Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

steve7150
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Re: Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

Post by steve7150 » Mon Jul 11, 2011 6:52 am

For when Saul tells Samuel that God is not answering him through prophets nor dreams, Samuel replies, “Why do you ask me, seeing the Lord is departed from you and is become your enemy?” That’s quite a shift for a man like Samuel who had been inconsolable about the king. So, too, I think in this life we but dimly see God’s perspective.






I prefer to appeal to Jesus if i want to know God's heart since he is the exact image of his Father and only does his Father's will and we are part of a New Covenant. Jesus said to the adulteress "neither do i condemn you now go and sin no more." Certainly God wants us to conform to the image of Christ yet Jesus did'nt seem outraged by the adulteress's sin but he did seem compassionate toward her. As you know on the cross was he outraged at his murderers? He said "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." Jesus told us if we are merciful we shall obtain mercy, part of conforming to Christ's image who is the exact image of God. In the Prodical son was God outraged by his son's sinful life or compassionate toward him? Yes God has wrath but he has mercy and he is love and simply confining sinners in a quarinteened place eternally is not merciful or loving and is way beyond even wrath.

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Homer
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Re: Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

Post by Homer » Mon Jul 11, 2011 9:10 am

It is said that God is love, which the scriptures affirm. This is tirelessly repeated by those who insist that God can not (or will not) do this or that thing that is incompatible with their view of God (and Jesus who is just like God). But can God, who is love, also hate some people? The scriptures affirm that He does.

Whatever "God is love" encompasses, it must encompass some actions that we would not construe as loving. Such as chilren dashed to pieces and wives raped. God did not directly do these things, but He certainly took credit for them:

Isaiah 13:3, 14-16
New American Standard Bible (NASB)

3. I have commanded My consecrated ones,
I have even called My mighty warriors,
My proudly exulting ones,
To execute My anger.

14. And it will be that like a hunted gazelle,
Or like sheep with none to gather them,
They will each turn to his own people,
And each one flee to his own land.
15. Anyone who is found will be thrust through,
And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
16. Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces
Before their eyes;
Their houses will be plundered
And their wives ravished.


See also the book of Joshua for similar incidents.

Even the oft quoted John 3:16 presents us with God's great love and the perishing of those who do not respond in kind. Perhaps the popular idea of what "God is love" means is not quite the same as reality.

steve7150
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Re: Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

Post by steve7150 » Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:14 am

It is said that God is love, which the scriptures affirm. This is tirelessly repeated by those who insist that God can not (or will not) do this or that thing that is incompatible with their view of God (and Jesus who is just like God). But can God, who is love, also hate some people? The scriptures affirm that He does.


Homer,
I mentioned that we are under the New Covenant and that Jesus was the propitiation for not only believers sins but the sins of the whole world so i think it is not a coincidence that Jesus seems to relate to people differently then God on occasion did in the OT. Mostly though even in the OT God was merciful but on occasion he did destroy people when there may have been no other choice.

DanielGracely
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Re: Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

Post by DanielGracely » Mon Jul 11, 2011 4:00 pm

Hi Darin,
This is an excellent question, but it will take me a little time to write out my answer since quite a number of things are in play (man's original state, man's change in the form of his knowledge at the time of the Fall, the resurrected state of believers' and unbelievers' bodies, etc.). However, I'll try to get it done by tonight or tomorrow. Please feel free to interact with it.

DanielGracely
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Re: Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

Post by DanielGracely » Mon Jul 11, 2011 11:16 pm

Darin wrote:
If God loves the present form of man so much as to keep it forever, then do you think the reprobate will spend eternity in a resurrected body? Will it be the same as that of the saint? Without the temptations of the flesh? If our "form" will be different in eternity, then how does that jive with this view?

Hi Darin,

My view is pretty esoteric, but I offer it anyway.

First, we ought to recognize that man is still made in God’s image, but that it has been altered. I think this can be deduced from the facts that we are first told Adam was made in God’s image, then are told Seth was made in Adam’s image, and finally told that God, talking to Noah, justifies capital punishment for murder on the basis that man is [still]made in the image of God. Therefore, Seth must have been made in the image of God, yet was also made in the image of Adam. To me this suggests that some change occurred so that Seth was made not only in God’s image, but Adam’s image also. So what changed? Well, I personally think what happened was that Adam, as head of the race, changed the form of man’s knowledge in the Fall, since the Lord remarks re: Adam’s partaking of the forbidden fruit: “the man has become as one of us, knowing good and evil.” Now Adam already must have had some sense of what good and evil were, or else he would not have understood God’s command not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And so The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was really a Tree which would make Adam attain a higher knowledge than what God intended for his form. In fact, the Hebrew word for “knowledge” in the phrase “The Tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is an intensified form of the Hebrew word generally used for knowledge. It appeaers to mean an exalted, or intensified, or classified, type of knowledge. One commentator in The Pulpit Commentary once noted that God, being the kind of being he is, knows what sin is like without having to commit it, but that man, a lesser form, could only know the same thing experientially, i.e., by sinning.

The point here is to ask whether the Fall might affect the form of the resurrected bodies of believers and unbelievers. (Yes, I think the Bible teaches that both believers and unbelievers will be resurrected from the dead, and that this refers to their bodily resurrection.) Now, it seems reasonable to me to suppose that God will want the believer to receive the kind of resurrected body reflecting Adam’s pre-Fall state, i.e., how God always intended man to be, while God will accede to the unbeliever—the one who rejects God’s plan for his life—a resurrected body also, though with that form of knowledge which Adam obtained in the Fall. So yes, I do think unbelievers will have resurrected bodies, but that the form of it will be according to that form obtained by Adam’s fall, since the unbeliever has rejected the design of God. This form of knowledge by its very nature is a great hindrance toward focusing upon the good, since the multitude and intensity of thoughts, including, I think, the now vicarious knowledge of pleasure possible in sin, demand attention from the Self, tending toward an inward focus and thus a wandering off the path of proper obligations that lay outside the Self, namely, one's obligations toward God and Neighbor.

So, Darin, let me know what you think.

DanielGracely
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Re: Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

Post by DanielGracely » Tue Jul 12, 2011 1:12 pm

Hi Steve7150,
Yes, I think you’re right that Christ is the express image of the Godhead, and that as one observes Christ, one observes the Father (as Jesus plainly told Philip). And so to see how Christ reacted toward sin and forgiveness is to see how the Father Himself feels.

I agree, too that the New Covenant is superior than the Old Covenant. For it did what the Old could not do, in that the sacrifice of Christ ended forever the need for further sacrifice. This was because animal sacrifices never had the power to take away sin, whereas Lamb of God was sufficient once for all, for the sin of the world.

However, I’m a little concerned about how you’re all but dismissing Old Testament description of God as irrelevant today to show the divine attitude toward sin. Yet we know that even Christ Himself must have been in perfect agreement with the rest of the Godhead in rejecting Saul in the Old Testament. So why would that change simply because Christ would one day die for Saul’s sins? More broadly stated, why would Christ’s attitude toward sin change, simply because of his crucifixion?

For the idea expressed in 1 John about Christ dying FOR sin and being the propitiation FOR the sin of the whole world is the Greek word “peri”, which an interlinear translation (Baker Books) renders “pertaining to”. That is, the sacrifice of Christ pertains to forgiveness; it is not de facto forgiveness, i.e., apart from belief. It is like a $5 bill you might give to a drunk, telling him it FOR a sandwich, not yet another beer. Thus your money pertains to a sandwich for him. But ultimately the drunk decides how he will regard the money and what he will do with it. And in all likelihood, he will not spend it on a sandwich. Therefore to quote (as you do) the present tense statement of Christ, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” as if somehow that meant that all the sin of the world was at that point more or less forgiven, is to interpret this verse so that it opposes the entire teaching of Scripture about how repentance is necessary to obtain forgiveness. Do you really think Christ in effect said to the adulteress, “No big deal, I’m not outraged about your sin like I would have been back in the Old Testament?” Or rather, is it not that Christ forgave her because of her belief? Indeed, if not for this, then for what?

I understand how horrendous the idea of an eternal hell is to you. At some level or time I think we all pretty much feel this way. Yet it seems to me you have made a false dichotomy between (1) what Christ says and the New Covenant, versus (2) God’s attitude toward sin in the Old Testament. Yet does not Paul say the Old Testament was provided to us for examples? And would this not include examples of judgment? And did not even Christ Himself cite the Old Testament examples of Sodom and Gomorrah, when he said that the judgment of Choraizin and Bethsaida would even be worse (i.e. would in the future, notwithstanding the New Covenant) than that upon those ancient cities, since these others had witnessed his miracles but failed to repent? Christ further stated with approbation that the Queen of Sheba would rise up to condemn Christ’s own generation of unbelievers, for she had listened to Solomon, whereas a greater than Solomon was here. And Jesus further stated that even the Ninevites would rise up in judgment against the current generation, since the Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah (who was a lesser figure than Christ), while they rejected Christ.

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darinhouston
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Re: Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

Post by darinhouston » Tue Jul 12, 2011 1:58 pm

I don't have a problem with much of your view when it comes to our present state. However, your eternal state views seem a bit anti-gnostic for lack of a better term. While the gnostics seemed to elevate special knowledge, you seem to denegrate it. I don't see merit in that, particularly since scripture says we now know only in part and in the eternal state we will know fully, and also that we will know as we have been known. So, it would seem that our "knowledge" will increase in many ways and not decrease in eternity. So, I would disagree with you that we will be equal in that regard to the pre-Fall state. I think we will lose the self-interest we share in the post-Fall state, but don't see that as being caused by self-awareness as if Adam was "awakened" to himself from his sin. Our Lord knew no sin and certainly had a keen self-awareness as evidenced particularly in the Garden of Gethsemene. Perhaps we will lack the awareness of the results of sin that gives us guilt, but that seems a bit irrelevant (and unknowable) since we should have no opportunity or temptation to sin in eternity in any event.

steve7150
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Re: Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

Post by steve7150 » Tue Jul 12, 2011 9:01 pm

However, I’m a little concerned about how you’re all but dismissing Old Testament description of God as irrelevant today to show the divine attitude toward sin. Yet we know that even Christ Himself must have been in perfect agreement with the rest of the Godhead in rejecting Saul in the Old Testament. So why would that change simply because Christ would one day die for Saul’s sins? More broadly stated, why would Christ’s attitude toward sin change, simply because of his crucifixion?

For the idea expressed in 1 John about Christ dying FOR sin and being the propitiation FOR the sin of the whole world is the Greek word “peri”, which an interlinear translation (Baker Books) renders “pertaining to”. That is, the sacrifice of Christ pertains to forgiveness; it is not de facto forgiveness, i.e., apart from belief. It is like a $5 bill you might give to a drunk, telling him it FOR a sandwich, not yet another beer. Thus your money pertains to a sandwich for him. But ultimately the drunk decides how he will regard the money and what he will do with it. And in all likelihood, he will not spend it on a sandwich. Therefore to quote (as you do) the present tense statement of Christ, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” as if somehow that meant that all the sin of the world was at that point more or less forgiven, is to interpret this verse so that it opposes the entire teaching of Scripture about how repentance is necessary to obtain forgiveness. Do you really think Christ in effect said to the adulteress, “No big deal, I’m not outraged about your sin like I would have been back in the Old Testament?” Or rather, is it not that Christ forgave her because of her belief? Indeed



Daniel,
I'm not dismissing the lessons of the OT but i do think there is a progressive revelation of God in the bible and i think you would probably agree. I also did'nt mean to give the impression that sin is forgiven without repentence and faith but the belief that God is outraged by sin is a concept that at least to me seems shallow. God creates Eve with impulses built in her before she does anything, to tempt her to sin and then "allows" Satan the master deceiver of the universe to test her , and when Eve fails, God is outraged? Yes Adam sin was responsible for sin coming into the world but Eve stepped on the gas as i think she was meant to do. I think man is meant to overcome sin but to overcome sin and in fact evil he must experience it and conquer it.

DanielGracely
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Re: Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

Post by DanielGracely » Wed Jul 13, 2011 6:48 am

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Last edited by DanielGracely on Wed Jul 13, 2011 10:37 am, edited 2 times in total.

DanielGracely
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Re: Heretics? - and now Greg Boyd!

Post by DanielGracely » Wed Jul 13, 2011 10:09 am

Hi Darin,
If I understand you right, I think you’re raising the question (via an objection) that the form of knowledge the believer will have in his resurrected body will be greater in form than it is now, since Paul says our knowledge now is incomplete, but one day will become complete. And I would agree with the basic premise that the believer’s knowledge is now incomplete, yet one day will become complete.

However, I don’t personally feel that the context of Paul’s remarks is about our needing a greater form of knowledge in order that our knowledge might become complete. Rather, I think Paul is referring to complete accuracy of knowledge, and in accordance to the form of knowledge God created in Adam, which God always intended man to have.

For if we take Paul’s statement without qualification, that one day in the future we will know even as we are known, then this would mean things like knowing the number of hairs on our head, and, I suppose, all other similar information, like the number of cells in our body, their exact relation to each other in function, geo-physical space, etc. While God certainly could change man so that he had such knowledge, I don’t think the context of Paul’s remarks suggest that. And I’m not saying that you’re suggesting that either per se ; though I think your position heads in that direction, however small a distance you mean for it to go. But again, I don’t see why God would want man any differently in form that how He intended him from the beginning. In short, I think Adam communing with God in the Garden would have come to know even as he was known, relative to his form, if he had resisted temptation.

But about context. Paul’s remarks about the future, in which believers shall know as they are known (1 Cor. 13), come between the two most heavily-detailed chapters about spiritual giftedness in the Bible. In these, Paul stresses the incompleteness of any one member of the body apart from the others, since any one member has but one especial gift. A member might be relatively strong in another gift or two, but still he will ‘play second fiddle’ to another member in each case, assuming a sizable congregation (50 to 100+?). And so, since the Body learns e.g., mercy best from the one gifted in mercy, faith best from the one gifted in faith, knowledge from the knower, wisdom from the wise, etc., we all will mature only insofar as the Body’s members appreciate each other. For however gifted a “pastor” might seem, he will not be the one most gifted in any of the gifts I have just mentioned. For God wants us interdependent on each other, not independent of each other. Therefore the Spirit distributes the gifts so that each member can contribute and thus feel needed by others and connected to the Body, while each member himself is ministered unto. IMO the gross absence of this sort of mutual sharing among members during the formal worship service when Christians are gathered together in Christ’s name (i.e., publicly, so that all might learn from and be accountable to each other), explains why so many Christians struggle with maturity to one degree or another, in one area or another. And I include myself here among these strugglers without any attempt at self-effacing.

But someday I will no longer be incomplete. When at last I am in the presence of Christ, things will become clear in a way I now can hardly imagine while here on earth. But I don’t think this means I must first be given a superior form of knowledge to obtain this completeness. Rather, I see completeness as a thing relative to one’s form. For example (if a very exaggerated one), what would be completeness of knowledge for my form as a person, wouldn’t be what it would be for my dog.

Finally, you mention self-awareness. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I’m quite following you on this. So let me just try to clarify my own position. I think the Bible teaches that Adam and Eve, being persons, i.e., made in God’s image (unlike the animals), had a form of knowledge that made them eternally culpable in regard to their knowledge, specifically, because of their having knowledge of God’s commandment not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But what changed when they broke the commandment was a greater awareness of moral possibilities that would now require a response, amidst various situations they previously knew nothing about. But conversely, and to give an exaggerated example, one’s cat or one’s child doesn’t face the moral question about whether or not to pay the electric bill. So then, where there is no knowledge, neither is there culpability; but where there is knowledge, so, too, is there culpability. And God did not create man with the intent that he be burdened with a greater knowledge and therefore greater culpability. The current dilemma of man reminds me of a quote I heard by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who said: “the person who lives a meaningful life does not need the burdensome overflow of information.” And neither did Adam and Eve. But that’s what they chose, and the resultant change in Adam’s form of knowledge is a thing I believe is now passed to us as his descendents. (Therefore Christ, emptying himself, and bypassing the Adamic male seed, had not this greater form of knowledge constantly burdening his mind with information, and in this manner became the Second Adam.) But if the question is raised how we could inherit Adam’s form, when it was only by disobedience that Adam acquired it, I would say that God allowed Adam to change for all his posterity what form of knowledge they would have. I think our form of knowledge of good and evil may now (unfortunately) surpass even that of unfallen angels, since the Lord likened man’s form to that of the Creator Deity, i.e., “the man has become as one of us.”

Finally, I might agree that in heaven we are not under a fiery trial to abstain from sin. But I do think the essence of man—his very being, in fact—is Choice (since even the act of thinking cannot escape choice), and that therefore in some sense we will always have the ability to choose right or wrong. But I think we will find our circumstances much different in heaven, and therefore temptation very minimal. I would liken the present temptation to the ease of grabbing (right before supper) a snickers candy bar out of the cupboard door, whereas—in a future when we are present with Christ, and when Satan, his minions, and even the Adamic part of our form-nature is not present—the snickers bar would feel like it was up at the top of Mt. Everest. Accessible? Theoretically, yes. But why the bother?
Last edited by DanielGracely on Wed Jul 13, 2011 12:58 pm, edited 9 times in total.

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