Thomas Jay Oord - 7 Models of Divine Sovereignty

Models of God’s Action

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/models-of-gods-action

by Thomas Jay Oord

March 1, 2020

A few podcast hosts have asked me to “locate” my theology in relation to other views of God. This is natural, and I like to compare views of God. Comparisons help me explain my Uncontrolling Love of God theology, which I also call Essential Kenosis.

In my book The Uncontrolling Love of God, I explore seven models of God and sketch out their implications. I don’t claim they are the only possible models. But they represent major options for understanding divine action in Christian theology. Here are the models…

In the book, I describe in some detail how each model of God portrays creaturely randomness, free will, goodness, evil, and God’s love and power. Below I’ve excerpted descriptions of each as they address evil. Find a fuller account in The Uncontrolling Love of God.

Amazon Link

1 - God is the Omnicause

This model says God causes all things. What appears to be random or activities of free-will creatures are in accordance with God’s will, in such a way that God ultimately makes them happen, as they happen. God is in complete control.

According to this model, all occurrences are part of the “secret providence of God,” to quote John Calvin. “The great works of the Lord are carefully crafted,” says Calvin, “so that in a wonderful and ineffable way nothing happens contrary to his will, even that which is contrary to his will!” Paul Kjoss Helseth, a contemporary advocate of the model, calls it “divine omnicausality.”

This model sounds to critics like God promotes sin and evil. It is hard – in fact, impossible for me – to believe God perfectly loves while also being the ultimate cause of every rape, torture, disease, and terrorist act. To me, this model makes little, if any, sense.

2 - God Empowers and Overpowers

This model of God is most common among “average” Christian believers. It says God creates and empowers humans by giving them free will, at least sometimes. But God sometimes overpowers human freedom or interrupts the causal regularities of existence. God’s will is sometimes permissive and sometimes controlling.

Some versions of Arminian theology embrace the God Empowers and Overpowers model. Arminian theologian, Jack Cottrell, says that “even though [God] bestowed relative independence on his creatures, as Creator he reserved the right to intervene if necessary. Thus he is able not only to permit human actions to occur, but also to prevent them from occurring if he so chooses.” This allows God, says Cottrell, to “remain in complete control.”

Those who embrace this model typically say God does not cause evil. They usually blame human freedom gone awry, chance, or demonic forces. But they believe God permits or allows evil. After all, the God in this model has controlling power.

Although this model may allow advocates to say God is not the source of evil, it makes God responsible for failing to prevent evil. It’s hard to believe God loves perfectly when God can prevent genuine evil. This God may not cause evil but is culpable for failing to prevent it.

3 - God is Voluntarily Self-Limited

This model starts with the premise God essentially has the kind of power to create something from nothing and control others. Despite having the capacity to be controlling, God made a voluntary decision to give freedom to at least some creatures. In doing so, God voluntarily gave up total control but can intervene to control if God desires.

John Polkinghorne is an advocate of the Voluntarily Self-Limited God model. God’s “act of creation involves a voluntary limitation,” says Polkinghorne, “in allowing the other to be.” This means “God does not will the act of a murderer or the destructive force of an earthquake but allows both to happen in a world in which divine power is deliberately self-limited to allow causal space for creatures.”

This model says God could withdraw, override, or fail to offer freedom/agency to creatures. God could momentarily overturn the regularities/natural laws of the universe. But God rarely does so.

I can think of numerous evil events a voluntarily self-limited God should have prevented. This God should momentarily become un-self-limited to prevent those evils. A perfectly loving God should and would prevent genuine evil, if it were possible. Consequently, I cannot believe the God described in this model loves perfectly.

4 - God is Essentially Kenotic / Uncontrolling Love

The God is Essentially Kenotic model says God’s eternal nature is uncontrolling love.

Because of love, God necessarily provides freedom/agency to creatures in each moment. God works by empowering and inspiring creatures of all levels of complexity toward well-being. And God necessarily upholds the regularities of the universe, because those regularities derive from God’s eternal nature of love. God is not a dictator, mysteriously behind the scenes pulling strings.

Although this model says God never totally controls others, it claims God sometimes acts miraculously in noncoercive ways. Miracles occur when God and creatures work in tandem. God providentially guides and calls all creation toward love and beauty.

God’s nature of love logically precedes God’s sovereign will. Kenosis derives from God’s eternal and unchanging nature of love and not from voluntary divine decisions. And because God’s nature is love, God always gives freedom, agency, and self-organization to creatures and sustains the regularities of nature.

This model says God can’t prevent singlehandedly, because God’s love is always uncontrolling. God loves everyone and everything, so God can’t control anyone or anything. I explain this view in The Uncontrolling Love of God and God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils.

5 - God Sustains as a Steady State Force

This model says God exists as an impersonal force creating and sustaining all creation. God’s steady-state influence never violates the integrity of the universe. The divine presence never varies, and God never interacts in give-and-receive relationships.

Paul Tillich advocates this model of God. “It is an insult to the divine holiness to treat God as a partner with whom one collaborates,” says Tillich, “or as a superior power whom one influences by rites and prayers.”

Overall, this view affirms divine constancy. God sustains the natural laws, creates conditions for creaturely freedom, and makes chance possible. But it fails to offer support to the idea God is personal, interactive, and involved in relations with creation. It fails to give hope that God will act any differently to help when we encounter evil.

6 - God is Initial Creator and Current Observer

This model says that after creating the universe, God did not stick around or stay involved. God created all things, set natural laws in motion, and has since withdrawn. God is now, to quote Bette Midler, “watching us from a distance.”

Historians identify several thinkers during the Enlightenment with this model. It typically goes under the name “deism.” Deist Michael Corey says, God’s creative activity “is confined to the initial moments of creation,” and afterward, God “allowed [the first atoms and molecules] to develop on their own entirely according to natural cause-and-effect processes.”

Corey believes “a God who continually has to intervene to accomplish His creative purposes is clearly inferior… in the same way that a car-maker who is clever enough to design self-building cars is far more impressive than one who has to be directly involved during each step of the creative process.”

Putting God’s action only at initial creation means this model has difficulty explaining how an omnipotent God would have created a world with so much evil. One wonders: is this the best God can create? To use Corey’s illustration, Couldn’t a really clever car-maker design self-building cars that function more reliably?

This model offers no hope God acts to overcome evil eventually or console those in pain now.

7 -God’s Ways are Not Our Ways

Versions of this final model vary widely. Each shares the fundamental belief we ultimately have no idea what God’s actions are like. No language, no analogy, and no concepts can tell us the nature of divine providence. All is mystery.

The technical word sometimes used for this model is “apophatic theology.” It says we cannot describe God or divine activity positively. We can only talk about what God is not.

This model of God obviously cannot provide a satisfying answer to why a loving and powerful God fails to prevent evil.

Advocates of most other models of God resort to this mystery card when their views make little sense. “Remember: God’s ways are not our ways,” they say. In fact, the “God’s Ways are Not Our Ways” view is not probably a model of God’s action at all. But I included it, because many who talk about God and evil eventually appeal to this model.

Conclusion

This is not an exhaustive list of models of God. But I consider these the main ones. These brief sketches give a taste of what each thinks about God’s actions in relation to evil.

I have argued in various publications that the “God is Essentially Kenotic – Uncontrolling Love” model best accounts for evil. This brief essay shows how this model compares to other models of God.

Amazon Link

Catherine Keller - How to think about the pandemic

CV19 link

It awaits us to determine how we will react to crises in our lives

always with God as our helper as we work towards resolution.

- Catherine Keller, "How to think about the pandemic"

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Keller_(theologian)

A Letter from Catherine Keller

https://medium.com/@dostlund_42808/a-letter-from-catherine-keller-1930029c4914

April 2, 2020

Dear Ones,

Particularly, in this letter, ones who claim some seriously biblical, or explicitly theological, orientation. Amidst this pandemic, ones who may be wondering….

Is God punishing us?

We — the human species — certainly deserve it; we have gone way out of kilter in our most basic creaturely responsibilities. We’re out of balance, way out of sync with the wisdom, the Word, of the creation. We have taken our materiality for granted, in utter ingratitude. Isn’t this pandemic, and maybe worse to come, just what we have coming to us?

Is God testing us?

We surely are being tested, tried, exposed in our multiple vulnerabilities — challenged at our edges, both spiritual and physical. And that is not just as individuals and families and local communities. It is also our systems of life together, our economics and our politics, that are being tested. Some are failing worse than others. And our big national system is so far failing

big-time. But are we all together tested? By God?

Is God teaching us a lesson?

If so, we better learn it fast. So often, we have let the most aggressive and greedy portions of our species organize our material interactions, our global economies. Not that they asked our permission. But we who have less power have ceded much of the life of the planet, local and global, to the systems of power. We blame the powerful, but we do not reclaim the power. We have much to learn…so terrifyingly much.

Is God fixing the world?

Our carbon emissions are coming down, with millions of flights grounded. If emissions keep coming down, we might just prevent that 1.5C rise in global temperature. And pandemic can also bring down population levels, which have grown beyond sustainability. After all, the Bible teaches that it took the Great Flood to bring about a fresh start for humanity — and everything else. Almost total decline of the human population and the nonhuman ones too. Later, it took ten plagues to make Pharaoh “let my people go.” Huge collateral damage to the innocent, like Egyptian children and non-Hebrew slaves! Is our present plague the way God — like it or not — is fixing our world?

For many folks who find solace and guidance from their biblical faith, those questions must somehow be answered ‘yes.’ And this sense of divine intervention may lead them to do good, moral things. They can find biblical passages to read literally, to rip out of their context, to ignore millennia of history between an ancient text and our context, and find this kind of God who is directly and violently punishing, telling, testing, fixing.

I respect anyone’s sincere faith. But faith can get trapped in misguided interpretations. So, in the interest of the truth without which faith is an illusion — let me answer those four questions I posed.

Is the pandemic God’s punishment?

The coronavirus is having punishing effects, largely on the most vulnerable and least deserving. But “punishment” is supposed to signify justice. And yet in this and in most of the plagues of world history, the poor and the frail are the main victims. Doesn’t this make them the objects of a horribly unjust punishment? Besides, if God were the direct controlling agent of history, surely such unjust side-effects, such sloppy collateral damage, could have been avoided! Indeed, our getting to this point would never have been necessary.

God, in scripture, wants justice. So…no. God is not deploying the coronavirus to whip, execute, or otherwise punish us. Not even just to send us to our rooms like naughty children. Besides — isn’t punishment far too crude a notion for what we call God’s will?

Well then, testing us? That isn’t so punitive.

No, it’s not as punitive. But do you mean that God designed the pandemic to try our faith or our character, individual or collective? Again…no. Yes, our capacities are being put to the test as a society, as communities, as individuals — but not because God has selected this means to make folk grow better or stronger through suffering. Often, this “test” will have the opposite effect: we may grow weaker and die. Or we will fail the moral test and stock up for mere survival. Or the political system will pour maximum resources into reviving the economic system — rather than into the screaming needs of the suddenly jobless.

But then, isn’t God teaching us a lesson? Teaching us that we are all interdependent with each other — with all creatures, even with viruses?

No. Not if you mean that God has designed the disease to teach the lesson. It is too little too late, on the front of climate justice. And it is too much too fast, in the assault upon the weak. So, even if, improbably, we do collectively, globally — maybe even nationally — learn a great lesson about our togetherness as creatures, it won’t be because God has decided on pedagogy by plague.

Like it or not, you may insist: this crisis may be how the omnipotent God is now intervening to fix a sinful world. Don’t you believe that the Lord works to repair His world — whatever it takes?

Oh, I do think God works always for tikkun olam, the repair of the world. But no! Not by big destructive omnipotent interventions. No, God is no Big Fixer. The story of the flood powerfully narrates the radical new start that is possible after systemic human ugliness and tremendous natural disaster. And let us remember it is a highly condensed story, as is that of the Exodus — not a natural or literal history. Besides, the repair of the world in the Bible is a work of deep care, not careless destruction. The flood and the plagues, including COVID-19, do not care.

The God of Jesus, however, cares infinitely. And precisely for that reason, that God cannot, must not, be understood any longer as “in control,” as the omnipotent Lord who either always already determines all that is (in which case the world shouldn’t need repair in the first place); or as the One who occasionally steps in Big Time to Fix it.

Yet that is a big debate. “Theodicy” names an old theological argument about how to justify God — as just — in the face of unfair suffering. Christians often just go for the afterlife answer: whatever happens here, God will reward His own in heaven. As to this world, with its COVID-19 and other plagues — they assume it is somehow God’s will that we suffer (as punishment, as test, as lesson, as fix) and, well, it doesn’t matter anyway because I and my own are going to heaven when we die. The big supernaturalist shrug of — whatever.

So, no, I do not think that even the heavenly “out” works to relieve us of our collective human responsibility to be and do this world — better. Now.

Well, then, how is God working? Or are you saying that “God” is just a delusion of my wishful thinking or my unthinking tradition?

No, not that either! It is because we inherit some delusions about God that I offer this theological exercise. Those notions that God is an all-powerful force of control — always or when “He” deems fit — may actually obstruct God’s work in the world and in each of us. And it might be that God’s work in the world depends upon our work — precisely because the mystery called “God” is not a projection of sovereign dominance. Not something, someone, that works by top-down control.

If no, no, no, and no — how, then?

How about — by creative collaboration with the creatures?

The coronavirus is not sent as a divine punishment. But something not unrelated: in this crisis, God may well be calling us all to account, holding us responsible for the wellbeing of our world. It doesn’t mean God willed this crisis to happen — or any of the horrors and holocausts of history. It means that nothing happens apart from God, because God isn’t something that exists

apart from the world: the world is a part of God, and God participates in each part of the world. God feels and suffers it all — with us. But God also calls to us to face the meaning of this punishing plague, to face the interdependence of us all — an interdependence that our civilization conceals from us, that this contagion reveals to us.

God did not create the pandemic in order to test any of us; God didn’t create the pandemic! But perhaps we are being tested. Not by the torments of a bully God, but by invitation to rise to the occasion. To find the courage and the care that will sustain us.

And as a species, are we not being tested — to see if we might come to terms with our creaturely connections to each member of our species and to all the other species of the planet? If we fail the test, it is not that God will punish us but rather the consequences of our collective actions. It is the consequences of our actions and inactions that will bring us down. If not to the virus, then to the catastrophic effects of global warming. Coming soon. But isn’t the ultimate biblical test always and only love? If we rise to the occasion, it is because we grow in that dauntless love that casts out fear.

God is not spreading the coronavirus to teach us a lesson. The disease is the effect of imbalances between culture and nature. In this case, maltreatment of wild animals and systemic disregard for environmental regulations triggered the outbreak. But maybe God is trying to teach a lesson in and through the pandemic. Doesn’t God mean — the one who is always calling, inviting, us each and all? Trying to teach, to inspire, in the midst of whatever is happening?

Why then doesn’t the divine voice break through better? So many who declare themselves God’s spokespersons teach anything but that love — anything but the biblical love of the least, of the stranger, of every other. How can they confine love to their own community, race, religion, kind? How do they manage to drown out God’s teaching? Perhaps, because it comes in such “a still, small voice.” Might this pandemic, demanding so much sudden solitude, give us a chance to enter that stillness?

No, God is not going to fix the world through this or any disaster. So how can we hope for repair of the world? Certainly not by waiting for God to do it for us. Not by ignoring the spirit of wisdom that whispers, that breathes, within each of us always. Each of us individually.

But each, only in our all-togetherness — human, animal, vegetable, mineral. That togetherness takes on new meanings now, in all the layers of planetary interdependence, deadly or benign, oppressive or just, at home or in public. Now, as we learn that social distance does not mean separation, right in the midst of catastrophe, that Spirit might turn you, turn me, turn us together — into catalysts of transformation.

We might not fix much that is already too badly broken. But in a new, dark hopefulness, might we become creative collaborators? Even with the Creator, the one who triggers the simplest matter and the subtlest minds to new creation?

This is not a story of top-down creating. This new creation comes as we cooperate with each other and with the divine source of every other. This is new creativity in and through whatever chaos besets us. The chaos might feel like the Apocalypse. But remember that apokalypsis, at least in the Bible, does not mean The End of the World. It means revelation: not a final closing down, but a great dis/closure.

In whatever chaos we experience, we recycle everything that we can: ecologically and socially, democratically and theologically. We do not wait for a dictatorial fix from on high. We enter into creative collaboration in a process we can neither predict nor control. For the process of the new creation remains mysterious. “The new heaven and earth” translate no longer as supernatural intervention or afterlife escape — but as the radical renewal of atmosphere and earth.

I hope each of the four no’s have morphed into an odd kind of yes. Into affirmations of something of what you — you wondering ones — already deeply sense, feel, consider. And begin to do.

Love,

Catherine

March 2020

catherineekeller.com

Resources - How Does a Good and Loving God Respond to Times of Harm and Crisis?

By way of introduction to the several lessons below I don't consider our present crisis of a worldwide viral pandemic a judgment by God upon humanity. Many will say just the opposite - that God is judging the world. Or others will say that God is far away and doesn't care to help. That we mean nothing to God. Even others will say God can do nothing to stop plagues and harm; that God is without ability or power. Or there may be others saying there is no God at all; that we are stuck here to help ourselves as it always has been.

Here, in this post, I have listed several theologs who will shed some insight along each of these statements and assertions. They each are respected in their fields and have shown fidelity over the years to the gospel of Jesus Christ which seeks the other to share God's love in service, guidance, counsel, and help at all times in our lives. Who deny that God is anything other than a good and loving God who is not helpless or some other derivative of the religious imagination.

One last thing. Though the COVID-19 virus shows our fragility as a species. Or our cycle of life within a larger cycle of environmental destruction and carelessness. It also shows the connectedness we bear with one another and with nature. I do not attribute the CV-19 virus as a virus sent by God, nor a divine judgment upon humanity. No. It is not something a God of love would send. But rather, I see a God who is fully involved in creation lending care, guidance, and healing where He can or is allowed.

This is more the idea of a indeterminate, freewill  creation, as depicted by nature or humanity, being caught up in its own complex of evolving natural results. Perhaps our lack of care for the earth and its natural remedies and protective barriers it would provide until it cannot might be one of the lessons we might learn here. Or, living in an uncontrollable creation of chaos whose environs we can never fully tame nor should we ever fully expect to.

There may be many reasons for a worldwide plague but in every crisis we do have the opportunity to not only respond but to put into place good things for the earth and for one another. To take the time to rethink and analyze ourselves, our plans, even our benighted actions towards one another in order that all future generations might be reminded of the necessity to learn, to help, aide, care, and heal with one another from the ills and harms of generations past. This, perhaps, might yet be another approach as we currently practice social distancing from one another. To take the time to reflect, pray, and share with one another how we might go on from here as an older, wiser species than we once had previous to our experiences of the world.

R.E.Slater

April 5, 2020

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Exploring the possibilites of God's relationship with the world during times of crisis.

How does a good and loving God respond with us to a creation or humanity which

can at times be harmful and cause deep suffering? Here may be some helpful ways

to think about those times...

God's Will and the Coronavirus

A Sermon by Professor Tom Oord

March 25, 2020

Additional Reference - God and the Coronovirus, by Thomas Jay Oord

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From OPEN HORIZONS

by Jay McDaniel

resource link

Resources from process and process-influenced thinkers

offering comfort, perspective, and hope in our pandemic age.

Some focus on the personal and pastoral; some on wider,

social hopes for a post-pandemic time.

​

THE TWENTY THIRD PSALM: RABBI BRADLEY ARTSON

HOPE IN THE AGE OF CORONAVIRUS: TERI DAILY

THE TRUEST CREATIVITY: CATHERINE KELLER, NICK CAVE

PRACTICING PROCESS THEOLOGY AT HOME OR ALONE

DAILY RESOURCE FOR THE PANDEMIC

FOUR J'S SINGALONG FOR SENIOR CITIZENS

​LE-HAYIM: RABBI BRADLEY ARTSON

CLAPPING FROM MY BALCONY: SHERI KLING

GLOBAL SYSTEMS CHANGE: WEBINAR

GOD AND THE DELIVERY DRIVER: FILM REVIEW

FROM HUGS TO BOWS: THE POST-PANDEMIC COMMUNITY​

FEAR, LOVE AND BEAUTY: PATRICIA ADAMS FARMER

ON BEING FULLY ALIVE IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES AT HAND

SPIRITUAL PRACTICES FOR THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

ECONOMIC FLOURISHING AFTER THE PANDEMIC

FREE FALLING: NITA GILGER

LOVE SONG OF THE BLUE JAY: JAY MCDANIEL

PROCESS THEOLOGY AND COVID-19: BRUCE EPPERLY

TEN IDEAS FOR SAVING THE PLANET: JOHN COBB

FIVE FOUNDATIONS FOR A NEW CIVILIZATION: JOHN COBB

GRIEF TAKES A ROAD TRIP: PATRICIA ADAMS FARMER

GOD'S WILL AND THE CORONAVIRUS: THOMAS OORD

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Wash Your Hands and Be Kind.

"Faith in a Time of Pandemic," by Bruce Epperly

Amazon Link

From Pastor Bruce Epperly. "How can we respond spiritually when a pandemic hits our nation? How can our faith help us to face our fears, going beyond panic and denial, to hopeful and courageous action?

"The Coronavirus is changing everything in our society. It can provoke isolation and self-interested individualism. It can also inspire kindness, generosity, patience, and compassion. Facing the pandemic with God as our companion will deepen our sense of agency as well as peace and move us from self-interest and nation-first to planetary loyalty.

"This text provides a theological, pastoral, and spiritual pathway to help you, your family, and congregation find your way through the wilderness of the Coronavirus pandemic."

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This Barrel Aged podcast was originally released in 2008 as episodes 8 & 9. The quality of the conversation was so good we had to put it back out. Who doesn’t enjoy a good conversation about evil, suffering, Buddha, Bible & a little Whitehead? Clearly someone who hasn’t listened to this episode yet. Bob Mesle is a professor of Religion and Philosophy at Graceland University.

Dr. C. Robert Mesle’s 136-page introduction to process-relational philosophy is a must-read for anyone new to process or who wants to be able to clearly articulate Afred North Whitehead‘s philosophy to others without a lot of technical language or headaches. You can check out his podcast about the text HERE. You should also check out his introduction to Process Theology which again is the best for a newbie.

Go to audio podcast here

or here

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Conversation link here

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9 Reasons to Affirm Free Will

Free Will is an Experiential Nonnegotiable

post link here

by Thomas Oord

March 22nd, 2020

There are strong reasons to believe humans have genuine but limited free will. I believe this, in part, because I experience freedom every day.

In a previous post (click here), I listed 9 reasons it makes sense to affirm that humans have genuine but limited free will. In this post, I address perhaps the most powerful reason: freedom as an experiential nonnegotiable.

Our Freedom is Always Limited

Some people think “freedom” means “the ability to do anything.” So they reject the view. Few if any scholars who affirm free will believe this, however.

Human freedom is always limited. It’s constrained, conditioned, or framed by many sources, both internal and external to the actor. But all humans act as if they are free, even if some deny this verbally.

To be free is to choose, in a particular moment, among a limited number of relevant options. We freely choose as a source or cause of our actions. Free creatures could have chosen something other than what they chose; they could have done otherwise.[1]

I don’t know with certainty that all humans have limited but genuine free will. Absolute certainty about such matters is illusory. Certainty is rare!

But I’m more confident about my freedom than I am about descriptions of humans or even of existence. I’m confident about about free will, because I experience it personally. And I presuppose its veracity in the way I live my life.

We Should Start with the Data We Know Best

We often make mistakes and don’t know much if anything with certainty. So we should have some method in our attempts to make sense of life.

The philosopher Roderick Chisholm recommends what he calls “epistemological particularism.”[2] This method privileges experiences we know best when trying to makes sense of life. It begins with ideas that seem most obvious.

Amazon Link

Epistemological particularism doesn’t claim we can be certain descriptions of our experience are 100% accurate. But we can be more confident in first-person data — especially data inevitably expressed in our living — than data we know from a third-person perspective.

This method should lead us to affirm the reality of human freedom. Of course, some people interpret studies in neuroscience (and other sciences) as indicating humans are not free. For several reasons, I think such interpretations mistaken. But my first step in addressing claims about determinism is to argue we should feel more confident of the truthfulness of first-person data – our inescapable personal experiences – than the data of neuroscience. Scientists obtain neuroscience data through third-person perspectives.

I’m not rejecting neuroscience as a discipline. In my view, neuroscientists should pursue their research with passion. The discipline has generated helpful insights, and I have friends contributing in this field. But we must avoid conclusions the data does not and, I think, could not in principle support. For an accessible philosophical defense of freewill in light of neuroscience research, see Alfred Mele’s work.[3] 

Is Free Will Just Common Sense?

Some call those beliefs that are self-evidently true and inevitably expressed in our actions “common sense.” Philosophers such as Thomas Reid, GE Moore, and Alfred North Whitehead argued for commonsense ideas.[4] In terms of freedom, common sense says we all act freely — at least sometimes.

We use “common sense” to describe ideas that are not inevitably expressed in our lives, however. To some people, for instance, it’s common sense black men should not marry white women. Others think it’s common sense that the New England Patriots are the greatest football team. Some think common sense tells us God controls our lives. Because these ideas are not truly common nor expressed inevitably in our actions, the phrase “common sense” can be misleading and then dismissed as unhelpful or dangerous.

David Ray Griffin distinguishes between ideas some call common sense and what he calls “hard-core” and soft-core commonsense ideas.[5] We inevitably presuppose hard-core commonsense ideas in our practice. We don’t inevitably presuppose soft-core commonsense ideas. Soft-core commonsense ideas might include the (wrong) belief that black men and white women shouldn’t marry, the (debatable) belief that New England has the best football team, or the (arguably harmful) belief that God controls creation.

We can deny soft-core commonsense ideas and still live consistently. Hard-core commonsense ideas cannot consistently be denied in our practice.

Free Will is an Experiential Nonnegotiable

I’ve come to call the ideas that we inescapably live out “experiential nonnegotiables.” We must accept the truth of experiential nonnegotiables if we want to speak adequately about the way the world works.

We contradict ourselves if we say we act one way and then act differently. We commit what Jürgen Habermas calls “performative contradictions:” our performance in life contradicts our statements about what life is like.[6]

In terms of freedom, we contradict ourselves if we claim we are not free and then live as if we act freely. Our words don’t match our actions; we are experiential hypocrites. At least for most humans if not all, genuine but limited freedom is an experiential nonnegotiable.

I could list other experiential nonnegotiables (e.g., there is a world external to myself). Myy point for this essay is the inevitable experience of freedom in our lives provides strong justification to think humans have genuine but limited freedom.

We contradict ourselves if we claim we're not free and then live as if we act freely. We are experiential hypocrites.

NOTES:

[1] For similar understandings of freedom, see Laura W. Ekstrom, “Free Will is Not a Mystery,” in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2nd ed., Robert Kane, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 366-380; William Hasker, “Divine Knowledge and Human Freedom,” The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2nd ed., Robert Kane, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 40-56; Timothy, O’Connor, “Agent-Causal Theories of Freedom,” in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2nd ed., Robert Kane, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 309-328 and “The Agent as Cause” Free Will, Robert Kane, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Kevin Timpe, Free Will: Sourcehood and its Alternatives, 2nd ed. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).

[2] Roderick M. Chisholm, The Problem of the Criterion (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1973).

[3] Alfred Mele, Free: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2014).

[4] For a brief overview of commonsense philosophy, see “Philosophy of Common Sense,” New World Encyclopedia. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Philosophy_of_Common_Sense

[5] David Ray Griffin, Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998), 34, 210.

[6] Jürgen Habermas, “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification,” in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. C. Lenhardt and S.W. Nicholsen (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990).

God’s Will and the Coronavirus

God's Will and the Coronavirus

A Sermon by Professor Tom Oord

March 25, 2020

God’s Will and the Coronavirus

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/gods-will-and-the-coronavirus

by Thomas J. Oord

March 17, 2020

I’m not surprised some people are blaming God. Maybe “crediting” God is more accurate.

I’m reading social media posts saying the Coronavirus (Covid 19) is God’s will. Our current suffering is part of some predetermined divine plan.

One post put it this way:

“Sorry to break up the big panic, but the Coronavirus will not take anyone outta this world unless that’s the good Lord’s plan. And you’re not gonna change that no matter what you do or what you buy.”

If this view is true, no need to worry. No need to prepare, defend, protect, sacrifice, or act. It’s all in “the good Lord’s plan.”

Not the Plan!

I don’t believe the Coronavirus is God’s plan. God is not causing a pandemic that kills some, makes many miserable, and has widespread adverse effects on society.

God did not cause this evil!

Those who say, “God is in control” often claim all that happens, good or bad, is part of a master plan. Every torture, murder, rape, disease, war, and more are part of the divine blueprint.

I don’t believe the Coronavirus is God’s plan.

Your sister’s rape? God’s plan. That miscarriage you suffered? God’s plan. Every ruthless dictator or fascist system? God’s plan. Cancer, meth addiction, leukemia, severe disability, and so on? God’s plan.

The Coronavirus? God’s plan.

I don’t buy it. I can’t believe a loving God would design that kind of plan! If that’s what God’s love is like, I want nothing to do with God!

God Allows the Virus?

Fortunately, a large number of people today reject the idea God is causing the current pandemic. Unfortunately, a large number believe God allows or permits it.

Does that make sense?

Those who say God allows evil imply God could stop it singlehandedly. If God wanted, God could end this pandemic with a solo act of control. For some reason, say these people, God is allowing death, illness, and widespread harm.

Suppose one of my kids began strangling another of my children. Suppose I could step in and stop this act of violence. But suppose I allowed it – and the death of my child – saying, “I didn’t cause this killing, so don’t blame me!”

No one would consider me a loving father if I failed to prevent the evil I could have prevented. Fathers who allow their kids to strangle one another are not loving.

Those who say God is allowing the Coronavirus undermine our belief God loves everyone.

Those who say God permits the Coronavirus make a major mistake. They undermine our belief in a perfectly loving God. Just as a loving father wouldn’t allow his kids to strangle one another, a loving God wouldn’t allow a virus to wreak widespread death and destruction.

It makes no sense to say, “It isn’t God’s will, but God allows it.”

“See the Good that’s Come…”

Many who claim God causes or allows the Coronavirus will see some good that comes from our current crisis. They’ll point to stories of self-sacrifice or the good that comes from people cooperating to combat this pandemic.

Upon seeing the good that comes from the pandemic, some will use a “greater good” argument. “We’ve learned something valuable from the Coronavirus!” they might say. “This pandemic has taught us we don’t need all the stuff we thought we needed.” “It took a virus for us to learn to slow down and focus on what’s important.”

Good things will come from the evils we currently face. Count on it. But we shouldn’t say God causes or allows evil for this good. It isn’t part of some predetermined plan.

Working with a diseased creation, God works to wring whatever good can be wrung from the wrong God didn’t cause or allow.

Instead, we should think God squeezes some good from the bad God didn’t want in the first place.

God never gives up on anyone or any situation. Working with a broken and diseased creation, God works to wring whatever good can be wrung from the wrong God didn’t cause or allow.

It’s a Mystery

A growing number of people recognize the theological problems that come from saying God caused or allowed the Coronavirus. Instead of offering a better way to think about God’s action, however, they appeal to mystery.

“We don’t know why God acts this way,” they say. Some of the more sophisticated thinkers will say God doesn’t “act” in any way we can understand. What it means to say “God acts” is an absolute mystery. Finite beings can’t in any sense understand an infinite God, they say.

Others play the mystery card by saying God is uninvolved. Deists say God created the world long ago but now has a hands-off approach. This God watches the world from a distance as it suffers. This God has the power to stop the mayhem but sits on the sideline eating popcorn.

If we can’t provide plausible answers to our present struggles and biggest fears — including the Coronavirus — why believe in God at all?

I wonder why anyone believes in a God of absolute mystery. If we can’t provide plausible answers to our deepest struggles and biggest fears — including the Coronavirus — why believe in God at all?

If God’s ways are not our ways, no way is as good as any other.

A Better Way

There’s a better way to think about God’s will and the Coronavirus.

This way says God wants to defeat the virus. God desires to prevent the deaths and destruction we currently see. This way says God loves everyone and everything, from the most complex to the least. And God always actively engages the fight against the Coronavirus, at all levels of existence and society.

This better way says God can’t defeat the Coronavirus singlehandedly. God needs our help. In this time of struggle, God needs the best of medicine, the best from social leaders, the best from each of us.

I call this view “the uncontrolling love of God,” and I’ve written academic and popular books explaining its details. (For an easier read, see my best-selling book, God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils.) This view says God’s love is inherently uncontrolling. And because God loves everyone and everything, God can’t control anyone or anything.

The uncontrolling God of love is the most potent force in the universe! But because love does not force its own way (1 Cor. 13:5), even the strongest Lover cannot control others.

God’s Will for Us

What is God’s will? In one sense, it’s the same today as every day: to love God, love others, and love all creation, including ourselves.

In our current crisis, God’s specific will changes. God calls each person, each family, each community, and each political structure to unique responses of love. These specific calls are particular to what each creature can do in each situation. God calls us all to act in loving ways in light of what’s possible.

For most, social distancing can be a significant form of love. Sharing provisions – including toilet paper – can be another. Cooperating with health officials can be a powerful expression of love. Taking reasonable precautions can be an act of love. And so on…

We are always called to love. Our present crisis presents new challenges in discovering what love now requires. I commit to doing my best to discern and then respond to God’s calls of love.

I hope you join me. God does too.

God can’t defeat the Coronavirus singlehandedly. God needs our help. In this crisis,God needs the best of medicine, the best from social leaders, the best from each of us.

Amazon Link

Amazon Link

  

Trusting God Does Not Mean Denying Science

To my church family and friends,

Today's viral crisis has shown another church fellowship to be ill-informed.

Attending church worship or, going to church on special holidays, such as Lent or Easter this spring, has nothing to do with proving one's faithfulness to God but everything to do with accepting what modern medicine, virologists, epidemiologists, microbiologists, laboratory researchers, urban and rural regional planners, and public officials, are all saying together.

That Covid19 is not something to dare, show bravado over, prove ignorance about, or test its deadly effects. No. Until effective, proven, vaccines are developed and found safe for dispersal we are not safe as a society around one another. What we are to do is to follow acknowledged public protocols and policies such as practicing concerted social distancing.

Consider this surmise: It's not God who leaves us unprotected. He has given to us "special prophets," if you will. Men and women of wisdom who we might listen to, be taught, question, dialogue with, and together determine how to implement resultant personal, family, communal, and public practices along with any necessary subsequent societal planning. The tools are at hand. We are to use them.

We, as God's faithful, are therefore to follow God's "annointed disciples" of science and medicine. To trust the public institutions which have trained them, to acknowledge what they - and many other cross-over disciplines - are recommending. That those recommendations will be helpful in evaluating how an ancient faith based upon an ancient holy script, known as the Bible, might be read in the contemporary parlance of science and learning.

By updating one's faith and one's Bible will not invalidate God. In fact, it will testify to God all the more. I will attest to this fact in my own faith. But it will demand that we read of God and His Word in a more contemporary and relevant form according to the times we are living. A reading which may provide more congruence between faith and modern societies so that considered Bible truths are more in-line with common scientific knowledge, facts, and principles.

One's Bible faith is not being lost by doing this. No, it is being re-discovered, expanded, enhanced. It is learning to become a scientifically informed faith which may perceive God in larger terms. A God of greater complexity. A God who is deeply integrated with His creation and humanity beyond ways we can imagine.

Shunning, ignoring, or being unconversant with scientific perspectives has led to misunderstanding, or misperceiving, one's faith and beliefs. Boxing them into cubicles of magic and mysticism rather than properly into a science-informed language-construct which may teach of God and His cosmos in ways not considered before.

Good, grounded, belief does not need to defend itself. Rather, it should test itself so that God is never held back from whom He fully is and has revealed Himself to be. If science shows something different from the Bible then perhaps it has been our interpretation of God and the Bible that might rather be questioned than science. Pastors, teachers, theologians are not scientists. But they should be using the results of scientific study to inform themselves of their faith by asking better questions than they have allowed themselves to ask.

This can very difficult. I had asked these questions and discovered there was much about my faith which had to be rethought. Since that time of personal doubt and uncertainty has come an expanded  (and I think, profitable) rethinking of my very fundamental and evangelical faith for some time now. The results? A picture of God which is much grander than I had expected. A Bible more helpful than imagined. A Christian witness which is more relevant to non-believers. And, in strangely familiar and warm way, a faith which has survived to live again to share, nourish, and feed, mind and heart, soul and body. Similarly, a lot of "nones and dones" are asking the church to do this very task. But until it is done sufficiently - and sufficiently well - they are left without a fellowship. Let's not let this continue to be the case.

In ancient times, Biblical narratives had no knowledge of today's contemporary sciences. They thought in profoundly different ways than we do today. The Bible in which we read of God is a Bible whose hoary narratives portray ancient multi-cultural eras, ancient thoughts, ancient superstitions, worldly ideas, and out-of-date knowledge with today's sciences.

We may continue to read the Bible's ancient narratives to learn grand spiritual truths of God and His communion with man and nature. A God of love. Of presence. Of care and nurture. This is the God of the Bible who is also supported by modern science. Who is uplifted over all creation when seen through eyes of faith and wonder enlivened by modern day academia. Science is not to be shunned but used. Integrated. Rewoven back into the faith narratives of the Bible to tell us of a God who is there though hidden by our out-of-date doctrines of faith and belief.

As God spoke and communicated with ancient humanity in the past so He continues to reach out to us today. Through people. Through our experiences. Through ready learning. Through beliefs and perceptions which are to be tested, tried out, verified, and questioned, so we are not misled by our interpretations and beliefs. The key is discerning God's voice from those who would mislead from Christ and His salvation in this world. At times this can be the church itself with its wildly outdated schemes and bravados. But under God we have a faith-world we may all participate in, share together, and find safety and help in times of crises as well as joy and thanksgiving in times of goodness. Yea Lord, help us hear again.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

April 1, 2020
Edited April 6, 2020

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#StayHome and help save lives #WithMe

IMPORTANT LINKS

CV19 Control and Prevention - https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/covid-19/controlprevention.html


CV19 Safety Rules for Work - https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/covid-19/standards.html



















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Ignoring Virus, an IL Church Held Services;

Now Most of the Congregation is Sick

Link

by Hemant Mehta

March 27, 2020

On March 15, when COVID-19 concerns were well established in Illinois, The Life Church in Glenview, just north of Chicago, held a large event anyway. 80 people were present for an out-of-town speaker.

Now 43 of those worshipers are sick, including the pastor. And 10 of them have tested positive for the coronavirus — including the speaker, who is currently hospitalized.

Most of the people at the church haven’t been tested at all.

[Pastor Anthony] LoCascio, who has been pastor at the Life Church for 11 years, said he thought about whether to hold the service. But at the time, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was low and a stay-at-home order had not yet been imposed. Plus, he had an out-of-town speaker coming.

“We had a guest speaker. We were promoting it,” he said. “We made the announcement, ‘If you’re sick, stay home.’ We didn’t know. No one knew.”

Lots of people knew. Lots of people were dumb enough to ignore the advice of experts, though.

It was irresponsible of LoCascio to continue holding services when a virus was clearly threatening our way of life, as if the presence of God was somehow going to make everything all better.

It’s okay to skip church during a pandemic.

It’s okay to skip church, period.

You don’t have to go just because a pastor guilt-trips you into it. In this case, LoCascio put dozens of his own church members — maybe more — in harm’s way. God isn’t going to help.

* * * * * * * * *

A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal.

Now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead

L.A. Times Link

By Richard Read, Seattle Bureau Chief

March 29, 2020

One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease

researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing dispersed

iral particles in the church room that were widely inhaled. “One could imagine

that really trying to project your voice would also project more droplets

and aerosols,” he said.

Skagit Valley Chorale members Mark Backlund and his wife, Ruth
Backlund, sing choir music Friday at their home in Anacortes, Wash.,
while  convalescing from COVID-19.(Karen Ducey / For The Times)

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. —  With the coronavirus quickly spreading in Washington state in early March, leaders of the Skagit Valley Chorale debated whether to go ahead with weekly rehearsal.

The virus was already killing people in the Seattle area, about an hour’s drive to the south.

But Skagit County hadn’t reported any cases, schools and businesses remained open, and prohibitions on large gatherings had yet to be announced.

On March 6, Adam Burdick, the choir’s conductor, informed the 121 members in an email that amid the “stress and strain of concerns about the virus,” practice would proceed as scheduled at Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church.

“I’m planning on being there this Tuesday March 10, and hoping many of you will be, too,” he wrote.

Sixty singers showed up. A greeter offered hand sanitizer at the door, and members refrained from the usual hugs and handshakes.

“It seemed like a normal rehearsal, except that choirs are huggy places,” Burdick recalled. “We were making music and trying to keep a certain distance between each other.”

After 2½ hours, the singers parted ways at 9 p.m.

Nearly three weeks later, 45 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symptoms, at least three have been hospitalized, and two are dead.

The outbreak has stunned county health officials, who have concluded that the virus was almost certainly transmitted through the air from one or more people without symptoms.

“That’s all we can think of right now,” said Polly Dubbel, a county communicable disease and environmental health manager.

In interviews with the Los Angeles Times, eight people who were at the rehearsal said that nobody there was coughing or sneezing or appeared ill.

Everybody came with their own sheet music and avoided direct physical contact. Some members helped set up or remove folding chairs. A few helped themselves to mandarins that had been put out on a table in back.

Experts said the choir outbreak is consistent with a growing body of evidence that the virus can be transmitted through aerosols — particles smaller than 5 micrometers that can float in the air for minutes or longer.

The World Health Organization has downplayed the possibility of transmission in aerosols, stressing that the virus is spread through much larger “respiratory droplets,” which are emitted when an infected person coughs or sneezes and quickly fall to a surface.

But a study published March 17 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that when the virus was suspended in a mist under laboratory conditions it remained “viable and infectious” for three hours — though researchers have said that time period would probably be no more than a half-hour in real-world conditions.

One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing dispersed viral particles in the church room that were widely inhaled.

“One could imagine that really trying to project your voice would also project more droplets and aerosols,” he said.

With three-quarters of the choir members testing positive for the virus or showing symptoms of infection, the outbreak would be considered a “super-spreading event,” he said.

Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech and an expert on airborne transmission of viruses, said some people happen to be especially good at exhaling fine material, producing 1,000 times more than others.

Marr said that the choir outbreak should be seen as a powerful warning to the public.

“This may help people realize that, hey, we really need to be careful,” she said.