Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

How is the God of 5-Point Calvinism Not Worthy of Worship?

Do Arminians and Calvinists Worship the Same God?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2014/05/do-arminians-and-calvinists-worship-the-same-god/

Roger E. Olson
May 21, 2014

This question never dies. While most Christians on both sides of the divide say yes, some on both sides say no. Because I have openly admitted here that consistent Calvinism turns God into a monster and makes it difficult to tell the difference between God and the devil, some have assumed I believe the answer must be no. However, I have never said that Arminians and Calvinists worship different Gods. I have said that if it were revealed to me in a way I could not doubt that the God of consistent, five point Calvinism is the one true God over all, the maker of heaven and earth, I would not worship him because I would not think him worthy of worship.

What makes God worthy of worship is God’s perfect goodness combined with his greatness. God must be both great and good to be worthy of worship. Garden variety Calvinists do believe God is good as well as great. A few have stepped out of the pack and have said that God is the creator of sin and evil. I think they are more logically consistent than their fathers who are garden variety Calvinists. Of course, even they affirm God’s goodness but only by believing that God is freely good and that whatever God does is automatically good just because he is God. Or, in some cases, they defend their belief in God’s goodness by appeal to a “greater good” that justifies God creating sin and evil. In that case, of course, sin and evil aren’t all that bad.


Observing Theological Inconsistencies

The vast majority of Calvinists have always denied that God is the author of sin and evil and have affirmed that sin and evil arise from creatures’ natures and wills (angelic and human). They appeal to God’s permission, as do Arminians, to explain why and how God is not the author of sin and evil.

The “crunch” comes with the question of whether God “designs, ordains and governs” sin and evil and everything else we consider awful, bad, horrendous, etc.—such as childhood death from agonizing illness or accident. From an Arminian perspective it’s difficult to see the difference between affirming that God is the “author” of all that and that God “designs, ordains and governs” all that [as a distinction that a Calvinist does, and will, make. - res].

[As an example,] Calvinists typically accuse Arminians of “felicitous inconsistency” and at the same time use that to explain how and why Arminians are fellow Christians. The inconsistency they think they see in Arminianism is that Arminians affirm both that salvation is gift and that it must be freely received. To Calvinists this makes the human decision to respond positively to the offer of grace “the decisive factor” in salvation. Of course, Arminians never say that and we deny it... [it more rather rests upon the nature of God's prevenient grace. - res]. Most Calvinists hear us and say “Well, that is the good and necessary consequence of what you believe.” But, for the most part, they do not excommunicate us from Christianity due to our perceived inconsistency. Inconsistency is not heresy.

I say the same about garden variety Calvinism. It is inconsistent. When they say, for example, God is not the author of sin and evil (and all their consequences) but that God “designs, ordains and governs” everything without exception I accuse them of inconsistency. It’s a “felicitous inconsistency” and I choose to focus on the fact that they believe God is not the author of sin and evil. Those who go so far as to say God IS the author of sin and evil sully God’s character to the point that I cannot embrace them as brothers or sisters in Christ.


Reflecting on Theological Inconsistencies

What I have said, and do now say, is that if I were a garden variety Calvinist I would not be able to live with the inconsistency and would have to go all the way to affirming that God is the author of sin and evil and all their consequences. If I were a Calvinist I would join the ranks of those who step out of the pack and say that God is the creator of sin and evil (or at least their author). That is no different than Calvinists who say that if they were Arminians they would have to believe Christ did not die to save us but only to give us an opportunity to save ourselves (which is what they think Arminian theology logically implies).

When I say that Calvinism makes God monstrous and makes it difficult to tell the difference between God and the devil I am talking about from my perspective—not what all Calvinists actually believe. I am talking about the logical implications of Calvinism.

So here is a parable (not an allegory) to illustrate why I think Calvinists and Arminians worship the same God in spite of very different pictures of God’s involvement with sin and evil.

Imagine…a motley group of resistance fighters inside an enemy occupied country. All of the fighters are followers of a great national hero who organized them, gave them their “marching orders,” directs them from his exile, sends them representatives with messages, and promises to return to help them defeat the occupying enemy and drive them from the country. The exiled leader is the resistance fighters’ common hero; all of them believe in him and are committed to his cause. But they have very different “pictures” of what he is like. Some of them think he is a socialist who will abolish differentiating wealth once he is in power. Others think he is a democratic capitalist who will abolish government control of the economy and allow free enterprise. His messages to them imply both. Some of the resistance fighters think the leader knows something none of them know about economics and that somehow the two approaches will be combined. However, others think that’s nonsense and point to passages in his written messages to them that, to them, strongly imply their own belief about his plans.

In the meantime, during the occupation and their leader’s exile, the resistance fighters agree to disagree about economics and social policy. They stand together to follow their common leader and fight the evil occupiers of their country.

However, one night, around their campfire, leaders of the two sides fall into argument about the hero. One says to another that when the hero returns and defeats the occupation and drives the occupiers out, he will take away all private property and establish a communist regime. The other responds “No, you’re wrong. When he returns he’ll establish democracy and free enterprise.” Both say to each other “If you’re right about him, I will not support him when he returns and establishes what you say he will. But I’m not even worried about that because I know you’re wrong.”

A young freedom fighter listening to the two leaders debate turns to one of them and says “Wait! You don’t support our leader even now! What are you doing here?” The accused resistance leader responds “No, you’re wrong. I do support him. He’s just not what you think he is and you’ll see that you’re wrong when he returns. But if you could convince me you’re right, that he is a communist, I would stop fighting for him now because that’s no better than the enemy occupying our country right now. But fortunately, you’re wrong about him, so I will stay and fight alongside you.”

The young freedom fighter, a communist, responds “Well, then, you are not loyal to our leader!” The accused resistance leader says “No, you’re wrong. I am as loyal to him as you are if not more so! Your problem is that you cannot distinguish between your image of our common leader and our leader himself. We must agree to disagree about our hero’s economics out of our common loyalty to him and our common resistance to his and our enemy—the occupying force.”

Now (parable over, interpretation starting…), both sides within the resistance group believe in and follow the same exiled hero/leader and look forward to his return and victory over their common enemy. There’s no question about that. The only question is about his economic philosophy and intentions. Both sides are certain they are right about that, but neither side can prove it (beyond doubt or question) to the other side’s satisfaction. [Thus], both sides have reasonable interpretations of the exiled hero’s messages even though they think the other side’s interpretation is fraught with inconsistencies.


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