From: George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: dfsiemensjr@juno.com
Cc: tdavis@messiah.edu, Asa@calvin.edu
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 11:10:46 -0400
Delivered-To: asa@lists.calvin.edu
dfsiemensjr@juno.com wrote:
..................................
>> A proper theism requires a Creator who is outside of creation. Only in
> this way can there be _creatio ex nihilo_. To differentiate this view
> from deism, the Creator must also be Providence, in charge of "day to
> day" operations. This may involve strict determinism, as in Islam, or
> human freedom, as in most Judeo-Christian views.
>
>> If God is outside his creation, he is outside of the space-time
> requirement imposed on creatures. Since our best scientific
understanding
> requires a beginning to space-time, we clearly cannot impose that
> beginning on the Creator. Could he have his own time, if not space? If
> so, how can we characterize it? It seems to be that infinite, linearly
> finite and circularly finite exhaust the possibilities. The last
requires
> infinite recurrences of creation, which fit Hinduism and pantheism, but
> hardly theism. If linearly finite, then the question must be what got
God
> started, with infinite regress the apparently necessary consequence. If
> divine time is infinite, the immediate question is what God was doing
> before the creation, along with why he waited so long, for the past
must
> be infinite unless we return to finite divine time. Only if all time
> began with creation, which excludes temporality to the deity, can we
have
> a reasonable understanding of the matter.
>
> "For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for
the
forgiveness of sins" (Mt.26:28). Is the concern with "_all_ your sins"?
That isn't the
language of any Lutheran Eucharistic Prayer I know of but of the
absolution in the
Lutheran Book of Worship. But what's the problem? Jn.20:23 gives the
church the
authority to forgive sins. Should the pastor say "I forgive you some of
your sins?"
> Crucifixion and Eucharist are certainly linked but your analysis of
that
connection in the Lutheran tradition is wrong both historically and
theologically.
Details on request.
> Yes, the cross has to be seen as part of the whole Christ event,
Annunciation
through Ascension, and in fact of the whole of salvation history & cosmic
history. But
there are several important reasons to focus on the cross as the center
of that event.
For purposes of the present discussion this emphasizes that we have to be
able to talk
about the suffering and death of Christ as something which is part of the
divine life,
and is not simply an "external work of the Trinity" like creation. I.e.,
we have to be
able to speak about the suffering of God (Cf. Ignatius of Antioch, "the
passion of my
God") and of death as part of the experience of God.
> Yes, the Second Person of the Trinity, not the First or Third, became
incarnate
and died on the cross. But if the Son suffered abandonment from the
Father (Mk.14:34),
the Father suffered the loss of the Son. A picture in which the Son
suffers but the the
Father & Spirit don't in any way is both morally unattractive and borders
on tritheism.
> The point then is that the history of Jesus of Nazareth, including his
suffering
and death, are part of God's life. Certainly this requires some idea of
divine change.
Precisely how theology is to work that out in terms of divine time, the
space-time of
the physical universe, and the relationships between them is, I think,
not yet clear.
It is still a relatively new area of theology and the theologians I
mentioned - Barth,
Moltmann, Juengel, Jenson, LaCugna & others, as well as process
Trinitarians like
Bracken - have tried to do this in different ways. The points you raise
about the need
for an adequate _creatio ex nihilo_ doctrine are certainly important.
But it simply is
not adequate to start with that, develop a theism without any reference
to
christological and trinitarian considerations, and then try to develop
doctrines of the
Trinity and Incarnation and an understanding of the cross which are
constrained by that
theism. Western theology did that for centuries (_de deo uno_ always
came before _de
deo trino_ in dogmatics) and the result was an inability to speak
seriously of a
crucified God and a doctrine of the Trinity which was a mere slogan.
> It will be far more profitable to look at the work of today's
trinitarian
theologians critically, see where they may run into problems with a
doctrine of creation
and which of their approaches seem most fruitful for working out that
doctrine. Several
of them have tried to engage scientific ideas of cosmology and time in
their work -
e.g., Pannenberg, Peters, or Duane Larson.
From: George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: "Rasmussen, Ryan J." <Ryan.Rasmussen@mcnamee.com>
> There are several problems here. "Creation" is not "emanation":
Created things
are not "parts of" God or "out of God." Traditional theology speaks
about the divine
"operations" or "energies" but these are not the same as the created
operations which
are appropriate to each created think. God does not (normally at least)
act direct in
the world but "co-operates" with created things. God's eternity is part
of who God is:
It need not mean timelessness but rather God having all the time he
wants. The
indestructibility of energy/matter, OTOH, is conditional. If God in his
absolute
power chose to he could annihilate the world.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------
It is evident to me that George has not come to grips with what I wrote
in the post to which he responded. This becomes especially clear in his
answer to Ryan with "God having all the time he wants." This is clearly a
necessary requirement for the deity changing. But what kind of time is
it? I have set out all the kinds of non-creational time that I can think
of without George's acceptance of any of them. However, he has not
suggested an alternative kind of time. Why seems to me to be answered in
the latter part of his response to me.
I have to conclude from it that the only time possible in his view is
creation's time, specifically terrestrial time, for God changed with the
crucifixion. I see no way in which this is possible unless the Godhead is
within space-time. That the incarnate Word was in space-time will not do,
for this provides only for the changes in the Son. This will work for
emanation but not for _creatio ex nihilo_. The only way I see to have the
Father change on a specific date is to believe contradictory things about
him: he is both without and within his creation. Post-moderns may find
this acceptable, but it clearly has no place in traditional theology,
except in "proof texts" where the author was either careless or making a
point within qualifications, whether implicit or explicit.
George insists that God changes, making him necessarily temporal. What is
so difficult about recognizing that the Redeemer-Creator is eternally
different from the Law-giver-Creator of Judaism or the arbitrary deity of
Islam? Why is it necessary to reconstruct the deity with the temporality
of pantheism? There is a simple _reductio ad absurdum_. Change
necessitates time. Creation necessitates a Source outside of time. The
combination necessitates nonsense. This does not change no matter how
many contemporary theologians may be cited.
There is one other point. I will not dispute Lutheran history or theology
with George. I only report that, at every celebration of the Lord's
Supper in one Lutheran church, I hear the statement, "For as often as you
drink this cup you have the forgiveness of all your sins." This, I
contend, makes partaking a sacrament, something which of itself produces
a change. I do not have the _Book of Worship_ handy to check whether this
is an aberration on the part of one pastor. But I am confident that the
Reformed and Anabaptist traditions will not phrase matters this way.
Dave
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