What is God in Character,
Sovereignty and Rule?
by R.E. Slater
Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt VonnegutReligious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim ForestWe become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater
What is Divine Sovereignty?
Here are several definitions of God's sovereignty. As a process theologian I work within a panentheistic framework and not a theistic nor pantheistic framework. Most of the definitions given below are from a theistic framework although I like how John Paul II expresses sovereignty as a dual relationship between God and creation.
In the kind of Process theology I have been forming (and yes, there are many kinds of process thought, not only Christian but Islamic, Jewish, Asian, etc) has come up from the Reformed side of my Baptist faith. I began with Arminianism and uplifted it into Open and Relational Theology then completed it as an Open and Relational PROCESS theology.
I have written past articles on sovereignty but as the years past my processual understanding grows with the subject. For today's purpose I have provided a simple definition and then have given my reasons for this definition. See what you think.
- R.E. Slater
Commonly - The sovereignty of God is the fact that he is the Lord over creation; as sovereign, he exercises his rule. This rule is exercised through God's authority as king, his control over all things, and his presence with his covenantal people and throughout his creation.Lutheranism - The major components of the biblical concept of divine sovereignty or lordship are God's control, authority, and presence (see John Frame, The Doctrine of God, 21–115). His control means that everything happens according to his plan and intention. Authority means that all his commands ought to be obeyed.Calvinism - The sovereignty of God is the same as the lordship of God, for God is the sovereign over all of creation. The major components of God’s lordship are his control, authority, and covenantal presence.Arminianism - To Arminians, then, the decision to believe and repent is a decision which a sovereign God granted to humanity. Thus, free will is granted and limited by God's sovereignty, but God's sovereignty allows all men the choice to accept the Gospel of Jesus through faith, simultaneously allowing all men to resist.Catholicism - The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993) express the concept of God's sovereignty as his rule over his creation, allowing human libertarian free will and co-operation with him: "God is the sovereign master of his plan. But to carry it out he also makes use of his creatures' co-operation. This use is not a sign of weakness, but rather a token of almighty God's greatness and goodness. God grants his creatures not only their existence, but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being causes and principles for each other, [...]".- John Paul II 1993, Section II, Ch. 1, Article 1, §4 Providence and secondary causes, item 306.Eastern Orthodoxy - In general, Eastern Theology places much more emphasis on human freedom and less on God's sovereignty than do the Augustinian and Reformed strands of Western theology. Orthodox view of human free will is close to the Wesleyan-Arminian view. - Fairbairn, Donald (2002). Eastern Orthodoxy Through Western Eyes. London: Westminster John Knox Press.Process Theology - In Christian freedom, God is sovereign, but it is a sovereignty of love, not a sovereignty of control.
God's Sovereignty is One of Love -
Not Power. Not Control. Love
by R.E. Slater
The Christian message I grew up with was one that I consider a terrible teaching to children and teens. I don't think it has changed much today. My faith now has no hell, hades, or purgatory in it... if these eternal states are real they must exist during our earthly lives such as seen with the poor innocents of Gaza, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Central America, and within America.
For God to be a God of love people say he must be just and avenge sin and evil. The Bible shares these thoughts of God's character in its passages time-and-again... that the God of the bible is a God of violence, ruin, and destruction. In fact, the bible ends on this "high note" of ruination and damnation in the last book of the bible, Revelation, completing its journey started at Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden.
Meaning, God's love is not unlike our own human emotions projecting our forms of justice upon the world so that we feel safe, secure, and free to live in peace and serenity within our communities.
This is how American evangelicalism projects itself. Full of guns, retribution, and revenge. It is little different from Islam's violent Jihadism.
And then Jesus comes along and says to the keepers of Torah - the priests, scribes, and later, rabbi's, of the first century - that their stories of Divine Imprecation and Judgment speaks to their version of God and not to Jesus' version of God.
Said Jesus, "God's sovereignty doesn't rest on Might and Power but upon the weakness of Love" in so many words. That is, Jesus rejects the Temple's kind of Judaism and shows how God serves, sacrifices, shares, listens, heals, renews, and redeems. Not unlike Judaism's Old Testament (OT) God on his best days - but quite unlike their Warrior God which they have cultivated into their theology and deeply care about... needing it to be true as they live under the unwanted, secular reign of a foreign power known as Rome.
And thus, over the centuries since Jesus' coming, the better, humbler elements of the church seeks to be, and enact, love... but under Catholicism, Reformation Protestantism, and Orthodoxy we see the Wrathful-God-version of the OT overtake the Loving-God-version of the New Testament (NT) as read in the texts of Paul, Peter, John, and so on.
So what version of God is God?
Is God a God of damnation and hell? Or a version of Jesus's Loving Redeemer?
I, for one, might answer this query in a number of ways but the one answer I like most is the one stating that the narratives in the bible speak to the religious mindset of humanity at the time... which also includes the church ages after the NT in its own interpretations of the bible... including our own religious mindsets today.
And if I extend God's Spirit of inspiration from the Bible till now as an everyday common occurrence between men of any faith and God, then I have the foundations to question why our stories favor a Powerful God over a Loving God?
When looking around at the films, movies, and TV stories out on cable; or the best sellers and popular classics on the bookshelves and libraries; or the sports and SciFi genres of digital games; nothing seems to have changed in human cultures. We seem to be a violent species which find it difficult not to be us. And we have made of God a violent Power as an idol to ourselves.
As with Jesus - when teaching the OT - I find a deeper, more fulfilling inspiration of the Spirit in retelling the narratives of the bible using God's Love as the seed, theme, and outcome-objective of the story even as Jesus, Paul, and the apostles sometimes did. Otherwise, the spirit of this world will act according to itself and the outcomes in Revelation will be as real now as they been many times over in history.
Somehow, in our storytelling and worship, we must fill God's majestic holy Sovereignty with Almighty Love and not vengeful justice... which is unloving and unGodlike. For instance, I can teach "the Day of the Lord" all day long but ultimately it means God cleans house first with his people before judging the wicked and unjust.
The prophets warned of lusting for a God of justice over a God of love. Why? Because what we teach others is how we will learn to act. If we teach a violent God, then violence will be part of our life-character. And if teaching a loving God, then lovingkindness will become a part of our demeanors and relationships with others.
It seems to be a choice God has given us when sending Jesus and asking whether we will humble ourselves and repent and follow him - or stiffen our resolve to become our own God and see all of life as a tit-for-tat, eye-for-eye, struggle for supremacy over another. Which, in stark proverbial undertones, smacks of foolishness and unwise behavior.
This does not mean worshipping a loving God dispenses with justice... but it does mean that we dispense a "measured form of justice" that is restorative and renewing amid the many sordid evils abounding around us.
If we follow a God of love and not a God of wrath and judgment it means that a civil society might have a better chance of acting civilly with one another. And in doing so this will greatly help a civil society - such as America's Constitutional democratic society - to lean into its idealism of designs and purposes when worshipping a God of love rather than a God of wrath and judgment.
R.E. Slater
February 22, 2024
Additional Reading Material -
A Relational View of God’s Sovereignty, Roger E. Olson
My office phone rang and I answered it. A stern voice said “Is this Roger Olson?” who which I confessed. The man introduced himself as pastor of Baptist church in the state, implying that he was a constituent of the seminary where I teach. Anyway, I got the message. “I hear you don’t believe in God’s sovereignty,” he declared. I responded “Oh, really? What do you mean by ‘God’s sovereignty’?” He said “You, know. God is in control of everything.” I decided to play with him a little. “Oh, so you believe God caused the holocaust and every other evil event in human history? That God is the author of sin and evil?” There was a long pause. Then he said “Well, no.” “Then do you believe in God’s sovereignty?” I asked. He mumbled something about just wanting to “make sure” and hung up.
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A Short by Rance
"God loves you so much that he sent his Son to earth to die for you so you can go to heaven where there are streets of gold and you get to worship him and throw crowns at his feet forever....
"But, if you don’t accept him and believe in him, Jesus will throw your ass (actually your whole body) into a lake of fire (or a fiery oven, or outer darkness, take your pick depending on which passage you read) where you will weep, wail, and gnash your teeth as you are actively tortured day and night for the next trillion trillion trillion years (and you’re just getting started at that point!)."
Says I, "What a bunch of crock! And it’s not actually what the Gospel is!"
"And if that message really was in the Bible, and if it was the [actual] Christian gospel - which it isn’t; just more bad superficial interpretation - I, for one, would never believe it.
"However, if indeed this was the true Christian message (actually read the book of Acts to see that this is not even close to what the message was), I’d immediately start looking for something else to believe because this is just too insane.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, this is a crock of manure."