The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Trinitarian Christianity leads to Universalism? (Or not?)

Theology Philosophical
#21

Wow, I gotta play chatch-up!

Aaron,

I suppose I should qualify all my previous posts as intending to show how trinitarian theism entails UR. I can’t say how a Unitarian would view God in essential terms. Without getting into 1John, I’ll just say that I don’t think John consciously and explicitly intends to say something about the ontology of trinitarian relations. But I do think trinitarianism is implicated in the notion that God is love, as I understand the logic behind John’s claim.

Let’s take your suggestion that ‘God is love’ means that “the disposition of the Father toward the human race is that of perfect benevolence.” Just that much suggests to me that the Father is defined ‘dispositionally’ in such a way as to necessitate (I don’t mean by force or coercion) his ‘loving’ human beings when they come along. I’d be very interested in what you think that ‘disposition’ is. I think we’d agree that it defines God essentially (it’s not a contingent feature of God’s being, as if God is as dispositionally likely to abuse and hate as he is to love humans) and that it accounts for or explains the actual benevolence of God’s actions relative to the world. The only difference may be that I call this disposition a ‘definitional’ disposition, a disposition that only exists at all as it is actually exercised and not one which is exercised contingently, which I think you’d want to say about God’s disposition to love. So in the end, just what is this disposition to love that defines God essentially?

My hunch is that a disposition that always ‘loves’ in situations where love is possible is just another name for ‘love’ (or ‘potential love’ on your account, or something like that), however inconsistent I think it is to posit this disposition in the absence of personal relations. Be that as it may, even though John may have in mind God’s love relative to how the Father relates to us, it’s only (as you show) because God is already dispositionally inclined to love that John says what he does. In other words, John believes this disposition motivates God’s actions toward us (the acts we call ‘loving’) and not the other way around. God’s loving acts toward us reveal the divine disposition to love as opposed to that divine disposition being determined by God’s loving acts toward us. I think you’ll agree with that much. And if a Unitarian can agree that God is ‘dispositionally inclined to love’, then that may be as close as you and trinitarians can get on this issue, and that’s not bad! But my question is, just what is this essential divine disposition to love when someone comes along to serve as an object of love? I think in the end you and I are actually agreeing that God is essentially ‘love’. You just don’t connect ‘love’ necessarily to the presence of relations. And if you DO connect them, you don’t think God is always in relation to other persons (since created presons haven’t always been around). But you DO posit a necessary divine disposition to love when relations are present. You think the disposition is God’s essentially but not the relations.

On a side note, I’m not sure how to convince you that the act of loving (exercising one’s disposition to love) entails personal relations, or why it’s best to suppose that the actual exercise of this divine disposition to love defines God necessarily. Deep waters indeed. I take it as a fundamental intuition (or maybe just a ‘given’ of experience) that to love involves a certain being-in-relation, a certain giving-and-receiving between one and another. I honestly don’t know what else love is.

Luke: But one of the troubles with the assertion that ‘God is love’ is that wrongly elevates the unity of God over the distinctions of God. Besides which Augustine’s model from De Trinitate of the Father as the lover, the Son as the beloved and the Spirit as the love that exists between them is only a model (which he acknowledges) and one that starts to look to much like Sabellianism (one God, three masks) is used to often. Furthermore it’s also misleading to pull the statement “God is love” from Scripture but not “God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:29) or “God is just” (2 Th 1:6) for example.

Tom: I don’t think I’m pulling it the way you think I am. For example, were God to have a disposition necessarily to ‘consume with fire’ how might we imagine this disposition to be exercised eternally or essentially? Who would this fire be consumming? Similarly with ‘justice’. So what I want to say is that all the world-dependent attributes we talk about (forgiveness, justice, chastisement, etc.) are just the love of God relating now to this state of affairs, now to that one. But orthodox trinitarianism doesn’t make the triune relations world-dependent. They define God essentially. I don’t know what word other than ‘love’ we can use to better describe these relations.

In the end I don’t see justice and forgiveness and judgment as something ontologically other than love, so when I pull ‘love’ out I’m essentially pulling out all the attributes and just naming what is common and essential to them all—viz., the benevolent will to secure the highest possible well-being of a thing. Justice IS love-in-relation-to-______ (fill in the blank with an appropriate injustice) seeking to achieve the highest well-being in its appropriate circumstances. Similarly, judgment IS just love in-relation-to- _______ (fill in the blank with an appropriate evil) seeking to promote the highest well-being in its appropriate circumstances, and so forth. But those injustices and evils are world-dependent states. Divine love (or so I’m arguing on the basis of the divine relations) is not a world-dependent state, and that’s why love can embrace all the other attributes conceptually as the fount from which they spring.

Tom

#22

Yes, but much of that length was predicated on answering things that came up in the meanwhile. :wink:

(Which I had said I wouldn’t mostly do, but then went ahead and did anyway… :unamused: And I still haven’t replied to Aaron yet. WILL BE SHORTER!! WILLLLL BEEEEEEEE!!!)

Also, my first catch-up reply would have been about half that length if Luke had clarified to what extent, or not, he was accepting the essential personhood vs. essential non-personhood of God. Leaving that out leads to multiplication of various doctrinal options.

#23

Auggy: Imagine if a father threw his 20 year old son into a furnace and told him, “I know I’m loving but the love I had for you is not the love I have for you brother billy.” Such philosophy begins to cripple the words of John “Beloved let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God.”

Tom: Indeed!

T

#24

Aaron, while I don’t mean to disrespect you, and while it would be interesting to debate the Trinity versus Unitarianism. Unitarianism is outside orthodox Christianity and this thread assumes the Godhead exists.

TGB, so you found the ‘Mad Men’ app as well? (I wish smoking didn’t cause cancer.) I agree there a unity exisits, but the advantage of Carson’s description is that it accurately reflects differences in the revelation itself. Furthermore a universalist definition seems to unnecessarily blur the boundaries.

But it doesn’t, you haven’t shown that a) we should speak of God having a defining essence, b) characteristics/attributes can be used as defining the ousia of God and c) what love actually is.

You also need to explain why it’s theologically preferable to speak about God’s essence as a starting point as opposed to the Trinity.

Sometimes, I take total depravity seriously.

Jason,

We are being drawn into larger post territory, which may make the overall discussion break down a little as questions and arguments get left unanswered. I agree with your comments up to and including the point about God being a person. God is indeed a person and three persons, although I’m reluctant to use that language too often because when we say persons we tend to think individually and biologically. The phrase “multi-person” implies that the defining feature of the Trinity is “multi-person” and implies that the Trinity can be defined by a single feature. I’d also want to add that “persons in relation” is a more accurate biblical phrase.

I think the history of the Trinity has shown that settling on a model and saying this is the essence of the Trinity is ultimately flawed. For example the west favors unity and the East, distinctions. I’ve raised this a number of times in these related threads, the problems associated with coming up with an essential definition of God and making that a theological starting point for theology. Apart from confusing ousia with physis it goes against the grain of church history, which saw the starting point of our theology as the Trinity, not in coming up with a monotheistic starting point. In other words why can’t the starting point be the Trinity instead of trying to come up with an essential definition of God?

#25

Luke: you found the ‘Mad Men’ app as well? (I wish smoking didn’t cause cancer.)

Tom: Yeah. Well, YOUR avatar looks a bit more scruffy than mine. Yours is greyer, and certainly cigarettes are less GQ than pipes. That makes my theology more accurate too—doesn’t it?

Tom: …a love that defines the very personal being of God,

Luke: But it doesn’t…

Tom: I honestly can’t conceive of the triune relations in terms other than mutually affirming and loving relations. I literally wouldn’t know how to give meaning to the orthodox formula “one essence, three persons” apart from identifying the interpenetration of the persons in terms of love—which for me just means the perceiving, valuing, and promoting of personal otherness.

Luke: …you haven’t shown that a) we should speak of God having a defining essence,

Tom: You know Orthodox better than this. God has no ‘defining essence’? Au contraire mon frere.

Luke: b) characteristics/attributes can be used as defining the ousia of God…

Tom: We get as close as our language and a healthy apophaticism will allow us. In light of the fact that in the East the ‘ousia’ of God is absolutely off limits to claims of having captured or contained it in any number of propositions, I only offer my understanding of “God is love” as the best that a qualified and fearful approach to the truth of God will allow. If God is essentially unloving, essentially something else, or essentially nothing at all, God will have to make it plain in the eschaton, for nothing in our present view (in my opinion) permits me a better conceptual approximation than does ‘love’.

I should say that I can’t and wouldn’t seek to ‘prove’ any of this conclusively. I would only attempt to show that it’s plausible and beautiful, and I never offer a defence of the beautiful. It’s seen self-evidently or not at all.

Luke: and c) what love actually is.

Tom: I’ve tried to distil it here and there. I’ll try to sum it up! I might need to fire up my pipe to say what love is though.

Luke: You also need to explain why it’s theologically preferable to speak about God’s essence as a starting point as opposed to the Trinity.

Tom: Oh, I definitely don’t start with the divine essence when discussing God. I start with the ‘one essence, three persons’ formula of the Creed. That’s the trick. One cannot start with one and find one’s way to three. Nor can one start with three and try to derive some unity from it… One starts with the entirety of the Creed’s claim—one essence/three persons.

Gotta run!

Tom

#26

True and understandable. I will however remind you of things I think are important to cover that haven’t been covered yet.

For example, last time I pointed out that despite this being a key element of the topic of the thread you hadn’t clearly stated whether you agreed that God was even essentially personal instead of non-personal.

Nor does it seem you have clearly done so yet, either…

Well for one thing, when I started off trying to point out how the doctrines of the Trinity add up to a corollary expectation that God will necessarily be acting persistently to save all sinners from sin (i.e. that some kind of universalism or in abbreviation “Kath” is true, compared to any variety of Calv or Arm soteriology), you kept saying that you were having a hard time seeing why that would follow.

For another thing, you yourself had reduced God’s essentiality down to “being itself”–a position that doesn’t even have to be theism but could be atheism instead! Okay, so let’s start there and work back up to ortho-trin.

Third, the history of even Christianity, but certainly also of Judeo-Christianity, doesn’t in fact start off with the Trinity as a doctrinal set. It starts with a few thousand years of revelatory statements which people have been doing their best (for thousands of years) to piece together the implications of. Once the knowledge of God is lost, prior to Abraham, God has to start over from scratch to cut through the miasma of theology (very roughly speaking) and mythology in order to reveal correct truths about Himself. This isn’t easy (partly because the truths about God are apparently quite numerous and complex!) and takes a long time (partly because it’s apparently hard to put it all together; and partly because each generation has to personally start over when they’re born learning what has been learned before; and few if any generations, our own broadly included, are very faithful anyway).

Relatedly, when Saint Paul witnesses to pagans who are in a better position than most people to suss out theology with philosophical clarity, he meets them where they are at (and says God does the same thing!), with a very simple theology that he slowly starts to add to in detail (and quickly loses them when he takes a step or two too far before they’ve grasped the first points sufficiently.)

Fourth: are you saying that God isn’t essentially an ortho-trin Trinity? (Note the phrases I bold-italicized above in your quote.)

If you’re denying God is essentially ortho-trin (while asserting that someone like Aaron who denies ortho-trin theology is not Christian!?), then speaking as a pretty hard-core ortho-trin theologian I’d have to oppose that–and I would say that this is probably our main theological disagreement (if not earlier)!

If you affirm (as an Anglican priest might be expected to do??) that God is essentially ortho-trin, then yay we agree on that anyway! :smiley: But then we’ve “come up with an essential definition of God”. Which also means that God essentially is… whatever it is that the Trinity is, uniquely compared to any other proposal of God.

I can go the short route and start with the Trinity when talking to a professional trinitarian (God is essentially an eternally active interpersonal unity that, in and as God’s own independently Self-Begetting and Self-Begotten existence, eternally acts toward fulfilling fair-togetherness between persons; which means God in God’s own self-existence is essentially love, in a way far more fundamental and important than any other theology can claim God to be); or, if you complain about me going the short route, I can go the long route and start with a basically defined Independent Fact of existence (“being itself”) and work up from there.

But if you complain about me not going the long route if I go the short route, and about me not going the short route if I go the long route…? :wink:

Clearly I’m not thinking biologically, though (as the several hundred pages of theological discussion and analysis I’ve gone through over in the BSM series up to now would easily indicate :wink: ). And I’m just as clearly keeping the singularity of the substance in mind as well as the distinction of the Persons. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been complaining about me focusing too much on the “unity” of God and warning us about modalism etc.!

Again it starts to look like the problem is not how I’m getting there but where I’m getting, so that any stick is good enough to beat with. When it becomes obvious that the single substantial unity of God is important in how I get to universalism (which it is), then the complaint is that I’m focusing too much on the unity and not paying attention to the distinction of the Persons. When it becomes obvious that the distinction of the Persons is important in how I get to universalism (which it is), then the caution is on not thinking about the Persons too individually and maybe even biologically!

So let me reassure you: I am definitely not thinking of the Persons individually from each other (much less so biologically); and I am definitely not thinking of the Persons as (even if useful) modalistic fictions of a single personal entity. I am neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance.

If the problem is that I am treating God as essentially being multiple real Persons in a single unity of substance, then I really don’t know what to say to someone who (I would have thought?!?) is supposed to be professing the same thing. But I’m pretty sure I know what Aaron, who certainly has a problem with me claiming God to essentially be that (and who you consider to be outside Christianity!) would say. :wink:

Let’s go back to 1.): Are you at least willing to agree that God is essentially personal instead of essentially non-personal? (Keeping in mind that as “being itself” God’s person-ness will be categorically different than our derivative person-ness, at least by being independently self-existent? We derivative creatures are not, in other words, as essentially personal as God is?) Can we at least agree on that?

Of course if I was only defining the Trinity by a single feature, I wouldn’t even have gotten to multi-person! Nor would I be constantly refining and (in a sense even) adding characteristics to the list. (For example a single being itself, not multiple beings themselves; a supernatural being itself, not a natural being itself; a personal being itself, not a non-personal being itself; a multi-personal being itself, not a mono-personal being itself.)

If I am not defining the Trinity by a single feature, which very demonstrably I am not, then why are you worrying that I am defining the Trinity by a single feature?? Even when I state “God is love” I always go on to qualify that I mean A BUNCH OF DETAILS by that simple statement. (A bunch of details which non-trinitarians, such as Aaron, don’t altogether accept, though of course Aaron does agree on some of those details. But he quite reasonably doesn’t think those fewer details he accepts add up to God being essentially love; only at most that God loves.)

Moreover, I have gone on to refine and distinguish again with “multi-person”: not only multi-personal (which might be polytheistic or multi-theistic), but inter-personal (distinctively real Persons but a single substantial entity).

Which technically you seem to accept and agree about, on that distinction (versus being only multi-personal), which of course a trinitarian would and should do. Although once again the problem appears to be that you don’t want to agree that God is essentially inter-personal.

Really? I don’t recall that phrase showing up in the Bible as a description of God, but I have no objection if you’d rather use that–except that “persons in relation” could only be multi-personal (like you and I are persons in relation) instead of substantially inter-personal (as in the uniquely self-existent single-substance Trinity). I would prefer you use a phrase or term that distinguishes compared to polytheism or multi-theism (which even “inter-personal” doesn’t intrinsically do, but I have to use a phrase or term for sake of making the conceptual distinction, and “inter” connotes some closer connection than simply “multi” does…)

Certainly, use a Biblical term or phrase if you can recall one for this! May I suggest dikaiosune (“fair-togetherness”)? Even that doesn’t necessarily have to refer to a single-substantial unity of persons (which is why we, who are not a single substantial reality of multiple persons, can still do dikaiosune), but it’s certainly a popular Biblical term and quite important in the account of God’s war-waging, too! (Rev 19:11 famously comes to mind.)

#27

Hi Tom! You wrote:

and

I’ll do my best to answer your questions! First, I understand “disposition” to mean “an inclination or tendency to act in a particular way.” So I believe God’s inclination or tendency is to love (i.e., will the best interests of) every person that he has chosen, or will choose, to create. And this disposition is, I believe, simply an expression of his unchanging and self-existent rational nature. Because I believe reason leads us to conclude that happiness is intrinsically (rather than instrumentally) valuable, God’s rationality would, I think, incline him to promote the best interests of all finite persons to the fullest extent possible. So I believe it is because of God’s perfectly rational nature that he has an unchanging disposition to love. And because God cannot be tempted to do that which is contrary to what his rational nature leads him to do (unlike us, who are frequently “lured and enticed” by our own desires to do that which is contrary to our moral nature - James 1:13-14), he never ceases to love those who (as you say) “come along to serve as objects of his love.” But again, I believe John’s statement was made in light of God’s actions in history (especially in his sending Jesus to die for us). So I think John’s statement “God is love” should best be understood to mean something like, “God is perfectly benevolent towards us,” or, “everything God does for us is motivated by perfect love.” I just think it’s really unlikely that John was thinking of God as a multi-personal entity when he wrote these words. Again, when John said “God is love” it would seem that he was speaking of God as he relates to us, not to himself (or should I say, “themselves?” :slight_smile: ).

So if someone were to say, “God loved me even before I was born,” would you consider this to be a false statement? When God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” or when Paul spoke of God as having set him apart before he was born (Gal 1:15), is it your view that God had no love for Jeremiah or Paul until after these men were born and there could be “a certain giving-and-receiving” between them and God? Is it your position that God has no love for us until we are brought into existence? When Paul wrote, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” do you think God was not showing his love for those who had not yet been born? Because I’ve always read this to mean that God was showing his love for you and I as well, even though neither of us were alive yet when Christ died. Paul also told the Ephesians, “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph 5:2). Since Paul probably wrote this epistle at least 30 years after Christ’s death, it’s probable that there were some members of that church who had not even been born yet when Christ died. So do you think Paul was referring only to those believers who had been born before this time? Or do you think Paul was speaking to every member of the Ephesian church, whether they had been born before or after Christ’s death? The latter seems much more likely to me. But if Christ (who you believe to be the second member of the Trinity) loved us before we were even born, then it’s not true that love cannot exist apart from an actual relationship between two or more existing persons. So assuming that the statement “God is love” refers to what God not only is post-creation but also to what he was pre-creation, if God in fact loved us before we were actually brought into existence, then the statement “God is love” would not necessarily entail that the Father (of whom I believe John is speaking when he refers to “God” in 1 John 4:7-12) has, from all eternity, been “giving-and-receiving” love from some other existent person(s).

#28

Good stuff Aaron. I’ll get back asap. I find dispositional attributes a fascinating topic. And I’ll try to respond to your second paragraph too, about love.

Peace out dudes!

Tom

#29

Jason,

I said I prefer shorter posts because I believe any meaningful topic can be discussed at multiple levels, complexity doesn’t necessarily require long posts! Orthodox Trinitarianism, as I understand it is expressed by the Nicene Creed, the benchmark of Christianity, which, sorry Aaron, rules out Unitarianism. For excellent doctrinal summary of what I believe personally Article one of the 39 Articles is nearly perfect (a little Western in it’s emphasis of unity over distinction):

Like I said earlier I don’t buy into one characteristic or model such as “love/loving” being the dominate definition of God. I don’t mean to be rude by saying this, but given finite time and energy, you haven’t shown succinctly why this shouldn’t be the case. But maybe I’ve misunderstood you and we can debate why the Trinity leads naturally to Universalism.

Tom,

At the end of your last comment you affirmed the Trinity as a starting point so why should we take one of Augstine’s [suggested] models as the preferred one?

#30

Luke,
To clarify, is it your opinion that a Unitarian is not a Christian?

Sonia

#31

Yes, the Trinity is one of the first and clearest boundaries of orthodoxy. (I don’t say this to insult people, but simply describe Christianity.)

#32

Interesting… personally I’d place following Christ as the defining principle of Christianity, as our Lord says, “Whosoever would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”

But that’s a discussion for another topic. I don’t want to derail this one!
Sonia

#33

Tom: I honestly can’t conceive of the triune relations in terms other than mutually affirming and loving relations.

Luke: At the end of your last comment you affirmed the Trinity as a starting point so why should we take one of Augstine’s [suggested] models as the preferred one?

Tom: Everybody MEANS (or OUGHT to mean) something when they say God is triune. To start with the Trinity (or whatever one starts with) is not to start with a vacuum. It is rather to make some meaningful claim about God. I’m just trying to give the most plausible and consistent meaning I can to that claim (in light of the biblical/theological, philosophical, traditional, & experiential evidence).

Tom

#34

Sonia,

My knowledge of history is full of holes, but I think a firm denial of the Trinity would have placed a person outside the “Church” (traditionally speaking, i.e. re: orthodoxy). For my part, I wouldn’t identify Unitarianism as a “Christian” faith. But then neither would I necessarily deny that Unitarians are “saved.” It’s tricky. Creeds and such help us manage the traffic that comes through the doors so far as the earthly expression of the Chrisitan faith and “identity” goes. But whose to say how God negotiates within people’s hearts outside the confines of the Creeds? Jesus is at the center, yes–but then again orthodoxy has placed a particular Jesus at that center, so there’s the rub. I don’t have final answers on the status of Unitarians before God, and I’m glad about that. I’d hang out and chill with Aaron any day of the week and love it. But that doesn’t mean I think a body of Christian believers ought to open their pulpit and Sunday School classes to, say, a Unitarian to promote Unitarianism as a viable/orthdox “Christian” option. But that’s not to make the claim that I ‘know’ Unitarians aren’t saved, or that were I a pastor I’d shew them out of the Church building. Not at all. It’s about responsibly maintaining an enduring identity. See what I mean?

I’m fine with defining Christianity as an open set with, say, the Trinity (and other defining matters) at the center and then view a person’s involvement/participation relative to their movement toward or away from this center. That might not help when it comes to Unitarians. I’m not sure. I’m just trying to say that making the Trinity a defining feature of “Christianity” per se doens’t necessarily mean we have to consign Unitarians to hell-fire.

Hey, if God = Love then we can trust that whatever belief states minimally define “being saved,” God’ll know that. But if God does not = Love, then… :smiling_imp:

Tom :wink:

#35

Hmm…I’ve always considered the Bible to be the “benchmark of Christianity” (or at least of Christian doctrine) rather than an uninspired creed written more than 250 years after the last book of the NT was written. :confused:

focusmagazine.org/Articles/creedproblems.htm

#36

Hi Aaron,

Yes, the Bible as ultimate source. But it’s an agreed upon understanding of that text which is a community’s only way to shape (or express) their identity in terms of that same text. How could it be otherwise?

But onto dispositions!

Talk of ‘dispositions’ goes way back. I think the first to really hammer away on them was Aristotle who defined them in terms of ‘powers’ or ‘capacities’ to act. Some dispositions, he said, are ‘passive’ in their subsisting, a kind of sheer potentiality. Others are ‘active’ and only exist as dispositions as they are exercised in the realization of some actual state. There has been interesting work in modern times done on the ontology of dispositions.

I think the differentiation between passive and active dispositions makes great sense and I don’t know how to falsify the distinction. After all, actualities (a tree, a rock, a bird, a human being, and presumably a divine being) exist by actualizing some state of affairs through the exercise of some disposition (power, capacity). Whether or not an entity has some passive dispositions (dispositions that an entity can be said to possess without having to exercise it throughout its career), actual entities nevertheless must possess some ‘active’ dispositions (dispositions exercised throughout the career of the entity and thus which constitute or define that entity’s essence as the sort of thing it is). Hence, necessary existence must by definition be the actual exercise of some disposition(s).

That brings us to God—the greatest actuality imaginable. And the question is, as a ‘necessary’ being what ‘active’ dispositions constitute God’s being essentially? Not what potentialities (or passive dispositions) may be rightly attributed to God, but what exercised dispositions constitute the essence of divine being?

This is where you and I will part, because you understand the divine disposition to love as a passive disposition, a mere potentiality in God which is exercised contingently when some appropriate non-God entity comes along to “be loved.” For me, this disposition is an active or definitional disposition constitutive of divine being per se.

I’ll just leave it there for now and try to return later. I would absolutely love for you to read Greg Boyd’s PhD dissertation “Trinity in Process” (a Trinitarian reconstruction of Charles Hartshorne’s process metaphysic). Greg actually used to be a passionate Unitarian. Don’t worry, I’m not evangelizing ya! Ha. But I really think you’d be able to follow and appreciate his arguments. Available on amazon for only $60! Ouch.

Tom

#37

The problem I have with Luke’s comment is one I think we all share on this board.

If God’s loving nature does not define who God is toward man in any sense that we understand love, then it seems to me Jesus was wasting his time telling us not to fear God for he cares for us (humans) far more than many sparrows.

If God caring for us as children does not define his love for us (ala John 3:16) then who can prove anything scripture says about God except exactly what the Atheist says; “makes no sense at all”.

Aug

#38

Auggy: If God’s loving nature does not define who God is toward man in any sense that we understand love, then it seems to me Jesus was wasting his time telling us not to fear God for he cares for us (humans) far more than many sparrows.

Tom: Precisely. There has to be some shared context between divine being and human being if our langauge of God is to speak truthfully of God (or if the incarnation is to be possible!). After all, the incarnation is the ULTIMATE anthropomorphism isn’t it? Or perhaps it’s US who are theomorphic. Hmmm.

Tom

#39

Aaron,

What I’m asking is just what exercise of dispositional powers defines God necessarily. No ‘actuality’ can exist in an entirely passive state dispositionally speaking. By that I mean, no ‘actual’ entity can exist apart from some ‘actual’ exercise of dispositional power or capacity. So in your view what dispositions define God’s actuality? Whatever these dispositions are they define God ‘essentially’.

From what I gather you don’t think the disposition to love is exercised necessarily by God. Cool. Can you tell me what active dispositions you think are exercised necessarily (and which thus define God essentially)? Volition? Reason? Self-consciousness?

What Greg (and behind him Hartshorne) argues beginning with simple a priori truths is that the disposition to realize or fulfill ‘aesthetic pleasure’ (hence, the aesthetic a priori or the a priori of aesthetic subjective aims) defines necessary existence. God is necessarily the disposition to realize aesthetic pleasure, and from THAT it’s a hop, skip and a jump to ‘love’.

I’m letting all my aces show!

Tom

#40

I think it’s important to note that Robin Parry doesn’t make the case for Universalism based on the confusing statement “God = love.” I’ve ordered his book on the Trinity: Worshipping the Trinity to confirm my hunch that his argument for universalism is based on God’s words and actions and not some sort of definition of who God is essentially.

Aaron,
Everyone is biased, there is no such thing as a pure reading of Scripture. But this isn’t a problem because Sola Scriptura says Scripture has authority over the church and we interpret Scripture from within Church tradition! At least we know where the bias is then and it’s all codified into documents known as the creeds and agreed to as truth by the majority of the Christianity, past and present, furthermore I believe this is the process of interpretation the Holy Spirit has ordained.

auggybendoggy,
I want to both affirm the loving character of God and avoid reductionism. Yes, we can talk of God being loving but we also love and respect his entire revelation, otherwise our talk of love is hollow, because we want to pick and choose what suits our circumstances.