God, Time & Freedom

Let’s shift gears into something more philosophical.

I’ve been discussing some of these issues over at a friend’s site. I’m also in the middle of a philosophy class that I’m teaching for IWU’s College of Adult and Professional Studies. So it is no surprise that I’ve been thinking about God’s relationship to time and about human freedom to make real choices.

The traditional view holds that God is outside time. This is so widely accepted that to question it appears to be flirting with heresy. Yet I feel that there is something wrong with this view as it is commonly held.

I also have the sense that the Open Theists are on to something important. But this position has some problems of its own and is labeled heretical by many Christians.

It seems to make sense that time began at creation as Augustine suggests. In the same way that God is “outside” creation, he would also be “outside” time. Of course, if the biblical account is true, then God must be able to “enter” both creation and time. Otherwise he would be reduced to the “god” of Aristotle.

It is difficult for us to imagine any existence outside time. It is not unlike the difficulty a deep-sea fish might have imagining life on “dry land.” And we must be cautious when we speculate about “how things work” outside time. But let’s see if we can make some sense out of this.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument the standard position that God is outside time and that he knows the future exhaustively.

In the standard view, God sees all of time “at once.” He sees the “past,” the “present” and the “future” in what we would call “now.” If God knows the future in every detail, then the future must be “fixed.” In other words, we cannot do anything contrary to what God already knows we will do in the future. Consequently, we are not free to make real choices.

However, we seem to have the sense that our choices are free and that they are real. Some would argue that this is only an illusion. Others say that “libertarian freewill” is an affront to the sovereignty of God. Some resort to a philosophical sleight of hand that essentially has God manipulating our wills leaving us “free” to do “what we will.”

But these explanations are not very helpful. Some are worse than the problem they try to solve. I maintain that they seem satisfying to their adherents only because they’ve repeated them so many times and gotten “comfortable” with them.

I think I may have a new angle from which to address this issue. At least it’s new to me. I haven’t seen it anywhere. However, if it is true, I am probably not the first one to think of it. If I’m the first one to formulate it, it’s probably not true.

I believe the problem is created when we collapse our view of the future and God’s view of the future.

For God, the future already exists. It is “fixed” much in the same way that the past is fixed for us. From God’s perspective the future cannot change.

However, for us the future does not yet exist and is “flexible.”

As long as we look at the future only from God’s perspective, we don’t run into any difficulties. And as long as we look at it only from our perspective, everything is fine. The problem arises when we combine these two perspectives. Then we run into paradoxes and contradictions.

We are left with, “If God knows the future exhaustively, how can we make free choices?”

The Open Theists say that God does not know the future exhaustively. They say that this is a statement about the nature of the future not about the nature of God. They say that the reason that God does not know the future is because it doesn’t exist until we make our choices in the present. Their critics argue that this reduces God to less than all-powerful and all-knowing. But if the future doesn’t exist, then God is not diminished by not knowing it.

But I don’t want to get sidetracked into a discussion about Open Theism. I just want to borrow the idea that the future doesn’t exist until it becomes the present.

We assume this as we go about our lives. We are confronted with a decision and make a choice. It could be a relatively insignificant choice about where to eat dinner. Or it could be a bigger choice about where to live or work. We agonize over many of these choices as if the future will be (partially) determined by what we decide.

The problem comes in when we insert the data about God knowing the future.

In programming language, this is a “data mismatch.”

If you told a computer to divide 25 by a ham sandwich, you would get an error. These are two different kinds of information. You can perform math on a number. You perform other operations on a ham sandwich. But they don’t belong together in the same operation.

Our view of the future and God’s view of the future do not belong together. Our view is from within time. God’s view is outside time. The future is still open to us because it does not yet exist.

Another way to get at this is by using the framework of relativity. Einstein has shown that there is no absolute “now” or “public time.” By combining our “now” and God’s “now” we are treating them as if they are the same. This is what creates the paradox.

These are just some ideas. Let me know what you think. It seems to make sense to me. But you may see a fatal flaw in the logic. Or you may raise some questions that I haven’t considered.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Jesus the Student

Many people read Luke 2:41–52 and think that Jesus is challenging the teachers in the Temple. He comes to Jerusalem as a child of 12 and instructs the people who were supposed to be the experts.

But let me suggest to you a different way to read this passage.

Jesus wasn’t a teacher. He was a student. The picture Luke gives us is one of a precocious student who has an unusual grasp of the subject and who is voraciously taking in everything the teachers give him. “They found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”

It would not be hard to image him also challenging the standard interpretations, “What if this passage is talking about this?” But this is primarily a story about Jesus’ development as a child on the verge of becoming an adult.

If you still aren’t convinced, look at verses 40 & 52:

And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.

And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

Between these “bookends,” Luke recounts this story told to him by Mary (verse 51). Jesus is preparing himself for the mission that lies ahead.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Ashamed of the Gospel

Continuing with misunderstood passages from the Bible…

Today’s passage is Romans 1:16–17.

The meaning of these verses seems rather straightforward. John MacArthur speaks for the popular interpretation in his book, Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World. This is, in essence, that we are often afraid to proclaim the gospel in its stark reality. Instead, we must stand with Paul and declare the blunt truth of the gospel. The alternative is compromise and accommodation.

I want to suggest that Paul is saying something rather different.

The word translated “ashamed” is epaischúnomai. According to the Analytical Greek Lexicon by Friberg, Friberg & Miller, this word has three possible meanings: To feel guilty and remorseful, to be embarrassed because one’s expectations have been (or might be) proven false, to be afraid of being humiliated.

In this letter (Romans), Paul uses this word and another word formed from the same stem in several places. Here are some of them.

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us (Romans 5:5).

As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame” (Romans 9:33).

As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame” (Romans 10:11).

In the first instance, Paul is saying that hope does not let us down. In the second instance, Paul is saying that those who trust in the “stone” will never be let down. Paul is saying essentially the same thing in the third instance.

(Notice that this is meaning #2 from the Analytical Greek Lexicon.)

In the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Old Testament) Jeremiah 2:36 uses one of these words: “You will be disappointed by Egypt as you were by Assyria.”

I would suggest that what Paul is saying here is that he is not concerned about being disappointed by the Gospel “because it is the power of God.”

In the verses immediately preceding, Paul says that he hopes to come to Rome and preach the Gospel to them. There is no hint in this passage that he (or the Romans) has any inclination to compromise the truth of the Gospel or to accommodate the Gospel to popular culture.

The problem is that the word “ashamed” has such strong associations for us that once we read it we think we understand what Paul is talking about. But a look with fresh eyes reveals something very different.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Curses Curses

This misunderstanding may be even more controversial than Romans 7.

Most people who read Genesis 3:14–19, see the “curses” issued to the serpent, Eve and Adam as punishment that God dishes out because he is angry with their respective sins. But I want to suggest that this is a gross misunderstanding of what is happening here.

God is explaining what they have brought upon themselves. These are not punishments, but consequences that directly result from their rebellion.

God had warned them of the deadly consequences of disobedience (Genesis 2:17). This was not a threat, but a compassionate forewarning.

Dorothy Sayers expresses this well:

The fashionable habit of calling the prohibition of the Fruit of Knowledge an “arbitrary taboo” is a quite unjustifiable travesty of the Bible story. There, God is represented as saying to Adam and Eve: “Do not eat: if you do, it will kill you”—and I do not know what else one could reasonably say to anybody when begging him to refrain from taking strychnine or prussic acid (Dorothy Sayers, Introductory Papers on Dante, p. 63).

And so when the sin was committed, God sits them down and tells them what they’ve done.

Why does this matter?

It prevents the too-common caricature of God as the “angry old man” who lashes out at his creatures for doing what “he enticed them” to do.

[God] puts an apple tree in the middle of [the Garden of Eden] and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting “Gotcha.” It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.… Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end (Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe).

It also resolves the question of whether we should seek to reverse the effects of the fall. If these “curses” are punishments handed out by God, then we shouldn’t interfere with his discipline. (Have you ever tried to console an unhappy child only to find out that he had been put in “time out” by his parents?)

We seem to understand this when it comes to the resistance of nature to man’s effort to cultivate the land. We also seek to lessen the pain of childbirth. But we get confused about woman’s subjection to man. We pass this off as God’s ordained “chain of authority.”

Some go so far to say that original sin is “the woman taking over authority from the man, and the man saying and doing nothing to stop it” (Michael Harper, Equal and Different, London, 1994). (The complete article can be found here.)

Besides, these pronouncements by God are presented in poetic language. A woodenly literal interpretation misses the point. Take verse 15 for example. God says that there will be “enmity” between the offspring of the serpent and the woman. Couched within this reference to the nearly-universal abhorrence for snakes is the first prophecy of the coming Messiah who would crush the head of Satan once and for all. (See Romans 16:20.)

So tell me what you think.

Bonus: Notice that work is not Adam’s curse. The consequence for Adam was that his work would be now be burdensome. Adam performed work before the fall and experienced fulfillment and satisfaction in it (Genesis 2:15).

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Struggle with Sin

Continuing with my series of misunderstood Bible passage, it’s time to deal with Romans 7.

The common view is that Paul is describing his personal struggle with sin. However, there are two opinions about whether this is a normal state of the Christian life (“I knew that deep down inside, Romans 7:14–25 is describing me.”) or a state than is replaced by what is described in chapter 8 (“This moment, therefore, we may be emptied of sin, filled with holiness, and become truly happy.”).

I don’t want to get caught up in this particular battle right now.

I do want to suggest to you that both of these camps have misunderstood what Paul is saying in Romans 7.

Notice what he says before chapter 7:

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin (6:6–7).

For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace (6:14).

You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness (6:18).

So we can see that Paul clearly considers the life of a believer to be a life that is free from slavery to sin.

So what does Paul mean by this lament in Romans 7:14–24?

The key to understanding this complex and confusing chapter in found in reading Romans 5:20, “The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” along with Romans 6:6, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”

Paul’s argument in Romans is that God gave the Law in order to “call out” sin. But this Law did not have the ability to eliminate sin. In fact, it had the effect of increasing sin. Rather than freeing humans from sin, the Law made their slavery to sin even more obvious.

But this was not a mistake on God’s part. Things must often get very much worse before they can be “fixed.” Ignoring a problem seems less disruptive than facing up to it. But facing the full brunt of a terrible situation often makes the solution more obvious and easier to accept.

Here’s how N. T. Wright explains this passage in a Bible Review article:

In Romans 7:1-8:11 Paul declares that the renewed people are given the Spirit to do “what the law could not” (Romans 8:3). He argues (through the device of the “I,” speaking of himself as the embodiment of Jewish history) that when the Law was originally given Israel recapitulated the sin of Adam (Romans 7:7-12, looking back to Romans 5:20), that in her continuing life under the Torah Israel finds herself simultaneously desiring the good and unable to avoid the buildup of sin, and that Israel, despite her great vocation, remains “in Adam” (Romans 7:1-6, 13-25). God, however, has dealt with sin and given new life, to those who share the resurrection of Christ through the Spirit (Romans 8:1-11).

Scot McKnight expands on this:

Israel struggled with the Torah to do it, and couldn’t get the job done. (Or, for others: everyone failed to do the Torah.) God sent Christ. Paul is thinking of death: those who are in Christ are those who have died with Christ and his death becomes their death. The condemnation that death is has been dealt with when Christ died on the cross.

Here are a few scattered statements from Wright’s article, “Romans and the Theology of Paul”:

The way through the complex little argument of 7:1-4 is found by reading 5:20 in the light of 6:6 and 6:14f.: Torah binds “you” to Adam; Adam, the “old you,” dies in baptism; “you” are therefore free to belong to another—namely, Christ—without Torah having anything to say about the matter.

The chapter is a defense of Torah against any suggestion that it is identical with “sin” (7:7-12) or that by itself it was the ultimate cause of death (7:13-20).

[T]he Israel that lives under Torah continues to carry
about the mark of sin and death that results from being the child of Adam.

Torah, Paul said in 5:20, came in in order that sin might abound. That is, the divine purpose in the giving of Torah was in order to draw Adam’s trespass to its full height precisely in Israel.

God’s covenant purpose, it seems, is to draw the sin of all the world on to Israel, in order that it may be passed on to the Messiah and there dealt with once and for all.

So we see that Romans 7 is not describing a personal experience of Paul’s. (If you need further evidence, check out Philippians 3:6.) It is rather a description of the predicament of Israel under the Law.

To say that Romans 8 is only talking about the legal standing of a believer in Christ is to emasculate Paul’s argument. On the other hand, to say that “life in the Spirit” is only for some Christians is to completely miss the point of verse 9.

But when we pay close attention to the narrative flow of Paul’s letter, we see that he is making a very specific argument based upon the history of Israel. Even Romans, Paul’s most theological letter, has a story line. We get ourselves into difficulty when we read the Bible as a theology textbook or as a collection of facts and propositions.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”