Heaven and Hell in Christian Thought - Thomas Talbott (5): Restricting the Scope of God's Love

The Inconsistent Triad

These posts relate to the article "Heaven and Hell in Christian Thought" by Dr. Thomas Talbott as published in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  

This essay strikes an excellent balance between being concise and being thorough in laying out the arguments and viewpoints of various Christian schools of eschatological thought without resorting to caricatures.  His project is careful to present each of these viewpoints at their strongest, for only then can productive dialogue occur.


Return to Part 1
Back to Part 4

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Let's now look at how Talbott addresses the Augustinian notion of God's "restricted love".

The Augustinian reasons as follows:

God's saving grace is irresistible in the end, and yet everlasting torment in hell will nonetheless be the terrible fate of some; therefore, God does not love all created persons equally and his (electing) love is thus limited in its scope.

In the end, it's fairly simple.  Grace is "irresistible" (proposition 2), yet everlasting separation is true (proposition 3).  Therefore, it must be the case that God does not love all people equally in the sense that God wills their salvation.

If a person is not saved it is because God doesn't want them to be saved.  His electing love, being irresistible, cannot and must not extend to them.  Period.

For some people this salvation equation is sheer theological fact.  "Mysterious" as to the reasons for God's "free" choice to save some and not others, but not mysterious in it's sheer necessity.  On the other hand, for those who either (1) come from a tradition that doesn't hold to the Augustinian version of "irresistible" grace or (2)come from a tradition that does view salvation through the lens of the Augustinian version of "irresistible" grace but didn't realize the necessity of this limited scope of God's salvific will, this is a scandalous assertion.  Shocking.  For some, heretical.

The assertion naturally leads to some important theological questions like:

What??  

God doesn't want all people to be "saved"?  

How and where do we see such an idea defended philosophically?  Biblically?  Theologically?

What about those parts of scripture that would seem to indicate that God does indeed want all to be "saved"?

1 Timothy 2:4 is one example of an isolated verse commonly used to affirm God's desire to save all people without exception:

who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (NRSV)

For a person who needs to restrict the scope of God's (electing) love and sees this verse as holding some sort of authority, this verse is a problem.  What can be done?  But here is how Augustine explains it :

"the word concerning concerning God, 'who will have all men to be saved,' does not mean that there is no one whose salvation he doth not will...but by 'all men' we are to understand the whole of mankind, in every single group into which it can be divided...For from which of these groups doth not God will that some men from every nation should be saved through his only-begotten Son our Lord."  (Enchiridion) 

So for Augustine, "all" must merely mean "all kinds" or "some" individuals from "every group".  This is the necessary exegetical move.  God simply cannot be said to will the salvation of all people (as defined in proposition 1) and maintain any Augustinian theological coherence as defined by the acceptance of propositions 2 & 3.  So any Bible verse that seems to say otherwise ("all" as meaning literally "all people") cannot really be doing so.  It must be shoved off to the side or dismantled.

The logic of it is not difficult to see.  Simple.

Now some proponents of the Augustinian view of "limited election"argue, quite simply, that God does not love the non-elect at all.  Others, like the contemporary philosopher Paul Helm don't argue that God doesn't "love" all people or that "love" is not of God's very essence.  Instead, Helm seems to dismantle the connection between God's love and God's salvific will.  Helm argues that God's loving nature or God's loving actions towards human beings do not necessitate that God's redemptive love extends equally to all people.  The argument goes, just as there are differences within the created order (male/female, etc), there can be differentiations with respect to God's redemptive purposes.  Essentially, God being love in God's essence and being loving towards God's creation does not mean that this love is necessarily and finally redemptive in nature.

Helm does not here seek to throw out the language of "love" but rather to rework it's semantic content to fit into an Augustinian framework by:

1. creating a special category of "love" called "redemptive love" and arguing that the former does not necessarily entail the latter
2. viewing divine love on a sort of sliding scale, the minimum level of which may be called "love" but doesn't include the will to save

Jeff Jordan takes a similar approach.  He argues that God's love need not be maximally extended for it to be love.  He finds the idea of "equal love" to be an impossibility because love is not defined by uniformity.  In other words, divine love need not be salvific in it's aims for it to be divine "love".

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A lot of foundational things to work through here.  Personally, I'd prefer to see the language of "love" thrown out all together than see it's semantic content be reduced to a rubble of Augustinian equivocation.  Preference aside, the implications of going down this path are, I think, stunning and disastrous.

For me, the questions that arise out of this section are:

1. When does "all" mean "all"?
2. What is the connection between who God is and what God does?
3. We may very well be dealing with definitions of "love" that are are semantically different.  So what do we mean by the word "love"?  
4. Does God being "loving" entail that God wills the ultimate good of the object(s) of his love?  Or can "love" will something less (and far worse) that the ultimate good of the beloved and still be called "love"?
5. What are the protological (in-the-beginning) implications of a limited love?

continued

The Meaning of the Trinity for the Communal Life of Faith?

I wrote a series of posts several months back about the question “Is God Primarily Angry?”  (My answer to that question is “No” btw.)

One of those posts had to do with the Trinity.  In it, I invoked the image of perichoresis – “dance” or “rotation”.

Now, I didn’t intend to try to work out any sort of “doctrine of God” or to “explain” the Trinity.  I know now more than ever that I am not able to do so.  I mentioned in the post itself that the image that I started with was anthropomorphic and, essentially, to not get too caught up in it.  

My goal in appealing to the doctrine of the Trinity in my approach to divine wrath was really threefold:

1. To establish that God is not lonely and doesn’t have needs (as in God doesn’t need “wrath” to display some aspect of Himself that might not be possible without someone to punish). 
2. To question and clarify what is intended by the word “wrath”. 
3. To argue that God doesn’t have “parts” (as in “primarily” angry).

Essentially, my intent was to view and define divine “anger” (or “wrath’) through the lens of protology (origins and first things).  In other words, what is original within God?  Is the sort of hostility that characterizes the typical construal of wrath an eternal ‘attribute’ of God?

I still think my questions/points about “primary anger” are valid, that a protological imagination is essential to how we address them, and that the Trinity shapes Christian protology.  Attack the metaphysics of that post if you like, but don’t let them detract from the intent of the post and the validity of the line of thinking therein.  

But since the release of Richard Rohr’s book The Divine Dance (which I haven’t read) and The Shack (which I haven't seen), there seems to have been a spike in discussions of the Trinity (along with an associated spike in heresy hunting).  I’ve read several in-depth blog posts & discussions, most of them by some really smart guys.  

It's been...interesting.  Sobering.  A bit disorienting.  

The terminology is often inaccessible, necessarily anthropomorphic, and riddled with semantic equivocation.  People use the same words but mean different things.  When it comes to Trinitarian thought, the definition of “person” is enough to make your head spin.  So as far as the Trinity goes, to be forthright, I’m not sure that I have any idea what I’m talking about.  Looking in on some of these discussions makes me realize just how much I don’t know.

So there’s that. 

But that’s only part of what I wanted to say in this post.  The other part has to do with the place of the Trinity within the spiritual life of the Christian faith that I currently find myself in (of the evangelical variety).  What is it’s meaning for the life of faith?  

At best, the answer is not self-evident.

We do not say the creeds.  Our “liturgy” rarely invokes any traditionally Trinitarian language.  Even if it did (per more liturgical traditions), there is no clarity as to what it is that we’re talking about or why such things matter beyond dogmatic identity and association.  Evangelists occasionally reference the necessity of intellectual assent to the proposition “Jesus is God”, but their reason for doing so is to avoid the terrible fate that will come as a result of not making such a confession.  We may take a few steps into the realm of meaning in asserting that “to see Jesus is to see God”, but that hardly validates the metaphysical complexities, intricacies, and anathemas seen in the history of Trinitarian thought.

Sure, a few of the theologically minded may discuss some of the finer points of Trinitarian thought.  But other than a passing reference to the Trinity being “confusing” (the most common reference), as a religious badge of identity over against “non-Trinitarians” and their “misunderstandings” (“they think we believe in 3 gods!” we say incredulously) or in the rhyme of contemporary music, it holds no particularly vital or life-giving place in the spiritual life of the Christian community of which I’m a part.

I don’t know what to make of that.

Is God "Primarily Angry"? (3) - Trinity

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

-- as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.  Amen.  Alleluia.

If we were to pray the daily office on any given day, we might notice that the prayer both begins and ends with the above words.  They're interspersed throughout it's middle sections too, as a matter of fact.  This is important.  Fundamental.  Axiomatic.

Christianity confesses that God is Trinity - Father, Son, Spirit.  The transcendent Truth of all that is.... encapsulated by the image of Pericherosis - a Trinitarian dance of shared love and peace, a relational union not contingent on anything else in order to be complete.  God is complete within Himself.  So the answer to the question of  "why is there something rather than nothing?" – whatever that answer might be - has nothing to do with a fundamental lack within God.  God's "dwelling place" isn't a dark, dreary, lonely eternal realm that become a bit more cheery and lively after God made puppies.

Truth be told, I don't get this.  I have tons of questions, and I'm instantly skeptical of anyone who doesn't.  These words and images are but a shadow of something that is infinitely beyond words, but try to picture it.  A bearded and white-haired Father, a long-haired Caucasian Son with sandals and a robe, and a wispy Spirit holding hands and moving slowly in a circle.  Or perhaps you possess an imaginative mind that permits you to work from a less silly and anthropomorphic starting point.  Go with it.

Recall the two ways that I wrote about the concept of God being "primarily angry" in the last post - either for the benefit of the "other" (discipline), or for the benefit and satisfaction of the angered party (retribution as an end in and of itself).  Are either of these present in the scene that you envision?

Do we imagine that divine "anger" is a disposition or an "emotion" that is present within this transcendent Trinitarian dance?  Is it perhaps present but not "primary", whatever that might mean?  Does Jesus possess a little bit of an edge, or a problem with the Father's authority and His arbitrary rules?  Is there a slight hint of competition, insecurity, and self-preservation?  Is there anger and hostility within the trinity?

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

-- as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.  Amen.  Alleluia.

I don't know how the answer could be anything other than "no".  But we'll come back to that.  Some people disagree.  Like this guy.

Ok.  But perhaps a desire to display wrath is present in the essence of God and thus is present in an unrealized sense?  A repressed rage that lacks an outlet perhaps.  A "justice" and infinite power anxious to be made manifest but only able to take form upon a sort of imperfect "vessel of wrath", a thing that doesn’t yet exist?  Is there a greater glory to be attained in displaying retribution, but no means to display it without an "other" to punish?  We like to indulge our anger sometimes after all don't we!  Especially when we're right.  And God is always right, right?!  So why not?  Is the music of conflict needed to complete this trinitarian dance by way of contrast?  

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

-- as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.  Amen.  Alleluia.

Suppose we answer "no" to that too.  So there isn't a hint of wrath inherent within this trinitarian dance, nor is there some sort of desired but "repressed" wrath that "exists" but lacks a suitable outlet.

Hmmm,  What now?

"Let there be light."  Suddenly, there is space-time.  14,000,000,000 years ago.  Or 10,000 years ago.  Either way.  Whereas there was once “nothing”, there is suddenly a “something”.  Suddenly there is an "other" - that which is not God - and this "other" might rebel, disobey, break the rules, break relationship, deny it's intrinsic nature or however else you might like to say it.

How about now?  Is God angry?  In other words, does creation introduce something within the nature of God that wasn't previously there?  A zealousness to enforce the rules and smite someone perhaps, even though they haven't been broken yet?  A God who is just waiting....waiting for someone to screw up.  Glory-as-wrath to be revealed.

Ancient religion was quite comfortable with divine wrath and warring gods.  Many creation stories (like Enuma Elish) are filled with violence and wrath.  In these creation stories some sort of divine conflict is, in fact, THE means of the creation of the world.  Such violence and anger is part of the essence of God (or the gods).  Is that what we have here?

Nevertheless, still no anger?  Why should there be?  The mere existence of an "other" doesn't necessitate anger if that anger isn't eternally present within the essence of this trinitarian dance.  Right?  

But perhaps we now have a way to conceive of wrath as possibility?  

So move forward to the garden of Eden (which means "delight").  I'm quite aware of the difficulties of a "plain reading" of the Genesis narrative, but let us simply take the basics for what they are.  God plants a tree in the middle of a garden and tells the man and women not to eat it's fruit.  But they both eat it.  The "fall" ensues (though any reference to this as a "fall" itself isn't found in the Bible).

Now we have it!  There are rules.  We broke them.  God gets angry, and that anger is perfectly justified.  In the divine court of law, such anger is "legal".  What's so complicated about that?  That's how authorities behave.  Judges judge.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

-- as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.  Amen.  Alleluia.

NOW is God angry?  God the angry judge.

Before answering, a few questions worth pondering.

Have human beings, through their sinfulness, managed to change God?  To change His disposition towards that which He has created?  Does human sin introduce something within the nature of God that did not previously exist?  Does it introduce some hostile and vengeful character trait that had previously been unactualized, which God is actually undesirous of?  

"I mean, look at those humans down there.  Sinners.  They’ve ruined everything.  I'm so......angry.  So violated.  I can't believe this happened.  What am I supposed to do now?"

Is that the deep truth?  That if we're good God will reward us and if we're not God will punish us?  Isn't that what "the Bible teaches!?"

Did we create a wrath problem with God for ouselves?  Did we create a wrath problem for God with Godself?  The sort of internal anger issues that a human being might struggle with?    

Observe that underlying the format of these last few scenarios - the language of God being angry now or being angry yet - lies a presupposition that God moves linearly through time and changes much like a person - without anger one moment, and then with anger the next.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

-- as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.  Amen.  Alleluia.

I have to say, I think the idea that we change God is wrong.  And I say that knowing full well humanity's undeniable history of evil, violence, greed, and suffering.  But I don't care how extreme or graphic we make the language of evil.  Whatever it's nature, it isn't original.  It doesn't add to or subtract from that primordial trinitarian dance in the least.

So what now?  Is God not "angry" at all then?  What do we do about all the Bible passages in which God is angry....in which God becomes angry?  Or did we go wrong somewhere in this post?  Either God changes, of there is, was, and always will be anger within that trinitarian dance.  What other choices do we have?

I see two possible answers.

The first is to assert that anger WAS, IS, and ALWAYS WILL BE present within this trinitarian dance in the form of "holiness".  Yep, I played the "holiness" card.  We make holiness synonymous with anger, synonymous with justice, synonymous with retribution.  While I understand what's being said here (should a "holy" God be indifferent towards child molestation?), I think it's dangerous and ultimately heretical to frame holiness as virtually synonymous with anger and retribution, or to make sin the occasion by which a holy God deems His own anger and retribution to be sort of forensically justified (as in those vile humans broke the rules, now God can justifiably punish and nobody can say He's wrong for doing so).

No.  Jesus is holy.  That's holiness.  "Justice" is more than that (see "Justice" by George MacDonald).

But that "holiness as divine right to slaughter" is a perversion of the word and leads to this sort of thing from the Westminster Confession:

The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His Sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice. (Chap. III-Art. VI and VII)

"Wrath for the praise of his glorious justice."  Yikes.

The second, in keeping with the immutable unchanging nature of the Trinitarian God, is to frame wrath as the love of God wrongly received.  In other words, it's not God who changes in his disposition towards wayward, selfish, and lost humanity, but the inevitable ontological experience of goodness bumping into evil.  It is darkness fleeing from the light.

If God is always for humanity, even in the midst of opposition, then what we call anger is restorative and for our benefit.  Always.  And this is good news.  Always.  This is the God who makes "all things new".  It's the "refiners fire".  It's "kolasis", going back to my last post.

If God is not for humanity, if God glorifies himself in punishment as an end in and of itself in order to display justice and holiness (or for whatever reason), then that is another thing.  It fulfills something that simply could not be fulfilled in the Trinity itself - opposition.

Either way, we must decide.  And we must decide with the Triune nature of God at the forefront of our hearts, minds, and prayers.

Is anger "kolasis" (inflicted in the interest of the sufferer) or "timoria" for the satisfaction and/or appeasement of the angered party?  In my experience, despite the lip-service paid to "kolasis", within our atonement theology and in our eschatology (my next two posts), we generally put forth that the default position of the Triune God is one in which wrath is primarily "timoria" - retribution, not discipline.

In the end, in light of the Triune God, I must believe that all God's actions are ultimately restorative because the only "end" for created things is defined by this Trinitarian dance.  "I am the alpha and the omega" says Christ.  All things.  Eternally.  Because the trinitarian dance of love and mercy is deeper than anything else, even deeper than our lostness and our will to destroy ourselves.  God is the father of the lost son, the one who finds the lost sheep and the lost son.  While it's virtually always portrayed in the exact opposite terms, I believe that is what makes God's ways higher than our ways.

Or do I?  Do I really?  I'm not so sure.  I'm filled with doubts.  Why is it hard so hard to believe this?  Because SO MUCH that I hear testifies to the exact opposite.  Because some would scream "heretic!" at my words here.  And because of the common portrayals of the cross, the subject of my next post.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

-- as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.  Amen.  Alleluia.

Continue to part 4 - Cross

Is God "Primarily Angry"? (2) - Defining our terms

Return to part 1

In the last post I began to explore the degree to which we (I) perceive God to be "primarily angry", a probing question posed in a recent sermon at Lifespring Community Church.

We live in a semantic universe and have complicated ways of defining our words, so I’d like to explore these two words in more detail – “primarily” and “angry”.

So what is meant by the term “angry”?

It's defined as "a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong; wrath".

Truth be told, we don't really need to be told what anger is.  We're know it's ebb and flow in our lives.  We're angry at one moment in time, and then not angry a moment later.  We feel angry towards a person who has offended us or impeded our will in some way, and not angry at a person who has not.  And we've been on both ends of actions driven by anger - we've both received it and we've dished it out.  Sometimes it feels good to indulge our anger.  We like the rush of it.  The power.  Or perhaps we don't.  Perhaps our anger is crippling to us.  We long to eliminate our anger but cannot do it.

Is God like that?

I'll have more to say about some of the words presented in that textbook definition in the context of the divine in the next post - feelings, belligerence, and aroused in particular.

But generally speaking, when we talk about anger we're talking about a negative reaction to an offense.  We're talking about an inner emotion or disposition that is characterized by opposition to some person or action, an opposition which may or may not manifest itself in some show of force that is experienced by the "other" as a punishment.

I can't leave it at that though.

As they relate to this specific discussion, the most important questions may very well revolve around the intent of the anger.  We might differentiate between anger as "discipline" (as in a loving parent disciplining a child for the sake of a child) and anger as "retribution" (as in an authority figure taking some degree of satisfaction in the very acts of anger and punishment as ends in and of themselves).

In other words, is this "anger" in the interest of the object of the anger, or in the interest of the one who is angry?

Thus Aristotle differentiates between kolasis and timoria:

For according to Aristotle, "there is a difference between revenge and punishment; the latter (kolasis) is inflicted in the interest of the sufferer, the former (timoria) in the interest of him who inflicts it, that he may obtain satisfaction."
  --The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd Edition, p.81

Which one are we talking about here?  Both?  Or option C, whatever that might be?

And on to our second definition.  What might we mean by the term “primarily”?

It's defined as "for the most part" or "mainly".  Nothing earth shattering.

More precisely, we might use the word in reference to the components that make up an object or experience that we’re seeking to understand or describe.  We might think of it in terms of size comparison, numerical ratio, degree of importance, etc – it’s an inherently relative term.  So “primarily” in relation to what?  Answer: in relation to the whole and/or to the other parts that make up the whole, whatever that “whole” might be.

The human body is made up of roughly 65% water, so we might say that the human body is “primarily” water.  We might take a class at school, and upon reading the syllabus understand that the grade that we’ll receive is derived “primarily” from tests.  We might say that a vacation was “primarily” relaxing in terms of the ratio of time.  I might say that I work “primarily” for the paycheck – a measure of importance or motivation.  We might say that the Cubs are "primarily" a losing franchise (but THIS IS THE YEAR!!).

So the measurement by which we determine what constitutes something as "primary" may vary, but it's purpose - this term "primary" - is used to get at the essence of the thing in question.

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Putting these two words together, how might we think of the phrase “primarily angry” when it comes to God?  Do we think of God as the end result of some combination of independent attributes or components, and the question is whether anger is relatively “primary”?  For example, God might be 6 parts anger and 4 parts love?  Or 2 parts anger/wrath, 3 parts holiness, 1 part justice, 3 parts love, and 1 part mercy?  Or 1 part anger and 9 parts love?  And does it all fluctuate, all the time, as things in the world get better or worse?

Does God have "parts" like this?

Hopefully we wouldn't characterize a divine attribute as "primary" by applying some sort of math equation.  Such a "recipe" is absurd, yet it illustrates something problematic.  It highlights what we perceive to be a sort of competing set of attributes within the heart of God.

We might surmise that justice and mercy are utterly opposed to one another (this is a biggie).  We might hear it said that "God is merciful, but he is also just" - the two being opposed together in such a way that granting mercy is fundamentally not an act of justice.  There's the "but" - a word that communicates some opposition or tension.  We might say the same thing about holiness and forgiveness.  Or anger and love.

Or we might create two buckets of attributes, conflate each of the words in those two buckets to basically mean the same thing, and then have just those two buckets oppose one another at a fundamental level.  So, for example, we create a bucket called "holiness" in which holiness, anger, wrath, retribution, power, and justice all effectively equate to the same thing.  We create another bucket called "love" which is where we bucket love, mercy, forgiveness, kindness, restoration, etc.  It becomes a matter of simplification.  The simplification may obscure the tension (a God with 2 competing attributes is more coherent than a God torn in different directions by 20) but it doesn't eliminate it.

Even after all that, a key question for me comes back to whether divine "anger" (whatever it's relative importance) is an end in itself, "satisfying" God in some way, or whether what we call anger has something else in mind, is geared towards some other end.  Is it kolasis or timoria?

So we're left with all of these different words that have different meanings to different people, and connect to one another (or oppose one another) in different ways depending on who you ask.

So when all the chips are on the table, what's the "primary", the trump card?  What's left when the layers of the onion are pulled away?  What's our perception of God's default disposition?

But how can we know?  How do we do this?  Confused yet?  Feeling a certain amount of tension?

It's a complex, subjective, and somewhat subconscious process.  It's all a bit circular, not unlike a photomosaic.  The whole informs where we place the tiny pictures, but move the tiny pictures and the whole changes.  And it's complicated because we're not robots.  We're emotional.  That's a feature, not a bug.  We're human beings living in particular times and places.

Despite assertions that we can we just "look at Jesus" or "read the Bible", we have to acknowledge that such assertions have not eliminated the ambiguity, as much as we might like to say otherwise.  Within the evangelical tradition that has defined my own religious upbringing, (but also in many other traditions) there are things that have often reinforced the idea of a "primarily angry" God.

So here's what I'm going to do:

My next three posts will be about:
Trinity
Atonement/the cross
Eschatology

Continue to part 3 - Trinity

Is God "Primarily Angry"? (1)

The church I attend has been doing a sermon series entitled “Knowing the Heart of God”.  And what more important topic could there be?  All theological pontificating and arguing is REALLY just a way of trying to formulate an answer to THAT question.  It's a question for all people, not just for some exceptional class of the theologically and intellectually elite.  The question of the heart of God is, in the end, inseparable from the most significant questions about ourselves and our world.  What is a human being?  What sort of universe do we live and die in?  What is the destiny of creation?

The answers are not as self-evident as we might like, for God does not subject himself to cross-examination like a trial witness or hit the campaign trail like a politician.  We are left to grasp, wonder, argue, harmonize, exegete, think, pray.  But even then, the diversity of thought and practice within Christianity itself is evidence that Christians don't agree on what God is like.  Far from it.  There is no divine FAQ page.  Our language reveals ambiguity – for what I mean by love, justice, grace, wrath, anger, or mercy is not what you mean.  We all see through a glass darkly.

I often write as a way to come to terms with my own experience, to sort of tease out what it is that I actually think and believe, to deconstruct and (hopefully) reconstruct.  A recent sermon within this series in particular has had my brain wheels churning.  We were confronted with the important and perceptive question of whether we see God’s disposition towards humanity as being “primarily angry”.

Is God "primarily angry?"

Now, the very fact that a sermon asks the question of if we perceive God as “primarily angry”, to me, reveals that the answer is very often “yes”.  There'd be no reason to ask it if there wasn't.  We need not pretend that a "primarily angry" God exists only in the minds of a few eccentric cultish groups but is otherwise absent.  In order for any constructive conversation to get off the ground, it might be helpful to just acknowledge that, to bring it into the light.  

But things are immediately fuzzy.  

What is divine "anger"?  Is it an essential attribute of God?  Was God not angry originally, and then "became angry" at some point in time?  Is anger an "emotion"?  Have we conflated anger with other words like holiness, retribution, hatred, justice, or vengeance.  Some of them?  All of them?  Rightly or wrongly?  Is anger opposed to love?  Does love merely justify divine anger as "lawful", but anger itself is understood in a way that is opposed to love?

What does "primarily" angry mean?  It is just a sort of ratio thing?  Like you sort of compare the ratio of love to wrath, and as long as there is more than 50% love we have “a God who primarily loves us” and not a God who is “primarily angry”?  If we have a God that’s maybe 20% angry, does that fix things?  

And how do we know one way or the other?  What informs our knowing?  Does our knowing come through systematic theology, the way that our minds put together various pieces of data from the Bible, the Tradition, or our own experience?  Is it an experiential knowing?  Might our knowing be somewhat culturally conditioned? In this case, for example, perhaps an a priori understanding of justice as being fundamentally retributive in nature shapes the way that we see things?

I plan to explore some of these questions in the next few posts.

Continue to part 2 (Defining our terms)

Random Thoughts: The Week of 3/25/16 to 4/1/16

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In his Meditation from Friday, 3/25/16 entitled "The View From The Bottom", Fr. Rohr writes:

"Only by solidarity with other people's suffering can comfortable people be converted.  Otherwise we are disconnected from the cross - of the world, of others, of Jesus, and finally of our own necessary participation in the great mystery of dying and rising."

A few thoughts:

1. The word "solidarity" is a carefully chosen word.  It is not "caring" about other's people's suffering (as in feeling a twinge of emotion or guilt when watching the news or a movie) though this is not a bad thing in and of itself.
2. It is not simply a long distance financial commitment to the suffering of others (though this is far, far, far from a bad thing).
3. It is solidarity with other people's suffering.
4. Solidarity implies that you also will suffer.  You too are affected.
5. Change that word "you".  I will suffer.  I am affected.
6. Solidarity leads to suffering.
7. But I don't want to suffer.  And it seems like the entirety of my life is set up to avoid it.  The "panem et circenses", the "bread and circuses", seeks to define my life.
8. Solidarity can only happen in love.  And love can only happen in solidarity with others.
9. Love leads to suffering.  The Way of the Cross.
10. Love, the manifestation of which is solidarity, also leads to conversion.
11. This "conversion" itself is a "participation in the great mystery of dying and rising."
12. Conversion  = participation.
13. Now what???

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Paul Ryan in a recent speech:

"There was a time when I would talk about a difference between "makers" and "takers" in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong. "Takers" wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don't want to be dependent. And to label a whole group of Americans that way was wrong. I shouldn’t castigate a large group of Americans to make a point.

So I stopped thinking about it that way—and talking about it that way. But I didn’t come out and say all this to be politically correct. I was just wrong. And of course, there are still going to be times when I say things I wish I hadn’t. There are still going to be times when I follow the wrong impulse."

It's impossible to pretend that the rhetoric that Ryan seeks to eliminate isn't prevalent.

Check this out - Who Said It: Fox News or Jesus?

Biased?  Perhaps.  But the question is not whether there is "bias" in the presentation, but whether the source material itself is real and being used in reference to broad groups of people (as opposed to addressing specific cases of abuse).  It represents a fundamental way of seeing the world, one in which all people get and are getting what they deserve.  Poor?  It's your fault.  The opportunities are there and are available to all without exception.  Government should get.  Out.  Of.  The.  Way.  I'm successful?  Wealthy?  I have earned it.  Me.  The system works!!

This is not true for me.  I have two wonderful parents who stayed married.  My health and basic needs were provided for.  I lived in safe neighborhoods growing up.  I went to safe schools where I could learn effectively.  I wasn't ANY more motivated than any other teenager, but my own lack of motivation was effectively covered up by extensive opportunity.  I was able to get into a good college.  My parents paid for it, and I graduated virtually debt free.    This lack of debt opened up opportunities - to travel a little bit, to buy a house, to save money, etc.  Would I have started dating my wife if I'd been living at home with my parents?  Through all of this, I made TONS of mistakes that I got away with where others haven't.  I have done things that could have ruined my life.

This is not to say that life is just pure randomness with no cause and effect.  It's just to say that where you start goes a long way in determining where you end up.

I'll be curious to see how this plays out within the political world.  Is this posturing, rhetoric and political gamesmanship, or something more?

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A walk from Thursday to Sunday of Holy Week with two of my favorite bloggers, Richard Beck and Brian Zahnd:

Thursday: To Hell With Symbolic (Richard Beck)

Friday: Good Friday: A World Indicted (Brian Zahnd)

Saturday: Awake, O Sleeper, And Rise From The Dead (Richard Beck)

Sunday: The Gardener (Brian Zahnd)

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Much of what marinates in my mind over the course of a week originates either directly or tangentially in the things I’ve read during the week, some of which is new, some was published earlier but is new to me, and some I’m returning to after having read it some time ago.  Among the dozens of excellent blog posts and articles that I read each week, here are a few that I found to be particularly profound, inspiring, challenging, enlightening, informative, memorable, or provocative for me personally.  I might even reference something with which I profoundly DISAGREE (which I’ll identify accordingly - there won’t be a need to guess!)

Owning Up to Torture (New York Times) – Eric Fair

The growing controversy over Georgia’s Indiana-style religious freedom bill, explained (Vox) – German Lopez

The Self and the Gospel (Eclectic Orthodoxy) – Brian Moore

Traditio Deformis (First Things) – David Bentley Hart

It’s Always Better to be More Gracious than God (Speaking Freely) – Matthew Frost

How the Soul Matures – Fr. Ron Rolhesier

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And lastly, a few quotes that I came across this past week:

"Life is lived forward, but is only understood backwards."
--Kierkegaard (as quoted in Walking With Grandfather by Michael Hardin)

"If the skill could not be practiced by anyone, anywhere, then it was useless."
--(Walking With Grandfather by Michael Hardin, p70)

One Story, Two Revelations, Four Voices: Reading Biblical Narrative Christocentrically (Brad Jersak)

Read the essay by Brad Jersak at Clarion Journal here.

A profound, thoughtful, and challenging essay regarding the multi-vocality of the Jewish and Christian scriptures.  Any Christian tradition - Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical - can benefit from the scholarship and arguments put forth here.

My interpretation of the argument put forth in the essay is that multi-vocality is inherent within scripture, and thus argues that the allegorical interpretations (edifying as they may be), the absurd harmonizations that render theological language equivocal, and the gatekeeper terminologies of "infallibility" and "inerrancy" are unnecessary at best, harmful at worst.

This multi-vocality isn't a bug, it's a feature.  This multi-vocality should be permitted to be what it is.

Childhood, an image of the Divine

First, click on this link to go to the website of A New Liturgy.  Press the play button at the top of the screen and listen to Chesterton's words being spoken aloud.  It's barely a minute long.  Listen first, read later.

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“The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grownup person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

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Imagine the child in this scene.  Perhaps you can't, never having seen or experienced it, or having forgotten it.  Perhaps you have better things to do.  Perhaps your own kids demand your attention.

Nevertheless, close your eyes and try for a moment.  Perhaps you've seen it somewhere.  A movie.  The park.

"Again!  Again!"  Laughter.

Rightly do we treasure childhood.  It's a crime to violate it, because it's a picture of humanity.  And what Mind conceived of and created it?  What Heart decreed that all of us, each and every one, should enter the world in this way?

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36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Mark 9:36-37 (NRSV)

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But when we receive the child in the name of Christ, the very childhood that we receive to our arms is humanity.  We love its humanity in its childhood, for childhood is the deepest heart of humanity - its divine heart; and so in the name of the child we receive all humanity.

God is represented in Jesus, for that God is like Jesus: Jesus is represented in the child, for that Jesus is like the child.  Therefore God is represented in the child, for that he is like the child.  God is child-like.  In the true vision of this fact lies the receiving of God in the child.

The Child In The Midst - George MacDonald

The Wrath Of God & The Bible, 3 Options? (Michael Hardin)

The following excerpt is taken from What the Facebook? by Michael Hardin, a compilation of roughly a year of Facebook posts.

The content of this post cuts right to the heart of many of the issues that I've been wrestling with over the last few years as it relates to the Bible, wrath, and the very nature of God and the Gospel.

What IS the Bible?
How far do we take "God is love" as an interpretive axiom?
In the end, is the ONLY way to be done with the "angry alcoholic in the sky" to extract the Bible from the umbrella of verbal plenary inspiration and infallibility?  Is this, then, to confirm that a "plain reading" DOES reveal a God who's wrath is ultimately just as axiomatic as love, as I often suspect?
And on, and on.

What I Believe (4) Aug 19 

Yesterday one of my FB friends from Melbourne asked me a question. She said, “The biggest problem I have is the one everyone has OT God can be the least loving thing imaginable, and yet the most loving at times also. NT God (as shown in Jesus) is nothing but loving. Jesus lost his temper pretty badly (only once that is recorded, granted), but frequently showed signs of frustration and what I'd call mild anger at the disciples and some of the crowd. I often wonder if there isn't a bit of 'selective editing' going on in the NT stuff to play down the anger side of Jesus (and hence, of God) or if the 'angry God' of the OT still exists but we chose to ignore him?”

The concept of the wrath of God is so deeply embedded in us that to understand what the Bible is doing with the concept can be difficult. Basically there are three positions one can take.

1. The texts that speak of God’s wrath or anger are literally true. God gets angry at sin, unrighteousness, idolatry, injustice and any number of other things. Heck, God gets angry if the ark of the covenant tips over and you try to help out! In this view, wrath is an attribute of God. This understands wrath as an affectus of God.

2. Texts that speak of the wrath of God are to be interpreted in the light of an emerging dissociation of the affective view (#1) and see wrath as an effect: God allows us to go our own way and suffer the consequences of our actions. This view uses Romans 1:18- 32 which begins by saying ‘the wrath of God is revealed from heaven’ and three times uses the verb ‘to give over’ with regard to the consequences of sin. Wrath in this view is not so much anger as it is resignation.

3. Both views #1 and #2 are grounded in a view of the Bible’s infallibility. However, if one is willing to come to the Bible critically, one can understand texts about God’s wrath as projections. That is, these texts are not really about God but instead reflect Israel’s and the church’s inability to break free from pagan notions of God’s wrath.

At one time or another, I have held all three views. I began at #1, moved to #2 in seminary and then have since moved to #3. My Melbourne friend is right to notice that there are two seeming contradictory trajectories in the Jewish Scriptures, sometimes God is like an angry alcoholic in the sky, at other times God is like a gentle grandmother. When these views are put together they create what I call a Janus- faced (or two- faced view of God), and this way of conceiving God has been the heritage of Christianity even going back into certain New Testament churches and documents.

When the early church sought to understand the character of God in the light of the revelation of Jesus what they produced was the doctrine of the Trinity. It took several hundred years for this to fully emerge and even then, there were splits, some deeper than others. There still remains a split today between the Eastern and Western churches on the Holy Spirit. It has never been completely settled. Today we stand at the cusp of a new Reformation, a time when Christians the world over are rethinking the doctrine of God. Who is this God we worship? How shall we understand God’s character? Is God like Jesus? What is the relation of Jesus to God? What is the relation of the various traditions about God in the Jewish Scriptures to the One Jesus called Abba? If I John says “God is Love” how does this statement play out in our thinking as an interpretive axiom? What is the role of the Passion and death of Jesus in the light of God’s love? These and many more questions can be raised.

The Big Hurdle is in the way we understand the issue of the authority and inspiration of Scripture. It is what sets apart view #3 from views #1 and #2. Those who are willing to rethink the Bible (and I don’t mean those who throw the Bible out, whom I call “fundamentalist” progressives), but to do the hard work of rethinking theology within the context of the larger historic Christian tradition, are the ones to whom we can turn fruitfully and find answers to these difficult questions. The fact is that just as the “fundamentalist” position is outdated, psychologically crippling, moldy and no longer intellectually viable, so also those who would throw out the theological baby with the ecclesial bathwater are just as ill informed and ungrateful for the real valuable positive gains that have also been made in Christian life and thought for the past 2000 years. We seek a third way, a genuine intelligent, spiritual, faith oriented, Jesus centered way. I believe this way is manifesting itself all over biblical scholarship and theology these days. I see it in hungry congregations and pastors willing to risk their ministries for the sake of the gospel. I am glad to be part of those who are helping move us into this wonderful new theological space that I believe is being created by the Spirit of Jesus.

The Nihilism Of The “Age Of Accountability”

I've written previously on the so-called "Age of Accountability" here. It's been a big deal to me over the past few years. 

I left the following series of thoughts over in the comment section of one of Fr Kimel's posts at Eclectic Orthodoxy.  Thought I'd reproduce them here.

I'm of the opinion that the mere presence of the question of an "Age of Accountability", an impossible question that arises inevitably from infernalist (or annihilationist) formulations of Christian eschatology, finally either deconstructs that eschatology or forces us to choose existential nihilism - to irrevocably move on from the concept of God's universal salvific will and love as a divine attribute.

I feel the strain of this tension.  I teeter on the edge of an abyss.

I don't wish to say a whole lot on the Calvinist (double) predestination scheme in regards to the age of accountability.  A brief story:

A few months ago I started writing a satirical piece framed as an interview with a "guardian" angel divinely chosen to "guard" a child divinely "elected to perdition for the glory of God" & chosen for lifelong illness and a painful death at the age of 3.  As the story goes, this angel (always present before the Lord per Matthew 18:10) was also present both at the moment of the child's conception and at the moment that the child entered the world and fell into the loving arms of her parents. "A thousand kisses wasted" - words of reflection that I placed in the mouth of this guardian angel in observation of that scene.  That line haunted me and I ultimately lost the ability to continue writing.  Theological language becomes equivocal in this universe.

Sticking with the free will model of perdition (and it's pillars of both universal divine love and irrevocable eternal torment), I've observed that many of the most ardent infernalists believe in (and actually have a soft spot for) an age of accountability whereby babies and other young children who die young enough are sort of automatically given eternal life (though I'm assured that the appearances of it being "automatic" or a "loophole" are false).

But whether one believes in it or not, I'd argue that the very question of an "age of accountability" is a necessity and an inevitability arising inexorably from an underlying hermeneutic of perdition.

And the implications of an "age of accountability" are so clear, so problematic (I think) and so inextricably tied to the assumptions that generate it in the first place that I think there is no choice but to examine the assumptions themselves - either divine love and pascha and/or irrevocable torment.  It's starkness creates theological problems with enough clarity that they can't be so easily dismissed as "philosophical speculations" or the "faulty reasoning of men".  You're damned if you do and damned if you don't (pun intended).

Without this "age", hell is thoroughly populated with babies but "a span long" (Calvin).  No doctrine of love as divine attribute can tolerate this, not without rendering "love" as virtually meaningless.

Could the heart that sustains such a created order really be one that wills the salvation of all?

So suppose there IS an age of accountability.  What are the implications?  This could be it's own book.

William Lane Craig has stated in regards to OT genocide, for example:

“If we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.”

You die young, you go to heaven. Period.  I wonder why there haven't been more "crusaders" like Andrea Yates, determined to save children from the flames.  Thank God there haven't been.

Again, please understand how much I dislike talking about this.

I don't have the nerve to say much because the implications are so dark.  But essentially, from the moment of birth, each subsequent moment of existence is characterized by infinite eschatological risk with no additional reward.

Die as a child?  Eternal bliss.  Live long?  Eh.  50/50 at best. Probably far lower.  Lower mortality rates, better health care, etc, actually have a negative correlation to "going to heaven".

Few things could make life more meaningless.

Furthermore, an earthly "free-will" choice (it's lack of development being the whole reason for this so-called age of accountability in the first place) apparently ceases to be a metaphysically inviolable obstacle for God in redeeming people if they're young enough.

Perhaps one can keep this at arms length or reason through this on paper or in a classroom. But start looking at actual babies or children (whom the Lord calls us to become like) or the mentally disabled (and incidentally I have a 2.5 year old daughter and a brother with Down syndrome), and one realizes that this isn't an abstract theological problem to be solved.

Rather than go through the hermeneutical gymnastics to justify an age of accountability, look instead at the system that necessitates such insanity in the first place.

3 Questions That I'd Like to Ask John Piper

I despise Christianese.  I also recognize that certain theological terminology is loaded with anthropomorphic (and other) baggage and needs substantial clarification, but here goes......

#1 - Via monergism and compatibilism, you believe that God can ultimately redeem anyone that He chooses to, and that therefore, if a person is not redeemed in the end it's because God has freely chosen not to redeem that person.  And you believe, without ambiguity, that this is indeed the case - that God does not intend to finally redeem all people?  Is that accurate?

#2 - You believe that "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him", correct?  You've identified this as one of the most important sentences in your theology?

#3 - Holding to #2 - that "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him" - why then would God, though perfectly capable of it, not intend to redeem all people (as you declare in #1), thus ensuring that all people will not finally be "satisfied in Him"?


How does this make sense?

Mr. Piper seems to attempt to answer this here.

Importantly though, #1 isn't addressed or even alluded to in his answer. 

That is a problem.

If you didn't know better, you might think that Piper believes that God does desire to save all people. But that is unequivocally false. 

The key term in #2 , of course, is the "us".  God is most glorified in "us".

The term is not being used in a general sense.  The "us" is the "Elect".  

The glory given to God in the satisfaction of this chosen elect group is only a consequence of God having "chosen" them in the first place. Importantly, (and Piper alludes to as much), God is just as glorified in the damnation of the damned - those people whom He did not choose to be "satisfied by God" (effectively, those whom he providentially chose to be eternally dissatisfied in Him, thus being suitable vessels of wrath).

So a more accurate way to phrase the theology of Piper in regards to this particular matter might be as follows:

If you’re of the Elect, then you’ve been chosen as a vessel through whom satisfaction in God will glorify God.  If you’re not of the Elect, you’ve been chosen as a vessel through whom ultimate wrath will just as equally glorify God.

Satisfaction and dissatisfaction (that leads to wrath) are, in the end, equal expressions of the “perfection” of God according to this theology of glory.  If one were more primary than the other, then God would not be maximizing His own glory by promoting both of them.

Thus, neither is truly a primary means of glorifying God.  They are mere expressions of a more primal act of divine volition.  Preeminent and prior to either satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and the true source of both, is sheer unadulterated will to power.

And as DB Harts says:

“In any event, such a God, being nothing but will willing itself, would be no more than an infinite tautology – the sovereignty of glory displaying itself in the glory of sovereignty – and so an infinite banality.”  - The Doors of the Sea

The Moral Theology of the Devil (Thomas Merton)

Thomas Merton: “The moral theology of the Devil.” From New Seeds of Contemplation.

The devil has a whole system of theology and philosophy, which will explain, to anyone who will listen, that created things are evil, that men are evil, that God created evil and that He directly wills that men should suffer evil. According to the devil, God rejoices in the suffering of men and, in fact, the whole universe is full of misery because God willed and planned it this way.

Indeed says this system of theology, God the Father took real pleasure in delivering His Son to His murderers, and God the Son came to earth because he wanted to be punished by the Father. Both of them seek nothing more than to punish and persecute their faithful ones. As a matter of fact, in creating the world God had clearly in mind that man would inevitably sin so that God would have an opportunity to manifest His justice.

So according to the devil, the first thing created was really hell – as if everything else were, in some sense, for the sake of hell. Therefore the devotional life of those who are “faithful” to this kind of theology consists above all in an obsession with evil. As if there were not already enough evils in the world, they multiply prohibitions and make new rules, binding everything with thorns, so that man may not escape evil and punishment. For they would have him bleed from morning to night, though even with so much blood there is no remission of sin! The Cross, then, is no longer a sign of mercy (for mercy has no place in such a theology), it is a sign that Law and Justice have utterly triumphed, as if Christ had said: “I came not to destroy the Law but to be destroyed by it.” For this, according to the devil, is the only way in which the Law could really and truly be “fulfilled”. Not love but punishment is the fulfillment of the Law. The Law must devour everything, even God. Such is theology of punishment, hatred and revenge. He who would live by such a dogma must rejoice in punishment. He may, indeed, successfully evade punishment himself by “playing ball” with the Law and the Lawgiver. But he must take good care that others do not avoid suffering. He must occupy his mind with their present and future punishment.  The Law must triumph. There must be no mercy.

This is the chief mark of the theology of hell, for in hell there is everything but mercy. That is why God Himself is absent from hell. Mercy is the manifestation of His presence.

The theology of the devil is for those who, for one reason or another, whether because they are perfect or because they have come to an agreement with the Law, no longer need any mercy. With them (O grim joy!) God is “satisfied”. So too is the devil. It is quite an achievement, to please everybody!

The people who listen to this sort of thing, and absorb it, and enjoy it, develop a notion of the spiritual which is a kind of hypnosis of evil. The concepts of sin, suffering, damnation, punishment, the justice of God, retribution, the end of the world and so on, are things over which they smack their lips with unspeakable pleasure. Perhaps this is why they develop a deep, subconscious comfort from the thought that many other people will fall into hell which they themselves are going to escape. And how do they know that they are going to escape it? They cannot give any definite reason except that they feel a certain sort of relief at the thought of all this punishment is prepared for practically everyone else but themselves.

This feeling of complacency is what they refer to as “faith”, and it constitutes a kind of conviction that they are “saved”.

The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “God is satisfied:. And after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.

The moral theology of the devil starts out with the principle: “Pleasure is sin.” Then he goes on to work it the other way: “All sin is pleasure.”

After that he points out that pleasure is practically unavoidable and that we have a natural tendency to do things that please us from which he reasons that all our natural tendencies are evil and that our nature in itself is evil in itself. And he leads us to the conclusion that no one could possibly avoid sin, since pleasure is inescapable.

After that, to make sure that no one will try to escape or to avoid sin, he adds that what is unavoidable cannot be a sin. Then the whole concept of sin is thrown out the window as irrelevant, and people decide that there is nothing left except to live for pleasure, and in that pleasures that are naturally good become evil by the de-ordination and lives are thrown away in unhappiness and sin.

It sometimes happens that men who preach most vehemently about evil and the punishment of evil, so that they seem to have practically nothing else on their minds except sin, are really unconscious haters of other men. They think the world does not appreciate them, and this is their way of getting even.

The devil is not afraid to preach the will of God provided he can preach it in his own way.

The argument goes something like this: “God wills you to do what is right. But you have an interior attraction which tells you, by a nice warm glow of satisfaction, what is right. Therefore, if others try to interfere and make you do something that does not produce this comfortable sense of interior satisfaction, quote Scripture, tell them that you ought to obey God rather than men, and go ahead and do your own will, do the thing that gives you that nice, warm glow.”

The theology of the devil is really not theology but magic. “Faith” in this theology is really not the acceptance of a God Who reveals Himself as mercy. It is a psychological, subjective “force” which applies a kind of violence to reality in order to change it according to one's own whims. Faith is a kind of super effective wishing a mastery that comes from a special, mysteriously dynamic will power that is generated by “profound convictions.” By virtue of this wonderful energy one can exercise a persuasive force even on God Himself and bend Him to one's own will. By this astounding new dynamic soul force of faith (which any quack can develop in you for an appropriate remuneration) you can turn God into a means to your own ends. We become civilized medicine men, and God becomes our servant. Though He is terrible in His own right, He respects our sorcery. He allows Himself to be tamed by it. He will appreciate our dynamism, and He will reward it with success in everything we attempt. We will become popular because we have “faith”. We will be rich because we have “faith.” All our national enemies will come and lay their arms at our feet because we have “faith”. Business will boom all over the world, and we will be able to make money out of everything and everyone under the sun because of the charmed life we lead. We have faith.

But there is a subtle dialectic in all this, too.

We hear that faith does everything. So we close our eyes and strain a bit, to generate some “soul force”. We believe. We believe.

But nothing happens.

So we go on with this until we become disgusted with the whole business. We get tired of generating “soul force”. We get tired of this “faith” that does nothing to change reality. It does not take away our anxieties, our conflicts, it leaves us prey to uncertainty. It does not lift all responsibilities off our shoulders. Its magic is not so effective after all. It does not thoroughly convince us that God is satisfied with us, or even that we are satisfied with ourselves (though in this, it is true, some people's faith is often quite effective).

Having become disgusted with faith, and therefore with God, we are now ready for the Totalitarian Mass Movement that will pick us up on the rebound and make us happy with war, with the persecution of “inferior races” or of enemy classes, or generally speaking, with actively punishing someone who is different from ourselves.

Another characteristic of the devil's moral theology is the exaggeration of all distinctions between this and that, good and evil, right and wrong. These distinctions become irreducible divisions. No longer is there any sense that we might perhaps all be more or less at fault, and that we might be expected to take upon our own shoulders the wrongs of others by forgiveness, acceptance, and patient understanding and love, and thus help one another to find the truth. On the contrary, in the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong. This does not exactly make for peace and unity among men, because it means that everybody wants to be absolutely right himself, or to attach himself to another who is absolutely right. And in order to prove their rightness they have to punish and eliminate those who are wrong. Those who are wrong, in turn, convinced that they are right... etc.

Finally, as might be expected, the moral theology of the devil grants an altogether unusual amount of importance to.. the devil. Indeed one soon comes to find out that he is the very center of the whole system. That he is behind everything. That he is moving everybody in the world except ourselves. That he is out to get even with us. And that there is every chance of his doing so because, it now appears, his power is equal to that of God, or even perhaps superior to it...

In one word, the theology of the devil is purely and simply that the devil is god.