Thomas Jay Oord - God's Timeful, Experiential Pluriform Love (Panentheism v Classic Theism)

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Big God Questions: Love, Divine Revelation, and the Value of Theology

Mar 1, 2022

Thomas Jay Oord joins Tripp Fuller to

tackle HBC Community Member questions

Why Go Wesleyan? 13 Reasons from Tom Oord

Jan 13, 2017

Thomas Jay Oord joins Tripp Fuller's Theology Nerd podcast

to drop 13 reasons to go Wesleyan... theologically speaking.

* * * * * * * *

A strong case can be made that love is the core of Christian faith. And yet Christians often fail to give love center stage in biblical studies and theology. And most fail to explain what they mean by love.

Thomas Jay Oord explores this question and offers ground-breaking answers. Oord addresses leading Christian thinkers today and of yesteryear. He explains biblical forms of love, such as agape, philia, hesed, and ahavah. We should understand love’s meaning as uniform, he says, but its expressions are pluriform.

Widely regarded as the world's foremost theologian of love, Thomas Jay Oord tackles our biggest puzzles about the nature and meaning of love, divine and creaturely. His proposals are novel. They align with love described in scripture and expressed in everyday experience. Oord also provides radical and yet persuasive answers to questions about evil, hell, the Big Bang, divine violence, divine abandonment, and more.

Pluriform Love changes the landscape of Christian love studies.

Here, Tom Oord tells of an Everlasting God whose presence and love fills all the days of the cosmos, earth, beasts, and mankind. A God who is here, now, with us and not a God who remains substantially apart and separate from His creation as classic theologies of the church would have us believe. This is the story of processual theology and its meaning to the church and the fellowship of humanity in the person, work, and love of the Incarnational God who has forever been, and forever will be, with us from all our days before to all our days beyond. it is not only God's promise but God's binding love which anchors His presence with His creation giving to it life and light, nobility and purpose. - re slater

* * * * * * *

By R.E. Slater

As Intro, please refer to my more recent posts on God and Time:

How Process Philosophy & Theology Connects Scientific Evolution & Cosmology to God

COSMOLOGY - What is Processual Primordial Time before the Big Bang?

Thank you Tom for your helpful insights in your commentary below.

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Love and the Timeless God

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by Thomas Jay Oord

January 28th, 2022

Philosophy always plays a role in Christian theology. This isn’t a bad thing; philosophy isn’t inherently evil. We’re all philosophers, in the general sense of thinking about things, and all theologies have philosophical assumptions. In fact, every statement about love – scholarly or not – incorporates philosophy, at least in the broad sense.

Some philosophies do better than others at elucidating love. Some better fit the way biblical writers portray God’s love and creation. Some better fit our experience of the world, aligning better with contemporary science, personal experiences, art, and culture. Some philosophies are more plausible, in the sense of cohering with what we know about life. And some are more internally consistent.

We should avoid philosophies that cannot help us talk coherently about love.

Augustine and Classical Theism

The influential medieval theologian Augustine read widely in philosophy, including the works of Aristotle, the Neoplatonists (e.g., Plotinus, Porphyry), the Stoics, and others. Many scholars note the influence these philosophies had on his theology.

Adolf Harnack (1851-1930) is often cited as the first to decry Greek philosophy’s influence upon Augustine and Christian theology. Harnack called it “the Hellenic spirit” and many today call this the “Hellenization” of Christian thought.[1] These philosophical traditions still influence Christian theologians and philosophers today.

Many today use the label “classical theism” to describe ideas endorsed by Augustine and theologians he influenced, such as Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Martin Luther. “Classical” doesn’t necessarily mean old. Nor do only theologians who lived long ago embrace these ideas; some scholars embrace them today.[2] And not every theologian of yesteryear embraced so-called classical theism. Theological diversity existed then as it does now.

Augustine and classical theism affirm at least four unique ideas about God, ideas intricately connected to Platonic and Neo-Platonic views about the superiority of what is changeless. They say God is

1) timeless,

2) immutable,

3) impassible, and

4) simple.[3]

To a great extent, these four ideas are mutually reinforcing, and each has implications for a theology of love.

In this essay, I explore problems which come when believing God is timeless. In my book Pluriform Love, I explore the other three aspects of classical theism’s particular view of God. And in the book, I offer alternative philosophical ideas meant to replace the ones in classical theism I find inadequate.

God and Time

Just about every Christian believes God had no beginning and will have no end. But classical theism understands this belief in a particular way. It says God experiences no succession of moments. God is timeless. There is no “before” or “after” in God because God is nontemporal. Deity does not experience moment by moment.

Augustine affirms this divine timelessness view.[4] “In the sublimity of an eternity which is always in the present,” he says, God is “before all things past and transcends all things future.”[5] In fact, God created time, according to Augustine. “What time could there be that you had not created?” he asks rhetorically of God. “You are the Maker of all times… No time is co-eternal with you.”[6]

Because time had a beginning, Augustine says, we should not ask what God was doing before creating.[7] That question is nonsensical, because there was no time before God created it. In fact, Augustine admits he can’t really talk about time at all. “If I wish to explain it to one who asks,” Augustine says, “I know not [how].”[8]

1 - Scholars propose various ways God might relate to time. Two proposals dominate. The divine timelessness view we find in Augustine says God experiences no succession of moments. God has no experience. Many use the word “eternal” to identify this view, although in popular vernacular, some say God is “outside time.”

2 - The other dominant way to think about God and time is often called the “everlasting” view.[9] It says God experiences a succession of moments, and this succession had no beginning and will have no end. But God experiences the ongoing flow of time. Past moments preceded each moment of God’s everlasting life, and God will experience moment by moment everlastingly into the future. The everlasting God is the “living God,” to use a common biblical phrase, in the sense of experiencing time’s ongoing succession.

In short, to say God is “eternal” means God is timeless or nontemporal. To say God is “everlasting” means God continually experiences and is pantemporal.

My Response to a Timeless God

It is difficult to align the dominant portrait of God in scripture with Augustine’s and classical theism’s portrait. The God described in the Old and New Testaments interacts with creatures, moment by moment. This involves time sequences. The living God of interactive love has “befores” and “afters,” making promises about what God will do and responding to what creatures have done. In the Bible, God plans for the future, talks about past events, and acts alongside creatures in the present. Biblical writers typically describe God as one who experiences time’s flow.

Old Testament writers use the word olam to describe God’s relation to time. This Hebrew word connotes long duration, antiquity, and futurity rather than timelessness. Olam describes the remote past or future, but also the notion of perpetuity.[10] When used with reference to God, olam better describes God as everlastingly experiencing rather than as timelessly not experiencing. Many scholars also say the timeless view of God is absent in the New Testament.[11]

According to this reasoning, passages that appear to support divine timelessness are better interpreted as identifying God’s faithfulness. God is lovingly faithful through time, not outside it (sic, "faithfulness"). C. R. Schoonhoven states the case bluntly: “In the understanding of the writers of the Old Testament and New Testament, eternity is not timelessness but endless time.”[12] The God of the Bible “lives in time,” says John Goldingay.[13] “Neither timelessness nor the simultaneity of past, present, and future,” says Terence Fretheim, “would represent the view of any biblical tradition.”[14]

An everlastingly time-full God interacts with time-full creatures in a time-full universe.

Divine Timelessness and Love

The timeless view presents problems for a theology of love. From everything we know, love requires time-full giving and receiving. Love is interactive and experiential, which implies influencing and being influenced moment by moment. The love of a timeless God would be nondurational, which makes no sense with love as we know it.

If the divine timelessness view is true, many biblical passages would be meaningless. John’s claim that we love because God first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19), for instance, would be incomprehensible. A timeless God doesn’t act prior to our actions. If God is nontemporal, John should have said we and God love simultaneously. Creatures would not need a timeless God to act first on their behalf.

Or take the biblical view that God redeems.[15] To say God, in love, redemptively responds to sin makes no sense if God is timeless. A timeless God has no time to redeem, because an eternal God does not respond to what occurs in time’s flow. Nicholas Wolterstorff puts it nicely: “God the Redeemer cannot be a God eternal.”[16] A redeeming God must be everlasting, which means responding moment-by-moment to creation.

One of the most profound expressions of divine love is forgiveness. God responds to sin by forgiving the offender. “If we confess our sins,” writes John, “he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins” (1 Jn. 1:9). But forgiving love makes no sense if God is timeless, because a nontemporal God cannot respond. Forgiveness is a time-oriented form of love.

Index

[1] Adolf Harnack, History of Dogma, Neil Buchanan, trans. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1897). Many others have made this argument. See Hubertus R. Drobner, “Christian Philosophy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 672–90; Helmut Koester, History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age in Introduction to the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995). Sometimes the Hellenism thesis is taken too broadly, as Paul Gavrilyuk has argued (The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004]).

[2] For examples, see James E. Dolezal, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011);H. J. McCann, Creation and the Sovereignty of God (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 20212).

[3] On this designation for classical theism, see Ryan T. Mullins, “Classical Theism,” in T & T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology, James M. Arcadi and James T. Turner, Jr., eds. (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 85-100; T. Williams, “Introduction to Classical Theism,” in J. Dillerand A. Kasher, eds., Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities (New York: Springer, 2013), 95–7.

[4] Augustine, On the Trinity, 5, 17; Confessions, 13, 38, 53; City of God, 11, 8; 22, 30.

[5] Augustine, Confessions, XI. xiii (16).

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Translations of scripture rarely indicate what view of time the writer holds. Biblical translators sometimes use the word “eternal” to describe what is likely the “everlasting” view and vice versa. Note, for instance, various translations of the conclusion to John 3:16. Some say God gives “eternal” life and other say “everlasting” life.

[10] F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon (London: Oxford University Press, 1906), 761.

[11] Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time, F. V. Filson, trans. (London:SCM, 1951[rev. ed. 1962]), 69-80. This is the conclusion of many New Testament scholars, including Eldon G. Ladd (A Theology of the New Testament [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974], 47).

[12] C.R. Schoonhoven, “Eternity” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, vol. 2, ed. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1982), 162-164.

[13] John Goldingay, Israel’s Gospel, Vol. 1 of Old Testament Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2003), 64.

[14] Terence E. Fretheim, God and the World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005), 303.

[15] Richard Holland Jr. offers a strong argument for why a timeless God cannot be incarnate. See God, Time, and the Incarnation (Eugene, Or.: Wipf and Stock, 2012).

[16] Nicholas Wolterstorff, “God Everlasting,” in God and the Good, ed. Clifton J. Orlebeke and Lewis B. Smedes (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975), 182.

We Worship a God of Love, Not a God of Wrath - Part 2

 

The Good Samaritan

Luke 10 (NASB) - 30 Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he encountered robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. 31 And by coincidence a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, 34 and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you.’ 36 Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” 37 And he said, “The one who showed compassion to him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

We Worship a God of Love,

Not a God of Wrath - Part 1

Part 2

by R.E. Slater

After years of looking at how to interpret the bible for living out Christian beliefs LOVE is the best hermeneutic I could find...

It is the easiest to teach and share...

The most sublime reason for engaging God at all...

Of a God who is fully, freely, and willingly, a God who LOVES...

Though classic theologies would teach a half-and-half God the bible, through Jesus in the NT, corrects those OT mis-theologies by removing religious man's fear, imperfect view of God, and need for violence...

Jesus taught us that God is loving, good, tender, beauty, and joy...

God is a God without wrath...

God is a without judgment...

God is a God without hell...

Our sin brings these darknesses upon us...

Not a God of atoning redemption who brings loving salvation to mankind...

A God who does not send sinners to hell but saves sinners from the hell of being themselves filled with wrath, hate, and the hot winds of religiousity...

A God who can change unfeeling, unloving, indifferent societies from being the worse possible versions of themselves...

A God who writes beauty and wellbeing everywhere...

A God who redeems our darkness to make all light...

A God who is not a God of darkness, wrath, or judgment...

But a God who is only, and always, a God of LOVE...

Through and through and through and through....

This is the God of the bible, not the wrathful God of religious men of the bible...

R.E. Slater

October 11, 2021

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Stories of Love & Compassion

by Hill Carmichael

A few years ago, a seminary professor of mine decided to use the parable of The Good Samaritan to make a point about how fear influences the decisions we make. He turned to Luke chapter 10 and began to read. I zoned out for a few minutes. I know – best seminary student ever and something you never want to hear a pastor say. But it’s a familiar story. One we’ve all heard a million times. In fact, it’s become somewhat of a cultural norm to point to the Good Samaritan in everyday life. I use it regularly with my boys. I imagine you’ve used it as well in an attempt to convey what it means to be kind in a hurting world. So, I took a little mental break in class. No harm, no foul, right?

.

After my professor finished reading, he looked up and said, “This is not a story about being nice. This is a story about the transformation of the world.” All of the sudden I was paying attention again. And then he went on to explain that Jesus is responding to a question by sharing that there are three types of people along the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.

.

The first type are the robbers, whose ethic suggests that “what is yours is mine at whatever cost”. And the robbers will take whatever they need through violence, coercion and whatever means necessary. These are the people who will leave us physically, mentally and emotionally beaten and bruised along life’s road with nothing left but our shallow breath.

The second type of person to walk along the dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho is represented by the priest and the Levite, whose ethic suggests that “what is mine is mine and I must protect it even if it means you get hurt in the process”. They aren’t bad people. Both the priest and the Levite are deeply respected in their communities. They very likely follow all the societal rules and norms. They sit on local boards. They pay their taxes on time and likely coach their son’s or daughter’s teams. They also show a great deal of love to those within their immediate communities, but because of what crossing the road to help might cost them, they put their head down and go about their business. So, without even recognizing it, they do more harm than good. Their focus is inward toward their needs and the needs of those who are most like them. It’s an ethic that leads the good and decent priest and Levite toward a life of valuing their reputations instead of relationships. And it often results with them choosing their own individual rights over the health and well-being of their neighbors. Unfortunately, this is the category where I fall most often throughout my life. And if we’re all being honest, I’d say it’s the category that most of us fall into more than we care to admit.

Then there is the Samaritan, whose ethic is love. And along one of the most dangerous roads in all of history seems to live by a code that says “what is mine is yours…if you have need of it”..

• My safety is yours…if you have need of it.

• My security is yours…if you have need of it.

• My resources are yours…if you have need of them.

• My health is tied to your health.

• My well-being is tied to your well-being.

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on this text often and once said that the real difference between the priest and the Levite from the Samaritan is the question that each must have asked. The priest and the Levite likely asked, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”. The Samaritan likely asked a very different question - “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

Fear has a way of making us all behave badly. It was true for the priest and the Levite, and it is still true for us today. When fear is the ethic of our lives, we tend to cling to our own safety and our own individual rights. When fear is the ethic of our lives, we retreat, mind our own business and rarely cross to the other side of the road to help. And when fear is the ethic of our lives, we end up placing our hope in mottos like “We Dare Defend Our Rights” or “Don’t Tread On Me” as opposed to Jesus’ greatest commandment to “Love God and Love Your Neighbor”.

It doesn’t take looking out the window for very long to know that we are all on a road somewhere between Jerusalem and Jericho right now. It’s dangerous out there. The heart-break and exhaustion are real. It’s not just the virus. It’s everything. It’s layers and layers of being beaten and bruised along a dry, hard road these past 18 months.

So, we have some choices to make. We can choose to make our decisions with an ethic of fear. And for a time, choices based on fear have a way of making us feel safe, but that is fleeting at best.

The other choice is to cross the road to help our neighbor. When we cross to the other side, we’ll get a glimpse of something Jesus talked an awful lot about. We’ll see what transformation looks like. We’ll finally understand who we are called to be. And best of all, we’ll finally encounter the Kingdom we’ve been longing for.

We Worship a God of Love, Not a God of Wrath - Part 1

We Worship a God of Love,

Not a God of Wrath - Part 1

by R.E. Slater

GOD

We worship a God of love, not a God of love and wrath.

God is one in His being and essence, not two.

His love instructs His responses.

His attributes.

His actions.

God is not a dipolarity. Not two psychic polar ends of the the same God.

God is love through and through and through and through.

Western Christianity requires a binary system good and bad, love and wrath, hope and despair.

But Christianity is a singularity through and through and through and through.

God is not dipolar. God is One.

THE BIBLE

If one reads a literal bible with a God of love and wrath this is classic theism.

If one reads the bible as a collection of narratives of people asserting who God is based upon their experiences than you're reading a bible full of conjectures where some are more right than others.

A non-literal bible is neither spiritualized, symbolized, or iconized in its reading. It's the common sense reading of ancient beliefs about God and God's action in the world. 

In this sense, we read the bible as redactors attempting to find the common thread of a complicated idea through the moral and mortal eyes of collected beliefs of ancient societies.

It is too easy to discount the bible as ancient Hebrew myths and legends. The bible is a collection of literary beliefs about God no more nor less than the religious collections of beliefs about God today.

Beliefs require redacting.

Beliefs are only true if we make them so. But many beliefs are untrue, harming, and inaccurate.

Theology is the art of deciphering beliefs - whether true or not; whether pointing to the right way or not.

Theology is not a literal reading of the bible but a redactive reading of the bible.

DIVINE INSPIRATION

Inspiration is God speaking to all kinds of people in all kinds of ways.

God didn't speak only to the premetal and metal ages (bronze, iron, steel) of the BC/BCE eras.

God has been speaking to all of creation... including mankind, throughout the entirety of it's existence.

Discerning the bible is no different from discerning the inspiration of preachers, podcasters, commentators, or public figures today.

They all claim to speak for God just as prophets, priests, kings, and biblical narratives did in the days of the bible.

But we are non-literal readers of people. We hear what they say but test their words and actions to know if what they say and do is honest and integral to who they are, what their intentions are, and how they wish to form the tomorrows of our societies.

The question must then be asked, "Who speaks for God?"

"How are they speaking for God?"

"What is the outcome of their words in actions and policies because of the God they speak of?"

God's speech today is no less than God's speech eons ago.

We call it revelatory, but I call it normal.

God is communicating everyday in everyway possible because humanity comes in a polyplural package of varieties with a variety of needs, wants, personal and social environments, experiences, and histories.

The Art of the Commonplace aptly describes the Inspiration of God to mankind today.

It is no less, nor no more, in the bible even as it is today.

They are the same.

But even more so! Today's Godly inspiration is magnified because of our lived experiences of religious beliefs.

God's inspiration today may therefore be the more clearer with better theology today.

THEOLOGY

God is One.

God is Love.

God is speaking today as God did in yesteryear.

Where the bible people saw God as a God of wrath based upon their cultural upbring, religions, and beliefs, Jesus comes along and shows us a God of Love, Hope, regeneration, and beauty.

When Jesus speaks, He may speak to the people's beliefs. But when He speaks and acts, Jesus always shows us a God of love, love, love, love.

Process Theology rejects Western Christianity's classic theistic portrayals of a dipolar God.

Process Theology tells of a God of love alone without wrath.

A God who speaks into a world of agency where wrath and evil result from the misuse, abuse, and inaction of freewill.

The wrath and evil this world's experiences are not of God but of sin.

Process Theology therefore speaks of a panentheistic world where God is Savior, Redeemer, Reclaimer, Restorer, Lover, Hope, Beauty, and Joy.

A Process Christian rests in these truths:

That God is a God of Love.

God is not sin, evil, corruptible, contemptible, or horrible.

God is not wrath, hell, or judgment.

God is LOVE.

I worship therefore a God of LOVE.

R.E. Slater

October 10, 2021

Bart Ehrman - Nope. Jesus is Not Yahweh.

Nope. Jesus is Not Yahweh.

https://ehrmanblog.org/nope-jesus-is-not-yahweh/

by Bart Ehrman

April 17, 2021

In my last post I pointed out that some conservative evangelical Christians (maybe others? These are the ones I know about) claim that Jesus, in the Bible, is actually to be understood as Yahweh. I think that’s completely wrong, and in this post I want to explain why.

Again, if someone knows better than I do, let me know. But I’ve never even heard the claim (let alone a discussion of it) until very recently. I wonder if there are any early Christian theologians who have this view? Or even later ones, prior to recent times?

It is not the view of traditional Christian theology, at least as I learned it once upon a time. It was certainly not the view of the earliest Christians; and is not a view set forth in the Bible. The Bible, of course, does not have the Trinity, but when Christianity formulated the doctrine of the trinity, the Father was Yahweh, and Christ was his son. At least that’s what Christians who read their Old Testament said.

Of course the name Yahweh is not found in the NT at all, since it is a Hebrew word and the NT is written in Greek. The NT does not give God a personal name.

When Christians wanted to find another divine being in the OT to identify as Christ, they went to passages like Psalm 110: “The LORD said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” Based on what I said in my previous post, you can reconstruct who is talking to whom here (notice the first LORD is in caps and the second not): “YHWH said to Adonai….”

In interpreting that passage, Christians asked: who is it that elevated Christ (“our Lord”) to his right hand? Obviously God the Father. And so God the Father is YHWH, and the one elevated to his right hand is “the Lord Jesus.” Christians appealed to this verse in reference to Christ a good deal — it is is one of the most common OT verses found in the NT, quoted six times (see Matt. 22:4) and referred to more indirectly possibly nine (e.g. Eph. 1:20). These Christians were not seeing Jesus as Yahweh but as his son whom he exalted to his right hand.

Christians such as the second century Justin Martyr also found references to the pre-incarnate Christ in Old Testament traditions of the “Angel of the LORD” who was God’s (Yahweh’s) chief representative on earth delivering God’s message with God’s full authority in the stories of the Patriarchs, e.g., in Genesis and Exodus. Who was this mysterious angel? For Christians he was Christ before he was born of the virgin Mary.

I wonder if the confusion among some evangelicals about the Christian understanding of Christ (when they say he is Yahweh) is because the “Angel” of the LORD is so fully representative of YHWH himself that he is sometimes called YHWH after he is clearly identified NOT as YHWH but his angel. Why would he be called YHWH if he was YHWH’s messenger? It would be kind of like if a messenger of the king comes to you and orders you to do something, you tell your neighbors that the “king” has told you to do something. Well, actually, his messenger did, but he was so fully representative of the king that his words were the king’s.

This happens when the Angel of the LORD speaks to Moses from the burning bush in the famous passage of Exodus 3, as you can see. But the early Christians, so far as I know, were clear on the matter: this was Christ, coming in his pre-incarnate state as God’s chief representative, the Angel of the LORD, who was given such authority that he could be considered as having the full status of the LORD even though he was merely his angel – the view that Christians took of Christ.

Some modern Christians may misinterpret the Christ poem in Philippians 2 this way; I talked about the poem at length a month or so ago on the blog (just do a word search for it). When Christ is exalted after his death, God gives him “the name that is above every name” so that all creation will worship and confess him. That is a reference to Isaiah 45 where Yahweh alone has the name above every name so that all worship and confess him alone.

Possibly these modern Christians are thinking that Christ therefore must have been given the name YHWH, and therefore he *is* YHWH. But the passage doesn’t seem to mean that. The ultimate LORD of all, YHWH, is the one who *gives* Jesus the name that is above all others. It’s worth noting that in this very passage, when God gives Jesus his “name,” it does not mean that he’s made a name switch for Jesus. On the contrary, the passage says that the name to which everyone will bow in worship and confess is *Jesus*! (Not YHWH): “That at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.” Jesus’ own name is exalted.

Then how did YHWH give him a name above *all* others? Surely that would be YHWH’s own name, right? Well, yes and no. He did give him the name, but not in the literal sense of “now you are YHWH” but in the biblical sense I’ve been describing (“you now have the full authority of YHWH; what you say and do is equal to the authority of YHWH saying and doing it.”). Jesus now, at his exaltation (not before!) is given equal authority as the LORD himself. He now has the highest name/authority, equal with God. But that does not mean he *is* God/YHWH. Being equal is different from being identical.

Another analogy: When someone says to you, “Open up, in the name of the King” or “in the name of the Law” – the “name” means the “authority.” And that must be what it means in Philippians 2, since the literal name is still Jesus, but the authority the name has is now the authority of God Almighty, Yahweh himself.

And so I simply don’t think it’s right that Christian theology understands Jesus as Yahweh. Well, I guess some Christians do, since that appears to be what they think! I wonder when they started thinking it….

Supporting Hawk Nelson's Frontman, Jonathan Steingard's, Uncertainty and Doubt

Supporting Faith,

Doubt and Uncertainty

by R.E. Slater

June 1, 2020

About nine years ago (2010-11) I went through a deep despair in my Christian faith. I knew going into it I would need to let everything go in order to see more clearly beyond my faith background and experiences. Little did I imagine how deep this would become or how titanic the struggle would be in the lost wilderness of my experience.

During that time I had no one to pray with me. No one who could guide me or talk with me about this chasm which had ripped open my spirit. I was utterly, utterly, alone. What made it worse was my sense that God was not there. I felt this intensely and it sadden me.

But at the same time God's Spirit was me. To this day I can't explain the difference only that God seemed very closed off from me; His heavens like brass to my prayers. And yet, in a paradoxical twist to my unwanted dive into the underworld I felt the presence of His Spirit leading and guiding.

I can't explain it. I can only say that I felt no need to leave this unearthly wilderness. My spirit told me to stay in it. Learn from it. To take my time to explore, ask questions, many questions, and to walk as much as this spiritual darkness as I could. Only when God said to leave would I leave. Not before.

And so, for nearly a year, I lived through very dark and spiritually difficult times. What I began to learn is that my faith foundation was solid but that it's particulars needed to be re-weighed, re-envisioned, and brought into the contemporary world of today. It required letting go of what I thought were most central to my faith and placing into that void a new center to help guide me through everyone of God's Spirit-ordained tasks lying ahead of me.

It was a time when I could reimagine everything I had known at a very mature age (55y) filled with many, many ministries, community services, church lay ministries, working, raising a family, learning to partner well with my spouse, and a host of other activities, central around them was my hunger to read and know what I hadn't learned in my undergraduate and graduate years.

The Lord had always challenged me to strive in His Word, to express it well in everyday living, to learn from loss (there have been many), from relationships (many again) and community activity of sundry sorts. Looking back, the Lord was preparing me to loss my faith that it might be regained again a hundredfold.

So I'm glad I allowed God to lead me, against my wishes, and quite unexpectantly, into His wilderness. It was not mine alone, but a land that He had graced and walked Himself. I saw His footsteps everywhere. His insights and teachings upon the very ground I tread. I was following after my Lord, being led by His Spirit, unto a new calling I did not want.

The burden which had grown into me was that of anger. Anger that all my preacher contacts and Christian friends were unwilling to enter the lands of unfaith. Their absence upon its desert spaces only had room for one. I thought these to be far more capable and prepared them myself. They had the tools (not that I didn't) and the personal vocations to be able to do this. And yet they entered not. It was left for me alone.

As such, I was angry that it had to be my little voice to speak up for the gospel of the Lord in a way which was not clear at all. Not until I had entered into these Spirit-filled spaces and then be lifted out of them as quickly by the Lord as I had been led into them. I cannot explain. But after that I knew what had to be undone. What had to be unsaid. And what I must do when deconstructing my fundamental and evangelical faith for a more relevant faith which might reveal the Lord more clearly than all my biblical knowledge I had obtained a mere 11 months earlier.

I latter learned what I went through is commonly termed a process of uncertainty and doubt. Its the bogey man term of the Christian world. It is the place where fallen sinners go into a personal hell of agnosticism or atheism never be delivered out of again. Though I knew of this things, and how people may look from the outside casting aspersions upon the fallen, my own experience only taught me to rejoice along the spiritually hard paths. And this I did as I struggled with the Lord for as long as He wanted me there.

When I think of people like Jonathan Steingard, the frontman for the Christian band, Hawk Nelson, and his recent admission to leaving the Christian faith, I feel only sorrow. But not in the way you would think. No, sorrow as I would for anyone in public ministry with high expectations placed upon them. that they did not have the personal space as I had to collapse into darkness with no one's care or worry.

What I had that so many in ministry do not is a personal place to go to see the Lord afresh. A hidden cleft in the rock; a lonely trail through burning brushlands; a garden undisrupted and without foes and enemies seeking my soul. When our brothers and sisters lose faith it is essential that they do if they are to find again in whatever way the Lord is leading them.

We cannot know how deliverance will come, if ever it does, but we must love, guide, and pray with our wounded warriors who may never really have had a time in their lives to ask the hard questions about their faith. My own testimony says that it often comes only after a long time of service in ministry, in study and prayer. Had it come sooner when I was younger I may not have had the ability to course-correct under the Spirit's guidance.

Jonathan Steingard is a young man, a young faith, and a faith disciple. I, myself, chose to allow him his time of wilderness walking. What will become of that walk we do not know. But I pray for God's goodness and blessing along his forbidden journey that in what ever way becomes of him the Lord continues to be His guide and stay. Amen? Yeah, verily, Amen.

R.E. Slater

June 1, 2020

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Jon Steingard (Hawk Nelson) REJECTS Christianity

Welcome to the Daily Disciple with Isaac David

Jonathan Steingard, Christian singer,

reveals he no longer believes in God

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/27/entertainment/jonathan-steingard-atheist/index.html

by Lisa Respers France, CNN

May 27, 2020

(CNN) Jonathan Steingard, frontman for the Christian rock band Hawk Nelson, has gone public with some personal news. In a recent lengthy post on his Instagram account, the singer shared that he no longer believes in God.

Jonathan Steingard, singer for Christian rock band Hawk Nelson, says he no longer believes in God.

"I've been terrified to post this for a while - but it feels like it's time for me to be honest," he wrote in the caption to his multi-image post of his statement. "I hope this is not the end of the conversation, but the beginning."

In his note Steingard explained how he came to his latest view:

"After growing up in a Christian home, being a pastor's kid, playing and singing in a Christian band, and having the word 'Christian' in front of most of the things in my life - I am now finding that I no longer believe in God," he wrote in his statement.

"The last few words of that sentence were hard to write. I still find myself wanting to soften that statement by wording it differently or less specifically - but it wouldn't be as true."

According to Steingard, "The process of getting to that sentence has been several years in the making."

He wrote that he started by privately processing his doubts and then sharing them in conversation with some close friends.

To his surprise, Steingard said, he found that his unbelief was shared by others who also had grown up in church, but who -- like him -- feared "losing everything if they're open about it."

Steingard said he felt like the timing was right to share given that his band is currently sidelined because of the pandemic.

His fellow band members supported the singer in a statement to USA Today, saying that Hawk Nelson's mission is to "inspire and encourage all people with the truth that God is FOR them and not against them."

"God is still FOR Jon & he still matters," the statement read. "Why? Because that truth doesn't change just because we question it."

Hawk Nelson - Drops In the Ocean (Lyric Video)

Jon Steingard of Hawk Nelson Plays the Crying Game

[Jon Steingard of Hawk Nelson is a new father to his son,

"little G" Gray Steingard. Will Jon know the differences

between his son's crying sounds?]

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

Hawk Nelson frontman Jonathan Steingard

Jon Steingard: From His Bandmates:

Daniel, Micah, David

One of our best friends, one with whom we have walked, worked and lived alongside for 20 + years revealed some of his innermost feelings on his faith journey this past week.

Our mission as Hawk Nelson has always been to inspire and encourage all people with the truth that God is FOR them and not against them. In that message’s most simple and purest form, that THEY matter.

So now we turn that truth towards one of our own. That God is still FOR Jon & he still matters. Why? Because that truth doesn’t change just because we question it.

How we treat one another when they are at a different stage in their journey based on their life experiences is part of a bigger conversation. We are called to love one another unconditionally, as God loves us. We should also encourage and challenge one another in our Faith, seeking truth.

Are we the authors of our own salvation and eternity? Has God provided a way to salvation for us through Jesus? These are the questions that we each must ask and explore.

In the Bible (Romans 8:38) Paul writes, “… I am convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love… neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow - not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below - indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The same Lord is Lord of all, and gives richly to all who call on Him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Ever thankful and grateful for how God has used this band, the music and the relationships and how He continues to do so.

Daniel, Micah, David

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My Response to Evangelicalism's
Reaction

by R.E. Slater

May 27, 2020

Jonathan Steingard's expression of unbelief is an instance of honesty meeting doubt and uncertainty. Though it will lead him to the sidelines of institutionalized Christiandom it may also lead him to a well-needed space for faith introspection and revival which many other public Christian faith figures have taken in recovering their faith from the untruths taught by the church, or the unChristlike actions seen within the faith.

From such courage God can do great things in hearts seeking His love over other Christian beliefs disclaiming God's love in favor of practices, attitudes, and errant doctrines proclaiming God's searing judgment. I find in Jonathan's act an act of hopefulness to such a one brave enough to question his or her's faith and the teachings he or she have been raised under.

I took such a journey not too many years back myself only to discover God in uplifted and broader ways beyond my "conservative" biases. If we don't ask the right questions or challenge who we are then our faith cannot be lifted out of its misdirections. For many, its simply finding a more real Jesus culture away from the Christian secularism that too often surrounds the evangelical church. They may call it unbelief, but its more an unbelief in a Christian culture which has produced trumpian doctrines of lies, gracelessness, slander, and oppression.

Embracing empire culture is certain death to the church and its mission. I cannot fault Christian celebs who see this so starkly as to walk away from its chaining shackles. There is a better way. That way is Jesus. And those Christians and churches who chose Jesus must let go of the graceless teachings which bind them so that they may see God afresh again.

This then is the Spirit work of doubt and uncertainty. A process where the Master Potter remolds his pottery in shapes of freedom, declaration, and missional zeal for the Gospel of Christ.

R.E. Slater

May 27, 2020

Addendum

by Grant Alford

May 28, 2020

I completely agree with your assessment, and it seems in such contradiction to another posting of the same news item and the "Christian" response that seems to have all the pat answers and 'alarm'. My observation there was that the Evangelicals seem to write these people off as some kind of "Demas" who has responded to the siren voices of "the world, the flesh and the devil" so they can pursue some kind of hedonism or immorality or wealth.

My sympathies are with these who honestly and intellectually can no longer accept the "God" that they have been indoctrinated into believing.

The Evangelicals have sold a false bill of sale.

They offer a Four Spiritual Laws easy-believism, or a prosperity gospel.

They present an "Omnipotent" God who could DO ANYTHING and these ones who are "quitting the faith" wonder why, if God can do anything, has He not stopped the maniacs and dictators and perverts and sickness.

They talk about some kind of personal relationship in terms that just never materialize: "I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses, and he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own".

They speak as though they just had a voice from heaven and a warm hug and everything is hunky dory.

These faiths and churches are the ones who are bearing false witness; who sit on their blessed assurance having never faced any doubts. 

I liken such faiths to the "cute" 6 or 7 year old child star (of the faith) who sings Amazing Grace, "How sweet the sound that saved a WRETCH like me." To me these faith expressions are no different than well trained parrots who mouth words which have no meaning. 

Or, they have "received Jesus into their hearts" and according to their various theologies they do so because they are the elect or children of the covenant, and if they question or quit their covenanted faith it must be because they never TRULY believed in the first place. [Circles in circles in circles of faith logicisms, as they say.]

I, too, marvel that the alarmists seem to think that the same honest intellectual questions are likely to end now that they have "walked away from (that) faith". I expect that it is these sincere ones who will pursue the options and may well be the leaders in a movement that will proclaim JESUS as the Saviour rather than the Trumpian churches, or some MAGA madness, seeking to establish some earthly kingdom (sic, Empire Christianity, or Christian Reconstructivism).

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

An image of the proposed Temple for Atheists in the City of London, as called
for  by Alain de Botton. | Photograph: Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson

Alain de Botton's Atheist Temple is a

Nice Idea, but a Defunct One

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/02/alain-de-botton-atheist-temple-defunct

by John Gray

February 2, 2012

Alain de Botton has reinvigorated the conversation on religion. His new book moves away from the tedious debates of recent years to a more reflective consideration of the role of religion in sustaining values many people share.

Religion as a human phenomenon is too vast, pervasive and complicated to be discussed in simple binary terms of belief and unbelief. The evangelical atheists of the past few years may not be notable for sceptical doubt, but religious practitioners are often quite uncertain in their beliefs. De Botton is writing for the sceptics, whether they belong in any religion or not. It's a welcome shift of focus.

Atheists who aren't bigoted enemies of religion will agree that it has made many positive contributions. They are less likely to accept that they should have a religion of their own – complete with a temple in the City – as de Botton goes on to propose. Establishing atheist places of worship isn't exactly a new idea. As de Botton himself notes, an ambitious programme of atheist church-building was part of the Religion of Humanity, invented by the 19th-century French thinker Auguste Comte.

An obsessive, and at times unbalanced, personality, Comte – a fervent believer in phrenology, like many atheists at the time – developed an elaborate daily ritual that included tapping the forehead at the points where science had supposedly located the impulses of progress, altruism and order. He also created a "virgin mother of humanity", based on a married woman whom he had fallen in love with. When she died, he appointed her grave a place of pilgrimage.

Such eccentricities were not destined to last, but a number of atheist temples were established – not only in Paris, Comte's base, but in Rio de Janeiro, New York, Liverpool and London, where a church of humanity opened on Lamb's Conduit Street in 1870. In line with Comte's creed, these were temples where disciples could worship the new supreme being – humanity. As far as I know, none of the buildings is used for religious purposes today, though the Brazilian church seems to have been active until some time late in the 20th century.

When he proposes building a temple for unbelievers, de Botton is reinventing a wheel that never really turned. The fad for atheist temples lasted for perhaps 60 years, while places of worship dedicated to something bigger than humanity have been around for many millennia. There is a nice irony here. For all his loony notions, Comte was more intelligent than most of the atheists who came after him. He saw clearly that religion is an enduring human need that cannot be denied. Yet despite the formative influence it had on writers and philosophers such as George Eliot and John Stuart Mill, Comte's religion of humanity disappeared leaving hardly a trace – just a handful of sites, whose history as places of worship practically nobody remembers.

Even if Comte's church was ephemeral, he was right in predicting that religion would not die out. The world is awash with formless religiosity, much of it flowing through non-traditional channels. During most of the last century, politics was the principal vehicle for religion. Communism and the cult of the free market are examples of large, flimsy ideas being turned into articles of faith.

Today, faith is more often channelled through science. Not only the pseudo-science of crop circle enthusiasts and UFO cultists, but genuine advances in science and technology are being used to promote hopes and dreams that are quintessentially religious. People who believe that the human mind can be uploaded into virtual space and so be immune to death are recycling the fantasies of 19th-century spiritualists, who also argued that their beliefs were based on science.

Comte wanted his new religion to be based on science, so the temples of humanity pointed only as far as science could reach. That is why his new church failed. The very idea of a science-based religion is an absurdity. The value of religion is that it points beyond anything that can be known by the methods of science, showing us that a mystery would remain even if everything could be finally explained. The heart of religion isn't belief, but something more like what Keats described as negative capability: "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason".

Rather than trying to invent another religion surrogate, open-minded atheists should appreciate the genuine religions that exist already. London is full of sites – churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship – that are evocative of something beyond the human world. Better spend the money that is being raised for the new temple on religious buildings that are in disrepair than waste it on a monument to a defunct version of unbelief.