From: Sondra Brasile (sbrasile@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Feb 14 2003 - 10:27:16 EST
Don,
I see some fundamental problems with your theory, just off the top of my
head; when did God become the husband? You easily go from one to the other
with that, you agree that Jesus is the bridegroom, but then proceed with how
God has to make for *himself* wives. I'd say I have a pretty good knowledge
of what the Bible contains and nowhere does it ever say anything other than
God being "FATHER".
I'm not dispelling your theory, I in fact had a similar "revelation" about
two years ago, of course it was during a time in my life where I was
blatantly sinning in the worst ways.
Since then I look back at my "theory" and wonder if it came out of my own
indulgence in sensuality and sexual sin. It occured to me how "spiritual"
sex can be and wondered what that was all about, that was about the time my
mind began wondering about the sexuality of God. Of course I was drunk, not
only on alcohol, but on everything the Bible says NOT to do, sex is
intoxicating and seems spiritual the part that makes me worry is within the
confines of what God says is ok, acceptable by him, it is rarely like that,
it makes me wonder whether there's a Satanic link (oh the sin of it all!).
Now in my right mind I see that A. whenever we try to give God human
characteristics (we try to shove God into a human package) we are in
trouble. and B. The only reason sex exists is for us to procreate, (get
together, male and female to begin with) face it, without physical sex we
have very little need or want or reason to be together. We have very little
in common and all we really do is annoy each other to death. If we were
asexual (I sure hope that's the right word) do you think male and female
would mix much? I don't. (If there were such a thing as male and female if
we were asexual). I know people who have sworn off sex (my female cousin,
and a male friend of my husbands, they aren't gay either, just had bad
experiences I guess, or maybe they're being celibate for religious reasons,
I don't know) they are all alone and have no mate, therefore they will never
procreate (I'm a poet! Unless science steps in, that is).
Maybe sex is the closest thing we can use to *compare* the pleasure God gets
out of us, but it doesn't necessarily mean it IS sexual. We consummate the
marriage with Christ not God, so I don't know where you are coming from with
that. Some small parts of your theory may have some merit, but not how you
seem to present them.
Sondra Brasile
>From: "Don Winterstein" <dfwinterstein@msn.com>
>To: "asa" <asa@calvin.edu>
>Subject: my new paradigm
>Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:44:16 -0800
>
>
>
>Iain Strachan wrote:
>
>
> >But I think what Don means (trying to goad him into divulging more of his
>secret theory ... :-) …
>
>
>
>
>
>I’ve been leading people on long enough, and you’ve just given me the
>entrée or rationale I need to proceed. A big problem for me is that I
>regard my new paradigm more as revelation from God—that is, as the result
>of an actual instance of God’s punctuating the equilibrium—than as mere
>theory. But regarding it as revelation puts tremendous pressure on me to
>try to eliminate unnecessary offense in the way I present it. To think of
>the new paradigm as mere personal opinion or theory takes the pressure off,
>because anyone can then dismiss it as my weird idea, and I won’t need to
>hold myself to such high standards. So present it as mere theory I will,
>and perhaps I’ll learn something useful from feedback. To a considerable
>degree it is my conclusions from revelation rather than the revelation
>itself, anyway.
>
>
>My new paradigm is extremely simple in essence, but it has far-reaching
>implications. Because of its novelty it can also be difficult to describe.
>In a nutshell, God is fundamentally a sexual person, one whose fundamental
>goals involve his engaging in sexual relations. All three persons of the
>Trinity are sexual, but they are so in different ways. For this discussion
>I focus on the Holy Spirit.
>
>
>
>The Spirit, of course, has nothing like physical genitals, so the
>definition of sexuality needs to be broadened to make it apply to spirits.
>Briefly, sexuality is defined spiritually in terms of interaction between
>two persons, where a submissive person (considered female) submits herself
>to a dominant person (in this case God) to be redefined in him. Although
>God has no genitals, he has spiritual counterparts of genitals, and both he
>and his lover(s) in their spiritual intercourse experience something akin
>to human sexual pleasure.
>
>
>
>The paradigm introduced by Jesus had God as loving father. The new
>paradigm has God as loving husband. Both paradigms in reality have always
>been in effect, but for historical reasons different paradigms come to the
>surface and dominate at different times. A third paradigm dominated in the
>period from Abraham to Jesus.
>
>
>
>Scriptural support: Everyone is familiar with New Testament descriptions
>of Jesus as bridegroom with the Church as bride. The usual
>interpretation—when the marriage is taken as more than just metaphor—is
>that the marriage is to be consummated in the hereafter, at the second
>coming of Christ, not in the present age. In the Old Testament, several
>prophets speak of God’s two wives, the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Hosea
>and Jeremiah pursue this line of thought at some length in their early
>chapters. Ezekiel in chapters 16 and 23 elaborates with vivid imagery.
>Many OT statements refer to idolatry as sexual interaction with false gods,
>so one might infer that worship of the true God is sexual interaction with
>him. I suspect that most Bible interpreters take all these marriages
>strictly as metaphor. I have compelling reasons to take them literally.
>
>
>
>Jesus from the perspective of the new paradigm presents an image of God to
>his wives as one who is worthy of their love. God thus wins wives through
>the attractive witness of Jesus. I say wives, because it’s much easier to
>think of God as having many wives than as having just one. Each different
>Christian denomination, perhaps, is a separate wife; and in some cases
>Christians of one nation or period of history might be a wife distinct from
>Christians of another nation or period. In the hereafter Jesus is to have
>one wife, the whole Christian Church as a single entity. But God in the
>present age has many wives. The concept of wife for God is fluid and we
>don’t need to bother defining it precisely. The underlying idea is that
>God sometimes sees groups of people collectively, as a wife, in the same
>way that the Church is seen as the bride of Christ.
>
>
>
>This brief sketch probably raises far more questions than it answers. I
>wrote a book that addresses many of the details and put it on my Web site.
>But some of the things I say there will cause unnecessary offense, so I
>want to cleanse the site before divulging the URL. However, no matter how
>“clean” I make it, the things I’ll leave in will cause more than enough
>offense.
>
>
>
>So what relevance does this paradigm have to science? I can’t predict how
>others will respond, but to me it gives profound relief particularly on
>questions pertaining to origins and the problem of evil.
>
>
>
>The fundamentals once again are extremely simple and intuitive. The
>following three paragraphs come from my Web site:
>
>
>Sexuality of God explains his mode of creation. God’s goal involves finding
>a person whom he can love sexually. One does not have sex with one’s
>children. That would be perverse. From the kind of creation described in
>Genesis, God gets only children. That is, a dominating father figure like
>the God of Genesis, who brings the world into existence by speaking a word,
>does not create persons suitable for marital relations but only children
>who are forever dominated by their creator.
>
>Persons whom God can love sexually must somehow come into existence
>independently of him. When a man takes a wife, he does not choose a
>daughter, sister or other close relative, but someone who has grown up
>independently of himself. Therefore, to satisfy his need for a lover, God’s
>creative activity must be so subtle that the persons he creates must seem
>to come into existence on their own, independently of him. This is why
>species appear to scientists to have originated haphazardly and not by
>design. Those of us who believe in God know that he somehow guided the
>processes to give him the lovers he needs, but his touch has been so subtle
>that we can think of ourselves as having come into existence independently
>of him.
>
>A consequence of God’s sexuality is thus that the old problem of evil
>disappears. Question: How can an all-powerful and good God allow this or
>that terrible thing to happen? Answer: God wants a lover more than he wants
>a child. The world in many ways functions as if independent of him. His
>control nevertheless remains sufficient to yield his desired outcome.
>
>
>
>An associated concept is that the creation is not God’s toy or idle
>diversion but is an undertaking that is integrally tied in with his own
>meaning. He gives himself fully to it and eventually will identify with
>it.
>
>
>
>As I said, I have no idea how others will respond, but these concepts put
>me completely at ease with such things as the great age of the world, the
>“haphazardness conundrum” and the problem of evil. With God as loving
>husband, all such conceptual difficulties disappear, and I can be
>comfortable with God and with the world as science has revealed it.
>Science in fact has helped humans become the kind of independent beings
>that God seeks for a wife.
>
>
>
>How I came into these views is a long story, but I can say they derive
>immediately from experience of God I had over an extended period more than
>40 years ago. On my Web site I call this experience “my revelation.” The
>views have benefited also from different kinds of spiritual experiences
>since that time. I emphasize that the views I express are not the same as
>"my revelation" but derive from it. They are conclusions I have drawn from
>contemplating my revelation all these decades. As such they are no doubt
>flawed, but they're the best I've been able to do with what I have. My Web
>site presents superficial descriptions of some of these experiences of God,
>so readers eventually will be able to judge to a limited degree for
>themselves whether my conclusions have any merit.
>
>
>
>As an ex-scientist I cringe at the idea of presenting information publicly
>that comes from experiences that others cannot access and verify, but I’m
>consoled by the thought that all of God’s prophets had to do exactly that.
>
>
>
>Don
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