know not what’.  And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him.  If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall obey, if at all, only through fear – and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend….and thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.” 

Lewis is saying, in essence, that God’s moral character can be understood because it conforms to the same standards that any rational being would recognize.  “Good” for God must be, in a substantial sense, the same thing as “good” for humans.  Otherwise, we could know nothing of God’s character at all, nor could it form a moral basis for any sort of relationship.  While it is the case that in many ways God is inscrutable and mysterious, it cannot be the case that this inscrutability applies to his moral character, since as Lewis suggests, if God’s moral judgment is so incomprehensible that our ‘black’ may be his ‘white’, divine moral attributes become meaningless.  If in God’s moral landscape, ‘despair’ means ‘joy’ and ‘love’ means something completely foreign to our understanding of ‘love’, then there is no moral foundation upon which to comprehend God, much less to love and respect him. 

We can say with confidence then that all of God’s moral attributes – love, mercy, goodness, justice, wrath and truth – can be understood in the common sense meaning of these words insofar as they apply to humanity and to a human understanding of God’s character.  And since, as St. Anselm observed, God is “that than which no greater can be conceived”, it follows that all of God’s moral attributes are exhibited in perfection, without flaw and without contradiction among their various expression.

It may be tempting to add a caveat and suggest that God can do whatever he chooses and act in any manner that he wants.  After all, he’s God.  His ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts higher than our thoughts, as the writer tells us (Isaiah 58:8, 9).  It is the height of arrogance to presume to know God’s motives or intentions. He is under no obligation to conform to anything just because someone believes he should.

That line of thinking may appear superficially valid, (because, in fact, God does do whatever he wants to do) but it’s an example of spurious reasoning that can result in nonsense.  While it is true that God is under no obligation to conform to human ideas, he is obliged to conform to his own moral character.  There are many things that God is constrained from doing.  He will not lie.  He will not act unjustly.  He will not behave in any manner that is contrary to a rational, free agent whose being comprises moral perfection.  Nor would God desire to do so, or even contemplate acting in such a manner.  God only does that which is morally perfect.  If a doctrine teaches otherwise, it is the theology that is faulty, not God’s character.

Reflecting on this idea, I began to consider some aspects of what currently passes as orthodox doctrine within the Christian tradition, and how these doctrines reflect on the moral perfection of God, logical possibilities and the ultimate destiny of humanity.  And thus I began a very long survey into the issues surrounding soteriology – the theory of salvation - as it is currently taught within protestant Christianity.

In the process, I discovered something quite remarkable.  There really is a gospel of hope.  There really is “good news”, in fact very hopeful news, about our eternal futures.

In an upcoming post, I’d like to share it with you.