RE: Predetermination: God's controlling will?

From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Wed Jul 09 2003 - 20:20:23 EDT

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    Hi Howard
    you wrote:

    >-----Original Message-----
    >From: Howard J. Van Till [mailto:hvantill@chartermi.net]
    >Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 7:38 AM

    >From: "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net>
    >
    >Interesting Howard. To what then do we look for information on
    >God's nature?
    >
    >I'm not so much looking for "information" in the sense of facts or
    >propositions, but for ways to make sense of my total experience of
    >life. That is what leads me to speak of the "Sacred," the "More
    >than mere material structures," and the like.
    >
    >Do we look at what we like and don't like, and choose what we like?
    >
    >No, we look at everything we experience, and then do the best we
    >can to make sense out of it.

     I think I have a better formulation of my query to you. There is a danger of us doing what we wuld never ever think of doing. While broadly I agree with you that we all do the best we can to make sense of the world, one must be very careful in these things of creating our own god. If we take what we like about god and chuck what we don't like, then what makes us different from the idolators of old? The fact that we don't carve our view into stone is not a lot of consolation.

    Secondly, if God is nothing more than each man's creation (something that many of my atheist friends would claim) then I don't see how there can be any transcendence or claim on my life. If I am God's creator, then he is at my beck and call rather than vice versa.

    >
    >
    >What I choose to do is to include the biblical text, and the
    >authentic human experience of the Sacred that it represents, as
    >part of the human experience that I want to make sense of. In that
    >context, throwing out the entire text "wholesale" is as arbitrary
    >and unwarranted as accepting the entire text as having supreme
    >authority over any other form of human experience.

    so would it be fair to say that you follow what I understand to be the pattern of the Eastern Orthodox Church which places tradition (an extrabiblical source) on par with the Bible, with the exception that instead of tradition, it is experience?

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