04.08.09

Why I’m Not A Premillenial Dispensationalist

Posted in Commentaries at 03:07

(Or, Why I Don’t Believe in the Rapture)

Heilsgeschicte, or salvation history, is a theological term describing the history of God’s interaction with humanity, beginning with Adam and Eve, throughout time. Dispensationalism is a particular understanding of salvation history, which divides it into epochs called dispensations. These dispensations are framed by various covenants and certain portions of scripture. Underlying this framework is the assumption that with each new dispensation, a purer understanding of God is achieved (progressive revelation). Premillenial dispensationalism is a particular brand of dispensationalism with an eschatological thrust.

There are four basic views on the millennium:

  • Post-tribulational (tribulation happens, Jesus comes back, millennium happens)
  • Pre-trib (rapture happens, tribulation happens, Jesus comes back, millennium happens)
  • Post-milliennial (millennium happens, Jesus comes back)
  • Amillennial (Jesus comes back)

Premillennial dispensationalism and pre-trib sort of go together.

So why am I not a pre-trib/premilleniannial dispensationalist?

Dispensationalism is very new, circa 1830. A man named John Darby, a staunch Calvinist, came up with the idea, which later came to be associated with such paragons of high-caliber academia as the Scofield Study Bible, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Bob Jones University.

Dispensationalism approaches a very complex and nuanced genre of scripture, viz, apocalyptic literature, with a very un-nuanced literalism. This is bad.

Dispensationalism contributes to Chistians being weird. Discussions of hypothetical or metaphorical images of the future (or possibly even of the past) as literal, endless speculation about meaningless particulars of the end times, obsessive searches for the number 666, and the occasional accusation of a public figure being the Antichrist really make us look bad.

Dispensationalism contributes to carelessness and apathy in terms of stewardship of creation. Since it’s all gonna burn anyway, who cares if we destroy the ozone layer? Sucks for us if it isn’t all gonna burn.

I accept the creeds as a source of authority. Here’s what the Nicene creed says: “[Jesus] will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” I don’t claim to know what that looks like. But I believe and hope in the return of Christ, and the fullness of His Kingdom.

I believe that apocalyptic literature has more to offer the Church than inspiration for poorly crafted Christian fiction like the Left Behind series. I believe salvation history is more nuanced and complex and interesting than a series of dispensations. I believe in not being unnecessarily weird. I believe in caring for creation.

Thoughts on Dispensationalism and Christian Zionism

I think scripture points to an ongoing special relationship between God and Israel (the people, not the state). You might even be able to call me a Christian Zionist. I think it’s a good thing (for the most part) that an Israeli state was reestablished. I don’t think it’s a sign that the end is near. In fact, I think looking for such signs betrays a gross misunderstanding of Jesus’ words. I think it’s a good thing (for the most part) that the U.S. has a special relationship with the state of Israel. I don’t think that Israel can do no wrong. I really don’t think that Israel’s handling of the Palestinian situation is cool at all. And I don’t think the U.S. has a special relationship with or favour from God, on its own or as a result of its support of Israel.

If you haven’t guessed, I’m amillennial.

02.20.09

Why I’m Not An Open Theist

Posted in Uncategorized at 05:03

Open Theism addresses a number of problems with attributes popularly ascribed to God. Hellenistic influence has, throughout Church history, been a source of error. It is no surprise, then, that the immutability, impassibility, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of God should be put on trial. Unfortunately, this opens five cans of worms that cannot be very neatly closed again. I do not think Open Theism does a satisfactory job of closing all the loops any more than did the original attributes it calls into question.

If a well-thought-out doctrine espoused by numerous very wise theologians cannot do this in many, many books (most of which, I will admit, I have not read), I will not presume to do it in a single blog post. Instead, I will open the cans of worms, dump them all out on the counter, then toss them into the bin of agnosticism and start from scratch with a few praxis-centric assertions. In other words, I’m going to mess with you until you have a headache, then say, “Eh, screw it all, none of it matters. Here’s what does matter.” Read on at your own peril.

Immutability

The quality of being unchanging. If God is truly unchanging, then He is unable to be influenced by prayer. If, however, He is subject to change, then He is changing from one thing to something else. This implies that the way He was is not adequate, and that the way He is will not be adequate. God, if changing, is imperfect. He is still growing, still becoming. Cf. process theology/process thought.

Impassibility

The quality of not suffering pain. If God is impassible, divine mercy is not connected to empathy. Since God cannot suffer, He cannot share in our sufferings or empathise with them. Christ, being one person with two natures, will have suffered in His human nature only. Numerous modern theologians reject divine impassibility.

Timelessness/Omniscience/Foreknowledge/Predeterminism

Here’s where it gets really ugly.

It’s generally agreed that God is eternal. He existed before creation. He created the universe. Time seems to be a property of the universe, just like the laws of physics. Time was, therefore, created by God. If this is so, it would make sense that God is not subject to the limitations of His creation as we are. If God is not mastered by His creation and is also omniscient, He must possess foreknowledge. He must know the future. This means that the future must, in some sense, already exist (or it could not be known).

If the future is already “written,” however, human agency is destroyed. One cannot truly be held culpable for one’s actions if they are predetermined. It’s been argued that God, having created us, would be justified in damning some and extending grace to others based on divine whim, hence the doctrine of unconditional election. A consequence of this, however, is a disconnect between sin and atonement. If all are sinners (T) and some are elected based on divine wisdom (U) to receive redemption (L) they cannot resist (I) or lose (P), sin effectively becomes value-neutral. We are not damned because we are sinners (for some sinners are not damned, namely the elect), we are damned because we are not redeemed. Since we have control neither over our sinfulness (for all are sinful), nor over our redemption, we cannot be properly called guilty. If God in his wisdom chooses to save some and not others, I will not call Him a tyrant. But it cannot be said that those He does not choose are damned for their sin.

Open theism, on the other hand, contends that the future, strictly speaking, does not exist as such. Because future events have not yet happened, they do not exist to be known or not known. God, if He is omniscient, knows all that exists. Since the future does not exist, the lack of divine foreknowledge does not conflict with divine omniscience.

On the gripping hand, if God cannot know the future, a modified understanding of scripture must be adopted. A great deal of biblical prophecy is of the “God says” variety rather than the “this is what will happen in the future” sort. Furthermore, a number of the “this is what will happen in the future” passages are actually “God will do this in the future” passages. It is generally possible to reliably predict one’s own future actions (even for humans). Here’s where the problem arises: Christ. God (seemingly, at least) sent His Son into the world knowing/intending for Him to die. Here we have two bad options: 1) God foreknew that the Pharisees would hate and despise and ultimately kill Him, which is not  possible since the future does not exist and cannot be known, or 2) God knew the Pharisees would hate and despise Him because He was predicting His own actions–that is, God forced the Pharisees to become agents of His wrath, thus destroying their own agency. Perhaps, then, God did not know that Jesus would be killed, which leaves us with two more bad options: 1) God never intended for Christ to be killed, or 2) God, knowing the hearts of the Pharisees, knew Jesus’s ministry would be terribly offensive to them. He could hypothesise that, given their nature, and the presence of the Roman garrison, there was a very good chance of Him being persecuted, and quite possibly dying, but He could not know for certain, when, where, how, or even if He would die at their hands.

Alternatively, it can be argued that knowledge of the future does not predicate a closed-ness thereof. In other words, God’s knowing what will happen does not mean what will happen cannot change. If a person plans to do something, say kill 500 people, God will have known about it since the beginning of time. If that person then changes his mind, the future is altered, and God’s foreknowledge is, from the beginning of time, accordingly altered. This does not mean that God had been wrong about the future, or that He himself had changed. It simply means that as something external to Him changed, his knowledge willen hoven change-frupt (sorry, I don’t know how to say that in Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional Tense) retroactively accordingly. If my house is white, God knows that it is white. If I paint it grey, God knows it is grey. He was not wrong in the past about its colour, but His knowledge was altered by the alteration of the house itself.

Free Will

The notion of truly free will is a chimeric abstraction. In reality, the choices of one ‘free’ agent limit the choices of another. If person A chooses not to build skyscraper B, person C cannot jump off of skyscraper B. If person D holds person E at gunpoint and demands her money of her, she cannot choose both to live and to keep her money. Similarly, the actions of God necessarily limit the freedom of humanity. There is, therefore, an ongoing interplay of billions of free agents, constantly creating and destroying possibilities for other free agents. In order for God to minimize (for He cannot eliminate) His constraints on human free will, he would have to, in essence, create the world and then step back from it. Cf. Deism. This would not, however, stop humans from increasing or decreasing the  freedom of other humans.

Omnipresence

Is God in Hell too?

If you are not yet confused, read Wikipedia for a while. Start with the article on Free will, then move on to Open theism, Calvinism, Arminianism, Eternity, Determinism, Time, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, Impassibility, Immutability, Process theology, and Game theory. Also make sure to click on any links in those articles on topics you don’t fully understand and read those articles too. Then read all the books cited in all the articles you’ve read. If, after that, you still think any of it matters, let me know ;) To all of the arguments I’ve made in this post, there are counter arguments, and to those, counter-counter arguments.

So what does matter? None of that. I think Open theism is wrong (along with Calvinism and Arminianism) in that it starts with the wrong questions and assumptions. It is not possible to deal with all the issues brought up above with some perfectly designed philosophical/theological construct. And even if it were, it would be just that: a construct. But I don’t think any of those views are heretical.

Here’s where I start, and for the most part where I finish:

  • God does not deceive us
  • God responds to prayer
  • God speaks to and offers guidance to us
  • It appears to me that I have a certain degree of control over my actions, and, to that end, I desire to use that wisely

Thoughts? Opinions? Corrections, elaborations, arguments? I’mma get some Advil.

01.26.09

Why I Am Not Charismatic

Posted in Reflections at 23:50

I think I probably still believe in everything the Charismatic church teaches. While much of the Church catholic1 suffers under a brand of philosophical materialism2 that impoverishes their view of God and man alike, this cannot be said of the Charismatic church. There is another thing the Charismatic church has gotten right, and perhaps it’s the only thing that needs to be gotten right: the primacy of spiritual communion with God. This is my core conviction, which has led me into, and out of the Charismatic church.

I have two additional convictions, however, that deprecate rather than recommend, the Charismatic church to me:

First, I believe that God is big. I very much dislike—I will even use the word despise—the careless attribution of such ambiguous adjectives3 to God, so I will elaborate. As humans, we very much like drawing sharp lines of distinction. We assimilate knowledge by defining, comparing, contrasting, placing in neat categories everything we encounter. God defies and defeats these processes—He cannot be known about but only known.

God has shattered the categories I learned in the Charismatic church. A man raised from the dead or made to see by the power of God is a miracle. But so is a newborn baby. And so is the sun rising day after day. The categories of prophecy and revival and gifting, have been overwhelmed and destroyed and I am left only with the conviction that God is active in this world to an extent I cannot comprehend, and in ways I cannot imagine.

When I pray, I do so believing that God answers prayer, and that it would be foolish for me to tell Him how to do so. When I listen for the voice of God, I know He will speak—in a still small voice, through my friends or my circumstances, through a talking ass, or in some way I’ve yet to experience or imagine. And when I fail to listen, I know He will patiently wait for and with me. I am in love with and in awe of a God who is found in and yet is bigger than speaking in tongues or being slain in the Spirit or delivered of demons.

Second, I believe that we as Christians, stand in the context of the Church catholic—the universal Church; the past, present, and future; the living and the dead. The Charismatic Church, as a cult4, has ignored this to their detriment. They fail to realise that God has always given Himself and His gifts to those who love and seek Him—be they borderline-heretical sects like the Montanists, Roman Catholic ascetics like the Carmelites, fornicating bumpkins like those at the camp meetings of the Second Great Awakening, Hippies like the Jesus People, or modern day Charismatics. Many Charismatic pastors fail to study Theology and Church history, or, having studied them, do not teach them, thinking their parishioners will find them uninteresting or irrelevant.

Not only have they failed to learn about or acknowledge what God has done in the world between the book of Acts and and Azusa Street—they have also ignored much of what He has done since then. Any move of God that doesn’t involve religious enthusiasm5 fails to qualify as revival and is cast aside.

God has moved, is moving, and will move in ways that escape our observation or interest, in ways that break our paradigms, and in ways that flat out offend us. I don’t want to miss anything God is doing.

  1. In this context, ‘catholic’ with a little ‘c’ means universal, not Roman Catholic.
  2. This refers to denial or minimization of spiritual realities, not the pursuit of material wealth
  3. We should be very careful what we say about God.
  4. Cult, in this context is a technical term for a religious group. I’m not saying the Charismatic church is a cult in the profane sense of the word
  5. Another technical term describing an intensified emotional state brought about either by the Holy Spirit or by the group dynamics of certain religious activities. Charismatic stuff.

01.02.09

It’s Still Christmas

Posted in Reflections at 04:24

It’s January first and there’s a wreath on my door.

I feel like I’ve been sort of cheated. American culture tells us that once the presents are opened, Christmas is over. Oh sure, nobody takes their tree down on the 26th. But they start looking at it as a large visible reminder of a chore to be done. We look at the languishing remains of the Christmas sweets and think ‘Oh God, make it stop.’ Racks of Christmas things in stores become sparse and disorganised as they bear signs proclaiming progressively increasing discounts. Christmas music is unequivocally shunned. And our minds wander toward the New Year. Christmas is dead and gone.

But it’s still Christmas! Christmas day is the first of twelve days of Christmas. It should be the beginning, not the end of the celebration of of the mystery of the Incarnation, of the rejoicing in everything we longingly hoped for in the season of Advent. It’s the Feast of the Already following the Fast for the Not Yet. Christmas isn’t over until Epiphany, the celebration of visit of the Magi (Jan 6th).

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

–Handel’s Messiah “For Unto Us a Child is Born” (quoting Isaiah 9:6). Handel’s Messiah is absolutely amazing, by the way.

So have a merry Christmas.

12.28.08

A Fool’s Errand

Posted in Uncategorized at 05:46

My car doesn’t look very nice. It’s covered in salt and dirt and soot from dirty snow that splashes and sprays up from the road in the winter time. So I decided to wash my car this morning.

Now if you were reading too closely, you would have noticed that I said my car *doesn’t* look very nice. Then I said I decided to wash it. So I should have said, “My car didn’t look very nice…So I decided to wash [it].” Hypothetically.

I looked out the window, and it was sunny if a little windy. I stepped outside and it was a little colder than I expected. No matter. While I didn’t relish the thought of plunging my hands into a bucket of ice-cold water on a cold, windy day, I chose not to abort the mission. I grabbed my bucket and sponge and chamois. Ha, I took my chamois.

I got to the self-service car wash and all the stalls were taken, so I waited. Popular day to wash your car I guess. Someone finished, so I maneuvered into the stall. I started to reach for my wallet, but it sounded like the pump was still going. I stepped out. Sure enough, three minutes left. Wow. I grabbed the wand and got to work, spraying with the high pressure rinse from top to bottom. The first thing I noticed was that the floor of the stall was a bit slippery. I saw some soap bubbles, so I thought maybe that was it. Then I realized it was ice. Then I looked at my car. It was unusually shiny and a little bit more…ripply than usual.

My car was now covered from top to bottom in an eighth-inch of ice. It was a giant black icicle. Being completely unprepared for this, I kept spraying, not quite sure what to do. Then it occurred to me that this response was neither logical nor helpful. I put the wand away just as the one minute warning went off. I drove out of the stall, keeping the door open so I could see, since the entire vehicle was now a blind spot.

I pulled into a parking space by the vacuums, turned the defroster on full blast, and got out my scraper–not my chamois. After working on the windshield for a minute or two, the side of the car in the sun had melted. Actually, it had sublimated, and was dry, and just as dirty and salty as before, while the side in the shade was as stubbornly frozen as when I’d pulled out of the stall.

I guess I got what I paid for with my free car wash.

06.25.08

Food For Thought

Posted in Commentaries, food at 21:52

Why do we have more regard for companies than people? When the cost of oil goes up, we unflinchingly pay “fuel surcharges” on airline tickets and shipping so that companies don’t have to absorb the cost. Yet when food prices go up, where is the “food surcharge” for third-world sweatshop workers who aren’t earning a living wage to begin with? I guess they’ll just have to absorb the cost themselves. Even if I did get charged a “food surcharge”–now maybe I’m just a pessimist–I wouldn’t count on any of it making it to its recipient anyway. That’s just not how business works.

05.21.08

The Election

Posted in Commentaries at 06:47

I’m getting kind of tired of hearing about the election. It’s not ’til November and yet it dominates the media. It’s nearly impossible to turn on the radio or surf the web without hearing about superdelegates or campaign fundraising. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care who wins anymore. It seems the system has already done its job. There are three candidates, all of whom have proven themselves able to lead our country. And after all, isn’t that what’s important?

The issues can be very divisive, and they play to the natural human desire for affirmation. We want a candidate to come along and shout from their soapbox the truths we’ve quietly espoused for years. Then we want them to win so we can say “See! See, I was right all along!”

Well, maybe I’m just disillusioned by the failure of any candidate to affirm my beliefs, but I’m starting to question whether the issues really mean all that much. Has any president kept all the promises he made on the campaign trail? Or even half of them? Is the president really so powerful that s/he can effect those promises and enact those beliefs on a meaningful level? Will the political party of the president be remembered in twenty years? Fifty? Two hundred?

Of course there has to be something, some criterion that at least gives the impression of being intellectual–otherwise it would merely be a popularity contest. But the criterion can’t be too cranial, lest the uneducated be unable to participate. Hence, issues!

It seems that the function of our government is to intervene a necessary bureaucracy in between a lot of people far too stupid and far too fickle to run a country (myself included) and the people their decisions would otherwise adversely impact (mostly themselves, but also the rest of the world). I think it might be working.

04.02.08

Getting Dressed for Work

Posted in Random at 09:10

Today at work I had gowning training. Gowning is the process of donning clean room attire; namely hair bonnet, beard cover, shoe covers, hood, jumpsuit, overboots, safety glasses, and latex gloves. There are a lot of complex rules, most of which involve doing things in the correct order, not letting things touch the floor, and doing things in the correct order without things touching the floor. Since I don’t work on the factory floor, I won’t have to do this on a daily basis, just whenever a computer or printer in a controlled area has an issue. I think I’m glad I don’t have to go into any of the areas that require respirator, ear protectors, or chemical resistant gloves and apron. Although I don’t think you could get much closer than that to a space suit…

Anyway, the picture above is about what our bunny suits at work look like. Photo courtesy of NASA.

02.27.08

Stickin’ It to the Man

Posted in Confessions, food at 09:37

(A Mini How-to)

Tomatoes

When life gives you lemons, you can make lemonade. Well…usually. But when it gives you mouldy tomatoes? I can only think of one thing rotten tomatoes are good for. Throwing!

After a long day at work, I was feeling a bit ornery, and upon being greeted by a bag of fuzzy produce, I decided to take it out on my favourite grocer. No, I didn’t *literally* throw the tomatoes at ******. Only metaphorically. Here’s how things shook down:

  1. The goods
    • 1 x bag of mouldy tomatoes
    • 1 x receipt for said tomatoes
    • 1 x $0.70 off cereal coupon
    • 1 x ********** discount card
    • 1 x canvas tote bag
  2. The plan: Get in, get a refund, get a good deal, get out.
  3. The boon:
    • 1 x $5 box of cereal
    • 1 x receipt
    • $0.15
    • 1 x plastic bag…oops
  4. The net result: a worthless bag of bad produce (original cost $1.75) traded for a $5 box of cereal and $0.15 change. Now that’s a refund. Thank you, ****!

01.02.08

Changes Revisited

Posted in Confessions at 10:41

Hmm… Well 2008 is here and I couldn’t help but go back over my post from last January (http://www.canisaureus.org/wordpress/archives/changes). I guess life isn’t quite as bad as I had feared. I don’t have a job yet and that’s a little scary. I don’t really have any better idea what to do now than I did when I worried about it a year in advance. Thus it’s proved: worrying is a waste of time.