Why I'm Not a Calvinist

Calvinism/Reformed Christianity is all the rage nowadays:  the belief that humans have no free will, and that God predestines some to be saved and some to be separated from Him forever, and that He only died for those He "elects" (chooses for salvation), whom He draws to Himself by irresistible grace.

I have never been able to believe this.  Not that I just don't want to believe it.  I literally can't.

It's also not that I think I am incapable of error or that I have this perfect grasp of spiritual truth.  But the person I am, with the best heart attitude I can ascribe to and the best reasoning powers I can summon, has to believe in human free will.

Here's the way I see it. 

If God alone is responsible for saving humans, and humans really have nothing whatsoever to do with it-- then all He would have to do to save all human beings is exercise irresistible grace, and they would have to be saved. Oh, I know all the arguments about how we all deserve eternal separation from God*, and it's gracious enough of God if He just chooses to save some.

But to me, it's not. Not gracious enough. 

God created human beings-- all human beings.  If God holds humans responsible for their salvation, then they have to be capable of choosing salvation.  If they are incapable of choosing salvation, then their fate, whatever it is, is God's responsibility.

If humans are incapable of resisting His saving grace, then He is responsible for not saving them all, since it's completely within His power to do so, and no one else has any say in the matter. It's not a matter of what we humans deserve so much as a matter of impartiality in justice, and completeness in mercy. I can't believe that God exercises partiality in justice and limited mercy.  I can believe God could be infinitely better than I am able to conceive; I cannot believe that He could be worse.  That I, who love my children equally and would never set one up to receive my love and the best inheritance I can leave her, while consigning the other to total abandonment, could in my refusal to do this, be better than the God I worship.

But this doesn't mean I think humans can save themselves. (Non-Calvinists are often accused of believing this, but it isn't true.)  I don't think there's anything we can do or add to God's grace in order to be saved.  But I don't think grace is irresistible.

I think we can't come to God unless He draws us-- but when He draws us, we can choose to come towards Him, or resist and insist we don't want God. Simple as that. I think the image of God remains in us, distorted though it may be by sin. We are capable of responding to the Holy Spirit's influence for good, though incapable of moving towards the good on our own. But there are moments in our lives-- probably many, many more than one, for each of us-- where God draws us towards Himself, and that act of drawing suspends us momentarily between good and evil, allowing us to be capable of choosing -- either giving in to the drawing of God, or falling back towards wrong. He alone can make us free to choose, but He does make us free, and the choice is ours.

Could not God have enough skill and finesse to move a human heart into a state balanced between two choices so that we are in that moment free to make a choice?  Is God really incapable of drawing human beings gently enough that they don't have to come?

The idea that we have nothing whatsoever to do with it, that it's all God and there is no free will, as far as I can see, turns God into something awful. I have examined the argument that God's justice is so high above ours that what looks like injustice to us, really isn't; but I can't buy that-- especially for we who are redeemed. We can see what justice is-- and if it totally looks like something else, even after our eyes are opened to God's ways-- how can we call it justice? A God who makes creatures, claims to love them all, and then refuses to save some, is not a God of love or justice. I have tried, but the Reformed perspective simply makes no sense to me. In fact, it seems like an example of what Michael Spenser was talking about in his iMonk post, "More, Better, Most, Highest":

What I see happening . . . is an escalation of terms into the potentially useless. . . And the person willing to say the most, to make the highest claim. . . feels justifiably proud that he's climbed further out on the limb of faith than anyone else. . . 

We're justified by faith, right? Not works? Not any kind of works?

Not by saying "I believe in justification" MORE and LOUDER and with BIGGER WORDS and MORE ARGUMENTS than the other guy?

The language of the Reformed seems like that to me.  Do we believe grace alone saves us? Apart from any works? I mean ANY works? The highest we can go is to believe that it is somehow a "work" even to just give in when God draws us-- and therefore we can't even believe in humans just giving in to God, as part of grace.  No, He has to cause us to give in, or it's not grace.  But I don't think it's necessary to go that far in my belief that grace alone saves us. In fact, I can't.  My brain won't go there.

But some Reformed believers say that if I'm not willing to go as high as that, I must not really believe in "the doctrines of grace." Because they can do one better than me, with my insistence on free will.  That even surrendering to the grace of God is too much of a "work" on my part.  But I just can't see surrendering to grace as salvation by works.  It doesn't make sense to me. 

You see, I would call what I adhere to "the doctrines of grace," too-- so I disagree with appropriating that term for one particular expression of Christianity, with the implication that other traditions (such as the Wesleyan/Arminian) don't really understand grace.

The question then arises, what do I do with Romans 9:18-24? 

So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.  You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

Fortunately, I don't have to try to figure this out on my own.  Arminius and Wesley, and many other free-will believers, have gone before me.  (Roger E. Olson is a well-known modern example.)  I agree with them that this passage is not about salvation-- not in terms of individuals going to heaven or being with Christ in eternity. Arminians start at the beginning of chapter 9 instead of at verse 18, and note that after Romans 8, which is about individual salvation, Paul switches focus. He begins talking about Israel as a nation, and Israel's original covenant with God. Then Paul goes on to talk about Jacob and Esau, and then Pharoah-- but in terms of where their respective nations fit in God's earthly plan. The passage then begins to speak of Christians as God's new "nation," which is actually comprised of people from every nation. 

"Jacob I loved and Esau I hated" (v. 13) is not about God literally hating a human being that He created-- any more than when Jesus said we must "hate" our father and mother and even our own life in order to follow Him (Luke 14:26), He was speaking of literal hate.  This is part of a kind of poetic hyperbole which is a common feature in the Bible. Also, it's my understanding that the word "hardened" referring to Pharoah's heart would better be rendered "strengthened."  In Exodus 9:12 God strengthened (in the Scripture-4-All Online Interlinear, "made steadfast") Pharoah's resolve to do what Pharoah had already chosen to do.  But the Romans 9 passage is about Paul's looking back to the Old Covenant (which was with a nation, not individuals), and about whether God's plan for Israel as a nation has been nullified.  Paul's answer is "no."

The "vessels of wrath" are not individuals facing eternity, but nations in God's plans on the earth-- and the "vessels of mercy" are "us whom he has called" into a new covenant nation.  The destinies of these vessels are destruction vs. mercy on earth as nations-- but even though earthly nations may be "vessels of wrath," Paul goes on to show in Chapter 10 that "whoever believes in Me will not be disappointed" -- whether from the Jewish nation or a Greek one, any individual can receive eternal salvation and become part of the new covenant. Nor is this something they accomplish on their own-- but "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Chapter 10:17). Then Paul talks about how some form of "the word of God" has gone forth to everyone on earth-- through nature, when they cannot hear the the gospel (10:18).

In Chapter 11 Paul goes back to talking about Israel's calling as a nation again, and how a partial hardening has happened to that nation while mercy is being extended to the Gentiles to become part of the new "holy nation" which is the kingdom of God.

In other words, Arminians believe that God's earthly callings of nations, not the eternal destiny of individuals, is the topic of Romans 9. I think we miss this because of our overly individualistic mindset in the West. We tend to think it's all about individuals going to heaven-- but God is also interested in His kingdom, His holy nation, spreading on the earth.

With regards to other verses, this website briefly summarizes the Calvinist and Arminian positions on various Bible verses about predestination and calling.  There's no reason why any of the Reformed "clobber verses" have to be read as denying all human free will. 

The other issue I have with Calvinism has to do with "sovereignty."  I believe God is sovereign.  But I think Christians can at times get over focused on one attribute of God to the exclusion of other attributes. I think Reformed movements sometimes focus so much on God's authority and sovereignty, that they hardly have any room to think about God's humility and the freedom that Christ came to bring us. Ask some Christians what they are free from, and they'll simply say, "I'm free from bondage to sin. I'm free to live the way God wants me to." But the fact is that that we are also free from having to live in bondage to what Paul calls "the elements" of this earthly life, "do not handle, do not taste, do not touch" (Col 2:21) or the observation of "days and months and seasons and years" (Gal 4:10) or other things that are "destined to perish with the using."  Not understanding this can result in rules-based living-- though of course not all Reformed believers are legalists.

I find that sometimes a focus on God's sovereignty to the point where it almost shuts out any other attributes, seems related to a certain hierarchical view of the world-- a view that focuses on who is in authority over who, more than on service and love.  We can come to think God is all about enforcing His own authority, and that proper submission to authority is what the Christian walk is all about-- rather than, "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." But I see God as One who would deliberately choose to be born in a manger, the Son of a lowly carpenter in backwoods Galilee. I see a Kingdom of mutual submission and service, of each of us having a mind like Christ's-- in lowliness of mind considering others better than ourselves, as per Phil. 2.  I see a God Who limits His own exercise of sovereignty, by His own free will-- in order to allow us ours. 

And I believe this spirit of humility which is a true characteristic of Kingdom living, can be manifest just as much in the Reformed tradition as anywhere else.  Just because Calvinism doesn't make sense to me doesn't mean I think I have a corner on the truth and I couldn't possibly be wrong.  You see, I am not saying all this to condemn Calvinists or Reformed theology. I am simply explaining my own journey, the way my mind works, and why limited atonement and irresistible grace do not sync, in my mind, with the God Whom I have, in my human, limited way, come to know and love.

When Christ returns and we become "like Him, for we will see Him just as He is" (1 John 3:2), then these sorts of disagreements will be over and done.  But for now, I'll believe in free will.  There isn't anything else I can do. 

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*Note: as an annihilationist, I don't think eternal separation from God involves eternal conscious torment, either-- but that's a post for another day. 

A Walk in the Wetlands

A great egret has been visiting the wetlands where my husband and I walk every day.

As we walk along the boardwalk that loops through the standing water, we see him from a distance, a splash of white against the dark shrubbery behind him.  He stands in the water, neck curved, watching for tiny green frogs among the drowned grasses.  Or he stalks, head swaying back with each long-legged step forward.

Breathless, we pass the binoculars back and forth between us, standing at the closest point to him that the boardwalk will allow, hoping he won't fly away.  But we gasp with the beauty of it when he does-- when the huge wings open, curving in a great arc as he scoops air beneath them.  As he rises. As he flies.

He is gone, and we walk on, speaking of him in hushed voices, hoping that when we come back again tomorrow, he will have come back too.

Gerard Manley Hopkins said it best:


The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,
It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

As the sun disappears behind the foothills of the mountains, spreading a glory of pink and gold over the darkening sky behind it, we walk among the cattail stalks, listening to the marsh wren chirring just out of sight.  

In the willows above, red-winged blackbirds call to one another, their bright shoulder-patches ruffling up with every call.   There are so many that they sound like a concert of reed flutes.  They dive from the trees to sway atop the cattails, then flutter up again to perch in the branches.  "Poke your neigh-bor!' my son used to tell us they were saying.  He has grown too old now for such imaginings, but the blackbirds' song does not change.

Mallard ducks are flying in to roost in the cattail beds for the night.  Their short wings make a whistling sound as they beat at the air, losing altitude gradually as they circle.  Below in the shallow water, ducks that have already found resting places quack sleepily, or flap their wings in indignation when the newcomers land too close.

Later we pass through a wooded area where the water merely pools among the trees.  We remember the time a sudden knocking sound made us raise our heads, and a pileated woodpecker eyed us from the trunk above, crest burning bright over a white-striped face.

We never know exactly what we will see in the wetlands.  Pacific tree frogs shout from the puddles, and Oregon red-spotted garter snakes sun themselves on the boards, disappearing with a flick of their black tails when walking humans approach too near.  In the spring and fall, woolly-bear caterpillars trundle along the wooden rails, always seeming to have somewhere very important they need to be.

We notice gnaw-marks on the trunk of a tree and wonder if the beaver we saw last year is back.  In the dusk we would see its wet brown back slicing the water, and once or twice even heard the "smack!" as the flat tail struck the surface.  And though we haven't glimpsed it in some time, still the trees carry "beaver bites," as we overheard a very small human visitor call them once. 

The wetlands.

This is the place where the tension and frazzle of the day drop away from us.  The place where life has been lived just as it is, for centuries before humans ever built houses or drove cars or collected taxes.  This is where it all drops into perspective, where none of the things that worry me are important; where, as Hopkins wrote,

nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things. . . 

Here in the wetlands, the presence of God is palpable.  Here in the wetlands, I find that the things that so concern humanity are only passing, temporary things. Here, the seasons and the cycles change always, but nothing ever changes at all.

Here I can breathe.

Here I can think.

And here is where I like to come alone sometimes, to worship.

I just wanted to share it with you today-- with anyone who comes and wants to walk that boardwalk with me in their thoughts.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Is God's Nature "Father" and not "Mother"?

There is an argument among Christians today about whether the Father God can also be thought of as a Mother.  Paul R. Smith's Book Is it Ok to Call God Mother? - Considering the Feminine Face of God answers "yes."  Many other Christians have also pointed out the many feminine/motherhood metaphors describing God both in the Old and New Testaments.  Clearly, according to Genesis 1:27, both male and female humans are made in the image of God; therefore, though God is a Spirit and without gender, God's nature must encompass both male and female.  Shouldn't this mean that God our Father is also God our Mother?

Certainly not, other Christian groups say.  Jesus, they point out, taught us to call God "Father," but He never called God "Mother."  Some cite Ephesians 3:14-15:

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. (KJV) -- which in some translations reads:  "from whom all fatherhood, earthly or heavenly, derives its name" (Phillips) or "of whose fatherhood all heavenly and earthly fatherhood is a copy" (Barclay, Daily Study Bible).

Proponents of this doctrine say that theologically, we need to discard the idea that being Father means God is male; but the nature of God is Fatherhood, and all fatherhood on earth springs from God's very essence.  "Father" is what God is called-- one of God's names-- and therefore describes the nature of God.  But since God is not called "Mother" in the scriptures, the motherhood images of God are merely metaphors-- word pictures to help us understand something about God, just as referring to God's "feathers" (Psalm 91:4) does not make God a bird.  God is Father, not Mother-- and indeed, some who teach this insist that it is actually blasphemy to refer to God as Mother.

There are problems with this teaching, however.  First of all, the word translated "fatherhood" in certain translations of Ephesians 3:15 is the Greek word "patria"  As I quoted above, the King James version translates this as "family," as do most other translations, with only a few using "fatherhood."  There are only three instances in the New Testament where this word "patria" is used.

Luke 2:4 - And Joseph went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into. . . Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage (patria) of David.

Acts 3:25 - Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made. . . saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds (patria) of the earth be blessed. 

And, of course, Ephesians 3:15 - Of whom the whole family (patria) in heaven and earth is named.

Ephesians 3:14-15 does make a play on words between "Father (pater) of our Lord Jesus Christ" and "of whom the whole family (patria) of heaven and earth is named."  God the Father is seen as the Pater of the patria, which is a word linguistically related to "father."  But just because it is related to the word "father" does not make this word mean "fatherhood"!  "Fatherhood," as proponents of this teaching mean it, is "the state or nature of being a father."  But patria is not a concept word referring to a state of being; it is a concrete word referring to a group of people that are related by familial descent.  Therefore, meaning of this verse in its original language has to do with God being the source and engenderer of all people groups-- not the source of a state of being called "fatherhood" that women and mothers can never share.

This verse simply does not say that the nature of God is fatherhood and not motherhood.  In fact, there are certain implications of the idea that the nature of God is fatherhood and not motherhood, which the teachers of this doctrine may not have anticipated nor even desired.

1. If fatherhood is directly derived from God’s nature and motherhood is not, then what this would mean is that fatherhood is not only a biological thing, but a spiritual, divine thing, while motherhood is a biological thing only. This would mean that only fatherhood, and not motherhood, can have a spiritual dimension.

2. This wreaks havoc with the idea (which is often also believed by those who accept the doctrine of God-as-Father-only) that motherhood is a woman's highest calling. If motherhood is not spiritual and does not partake of the Divine Nature, how can it in any sense be a high calling?

3. This view degrades motherhood and thus womanhood, for if this necessary function of women does not reflect the nature of God, while the corresponding necessary function of men does reflect the nature of God, then women do not reflect God in one of the main aspects of the very nature of womanhood. ("Necessary" here is used in its meaning in logic-- not that it is necessary for women to be mothers, but that the potential  to be mothers and not fathers is "necessary" to the definition of womanhood.)  However, the holders of this doctrine usually believe men and women are both made in the image of God and are equal before God; that they just have different "roles."  But tying these roles into the nature of male vs. female humanity, and then saying the female role does not reflect the nature of God, contradicts the assertion of equality.

4. To find it insulting to God, or blasphemous, to think of God as having a mother's nature as well as a father's, smells of misogyny. Why should the Motherhood of God be blasphemous, unless there is something unholy about motherhood/womanhood?

5.  If only fatherhood, and not motherhood, can have a spiritual dimension (see point 1), then women must also, being made in the image of God, be able to partake of this spiritual, divine thing called Fatherhood, so women must be able to be spiritual fathers. To say otherwise is to say women are not as much made in God’s image as men are.  And yet the idea that women as well as men can be spiritual fathers is distasteful to those who believe this doctrine-- most likely because they associate "fatherhood" with authority that they believe women were never intended by God to have.

So, given that one way of testing an idea is to follow it through to its implications-- the implications of this idea seem to end up in a very self-contradictory place!  Perhaps it makes more sense to say that the nature of God is to engender, which both fathers and mothers actually do, and that there are other reasons why God is not called our "Mother" in the Bible that are unrelated to whether motherhood is also God's nature.

I'm going to go through some of the arguments in an online reprinting of Why God is Father and Not Mother by Mark Brumley, managing editor of the Catholic Faith Magazine (who originally published this in the July/August issue of 1999), to see how well his arguments hold together and if another way of looking at the issues he raises makes more sense.

Brumley says:

Since Christians believe that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, they must hold that He most fully reveals how we, by grace, should understand God: as Father. Otherwise they tacitly deny the central claim of their faith—that Christ is the fullness of God’s self-disclosure to man. Non-Christians may do that, of course, but Christians cannot—not without ceasing to be Christians in any meaningful sense of the word.

Here is the doctrine made explicit:  Jesus revealed God as "Father," and if we say otherwise, we are denying Christ and ceasing to be Christians.

The problem, of course, is that my understanding of the God-as-Mother concept is not that it denies the Fatherhood of God-- not at all.  Rather, that the Motherhood of God is a viable concept in addition to that of God's Fatherhood.  I am not saying we should stop viewing God as Father, but only that it is possible to view God as Father without excluding Mother.  Jesus, of course, stands in a special relation to God in that God is His Father in a way that God is not Father to the rest of us, except by adoption (see Galatians 4:5).  As Brumley himself says:

Now whatever else we say about God, we cannot say that He is Jesus’ mother, for Jesus’ mother is not God but Mary. Jesus’ mother was a creature; His Father, the Creator. "Father" and "Mother" are not, then, interchangeable terms for God in relation to Jesus.

Brumley then insists that if God was not Mother to Jesus, He [male pronouns for God are intended to be understood as generic here] cannot be Mother to us.  But that is precisely what Brumley cannot say, given his own words.  Jesus had no human father; He did have a human mother.  But the rest of us have both human mothers and human fathers.  Jesus could not call God His mother because God was exclusively His father.  God is not exclusively our Father, for we have human fathers as well.  Since God is our Father in a different way than He is Jesus' Father, it is not impossible that God could also be our Mother in that same way.

We cannot escape the fact that Jesus taught us to pray to "Our Father" and not "Our Mother."  But how restrictively should this be understood?  Brumley believes that it is wrong to call God anything other than what is revealed:

Undergirding Jesus’ teaching about God as Father is the idea that God has revealed Himself as to be such and that His revelation should be normative for us. God, in other words, calls the theological shots. If He wants to be understood primarily in masculine terms, then that is how we should speak of Him. To do otherwise, is tantamount to idolatry—fashioning God in our image, rather than receiving from Him His self-disclosure as the Father.

So is it wrong for humans to call God something other than what God calls Himself?  There is at least one place in scripture where a human does just that-- and God does not rebuke her.  Genesis 16 tells the story of how Hagar, Abraham's slave wife, was driven away by Sarah, and how God met Hagar in the wilderness.  Genesis 16:13 tells us, "And she [Hagar] called the name of the Lord who spoke to her 'You, God see me,' [or, "the God who sees"] for she said, 'Have I also here seen Him who sees me?'"   

There are actually many names for God used in the Old Testament, including names taken from other ancient religions.  There is one-- the name transliterated "Yahweh"-- which God calls His own Name, speaking to Moses in Exodus 3:14, but there is no indication that each and every other name used for God, including "El, "Adonai," and "Shaddai" [or "El Shaddai"], and "Ehyeh," were names God personally revealed to humanity as His names.  There are stories throughout the Old Testament where a person has an encounter with God and speaks of God using a new variation on one of these names.  Of course, Jesus' revelation of God should take primacy-- but there is simply no place where the Bible states that it is wrong for humans to give names to God.

Brumley goes on:

The fact is, whenever the Bible uses feminine language for God, it never applies it to Him in the same way masculine language is used of Him. Thus, the primary image of God in Scripture remains masculine, even when feminine similes are used: God is never called "She" or "Her." As Protestant theologian John W. Miller puts it in Biblical Faith and Fathering: "Not once in the Bible is God addressed as mother, said to be mother, or referred to with feminine pronouns. On the contrary, gender usage throughout clearly specifies that the root metaphor is masculine-father.

The question here, of course, is "why?"  Brumley dismisses the idea that the use of masculine pronouns and names for God could be driven by the patriarchal mindset of the times in which the Bible was written, but the fact remains that the word "father" (and other masculine names) in ancient times would have conveyed things God intended to reveal about Himself which the word "mother" (and other female names) could not have conveyed.  Women had no legal power in those times and were considered property to be transferred from male to male.  But this is no longer the case today.   Women today in society have the same rights and powers as men, and mothers today hold the same legal authority over their children that fathers do.  Therefore, the word "mother" no longer carries implications of powerlessness or dependence.

In fact, since fathers and mothers are different in the way they relate to their children (and children relate differently to them) motherhood conveys different concepts of relationship-- not inherently better, but different-- so that the desire to relate spiritually to a religious mother figure is widespread in humanity. Brumley, who says "Catholicism’s doctrine that Mary is the 'Mother of Christians' is correct," himself embraces a spiritual Mother in Mary. Protestants believe Mary should be honored as Christ's mother without becoming our own Mother. But many Protestants feel something lacking in relating to God only as Father. Is the desire for a divine mother-child relationship a genuine human need, and does it actually spring from the Motherhood of God? God is the One who said, after all, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so shall I comfort you." Isaiah 66:13. Though God does not call Himself "Mother" in the Bible, there certainly are promises of Motherhood in a verse like that one!

What are the reasons Brumley gives for why God is Father and not Mother, given that he disagrees that it has something to do with the Bible's patriarchal cultures? Brumley says:

A father is the "principle" or "source" of procreation in a way a mother is not. To be sure, both father and mother are parents of their offspring and in that sense both are causes of their offspring’s coming-to-be. But they are so in different ways. Both mother and father are active agents of conception (contrary to what Aristotle thought). But the father, being male, initiates procreation; he enters and impregnates the woman, while the woman is entered and impregnated. There is an initiatory activity by the man and a receptive activity by the woman.

This idea is inherently male-centered in perspective.  As Brumley says, it used to be thought that only the father was an active agent of conception: that he contributed the "seed" to which the mother's body was merely the "soil" in which the seed was planted.  We now know that both mother and father produce a "seed"-- sperm and an egg-- which combine together to become a child.  But the idea that the father "enters" the mother to "impregnate" her is neither more nor less accurate than the idea that the mother "encompasses" the father in order to "take" his seed.  Many men can testify that when a woman wants to become a mother, it is frequently not the man who "initiates activity"!  In short, there is no reason why God's generative, life-giving power is not as physically analogous to motherhood as it is to  fatherhood.

Another idea of Brumley's is this:

Because the father procreates outside of himself, his child is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) other than his father. Likewise, the father is other than his child (though also not wholly). In other words, the father, as father, transcends his child. Fatherhood, in this sense, symbolizes transcendence in relation to offspring, though we also recognize that, as the "source" of his child’s life, the father is united or one with his child and therefore he is not wholly a symbol of transcendence.


On the other hand, because the mother procreates within herself—within her womb where she also nurtures her child for nine months—her child is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) part of herself. And similarly, the mother is symbolically (though in reality not wholly) part of her child. In other words, the mother, as mother, is one with her child. Motherhood, in this sense, symbolizes immanence, though we recognize that as a distinct being, the mother is also other than her child and therefore not wholly a symbol of immanence. . . .

Which leaves us with the obvious question, "If this is so, why does traditional theology use only male language for God?" The answer: because God’s transcendence has a certain priority over His immanence in relation to creation. . .

To prevent God’s transcendence from being lost sight of and God being wrongly reduced to, or even too closely identified with, His creation, language stressing transcendence—masculine terms such as father —is necessary. . .

Thus, in order to express adequately God’s infinite transcendence and to avoid idolatrously identifying God with the world (without severing Him from His creation, as in deism), even on the metaphorical level we must use fatherly language for God. Motherly language would give primacy to God’s immanence and tend to confuse Him with His creation (pantheism). This does not exclude all maternal imagery—as we have seen even the Bible occasionally employs it—but it means we must use such language as the Bible does, in the context of God’s fatherhood.

In other words, God’s Fatherhood includes the perfections of both human fatherhood and human motherhood. Scripture balances transcendence and immanence by speaking of God in fundamentally masculine or paternal terms, yet also occasionally using feminine or maternal language for what is depicted as an essentially masculine God.

In a self-contradictory fashion, Brumley here associates masculinity with God's essence while simultaneously admitting that both motherhood and fatherhood image the nature of God-- one through transcendence and one through immanence.  I am inclined to agree that this analogy (fatherhood is to transcendence as motherhood is to immanence) has some merit.  However, I am not at all convinced by Brumley's idea that if we think of God as Mother, we will lose sight of God's transcendence and become pantheists. This would only be the case if we replaced the idea of God as Father with the idea of God as Mother.  But if we think of God as both Father and Mother, then God's immanence and God's transcendence achieve a balance.  

You see, I am also not convinced that God's transcendence should be given priority over God's immanence.  Jesus came to reveal God the Father-- but the Father also revealed the Son as Emmanuel-- "God with us."  Matthew 1:23. The Holy Spirit came from Father and Son and now dwells within us.  John 14:17.  And Psalm 139:7-10 states:

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.

All of these are ideas of immanence.  If we focus on God's transcendence to the point where it takes priority over God's immanence, we can end up with a distant, removed God who commands from afar, and can miss the fact that God is very near.  In many branches of Christianity, it is transcendence, not immanence, which is overbalanced in Christians' worship and service of God.

Brumley concludes by discussing the Trinity and the Incarnation in terms of Fatherhood, in that it is necessary to see God as containing an eternal, engendering relationship between God the Father and God the Son, who nonetheless are One.  As a Trinitarian, I wholeheartedly support this-- though I think Brumley is associating "Father" with maleness and supposed male authority, in spite of his assertions to the contrary.   When he says:

Thus, within the Trinity, there is fundamental equality—each Person is wholly God—and basic difference—each Person is unique and not the Others, not interchangeable. And there is also sacred order, with the Son begotten of the Father and the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. This shows that equality and difference, and even equality and hierarchy, need not be understood as opposed to one another. . . .

--he is arbitrarily adding an idea of hierarchy to the Trinity, and from there to human male-female relations, that is simply unnecessary and without basis.*  Once he has done so, he has weakened the female and rendered it dependent, which may be at the heart of why he disagrees with ascribing motherhood to God. 

In short, there is no reason to follow Brumley's reasoning to deny the Motherhood of God, especially in light of the negative implications that I have described early in this post as proceeding from such a denial.  I believe it is most accurate, therefore, to say that God's nature and essence encompass both fatherhood and motherhood.  

Both fathers and mothers reflect God's image when they relate to their children.  And we can relate to God both as a Father and Mother.  

For which I am truly thankful. 

______________________

*Note: I have discussed this further in Part 3 of my series, The Bible and Human Authority.

The Atonement: Did God Just Really Need to Punish Someone?

It's called the "penal substitution" doctrine of the Atonement.  It means that God, being just and holy, demands that all sin be punished, and that Jesus Christ substituted Himself for us and received in our place the punishment that is due to us.  And according to certain branches of Christianity, it is the only allowable version of the Atonement you can believe and still be a true Christian.  As Southern Baptist minister Al Mohler says in his article, "Penal Substitutionary Atonement is the Gospel":

This either is the Gospel, or, it is not. The dividing line is abundantly clear; we either believe that the sum and substance of the Gospel is that a holy and righteous God—Who must demand a full penalty for our sin—both demands the penalty and provides the penalty, through His Own self-substitution in Jesus Christ—the Son—whose perfect obedience, and perfectly accomplished atonement, has purchased for us all that is necessary for our salvation—has met the full demands of the righteousness and justice of God against our sin.

We either believe that, or we do not. If we do not, then we believe that the Gospel can be nothing more than some kind of message intended to reach some emotive level in the human being, so that the human being would think better of God, and might want to associate with Him. . . .

If you will deal with it, if you will read it, if you will honestly reflect upon it—if you will work through the biblical texts—it will become a matter of [ir]refutable truth; that the central thrust of the Scriptures atonement, is that God demanded a punishment for sin, and requires it by His own holiness and justice, and that He provided it in Jesus Christ—Who died on our behalf—paying in full the penalty for our sin.

The problem, of course, is that if this is really what the Atonement is all about-- if it's about a God who just cannot be appeased unless He can punish somebody-- it doesn't speak very well for the character of God.  And if the One God chooses to punish is His innocent Son-- well, many who have left Christianity or who refuse to embrace it, reject it because God seems to them to be a monster.  A "divine child abuser," I have heard them say.  "Fixated on punishment."

Many Christians disagree with this idea for the same sorts of reasons.  New Testament Professor James McGrath's blog Exploring Our Matrix puts it like this:

First, the Bible regularly depicts God as forgiving people. If there is anything that God does consistently throughout the Bible, it is forgive. To suggest that God cannot forgive because, having said that sin would be punished, he has no choice but to punish someone, makes sense only if one has never read the penitential psalms, nor the story of Jonah. The penal substitution view of atonement takes the metaphor of sin as debt and literalizes it to the extent that one’s actions are viewed in terms of accounting rather than relationship. It is not surprising this is popular: in our time, debts are impersonal and most people have them, and it is easier to think of slates being wiped clean and books being balanced than a need for reconciliation. But the latter is the core element if one thinks of God in personal terms. . .

The moral issue with penal substitution is closely connected with the points just mentioned. Despite the popularity of this image, to depict God as a judge who lets a criminal go free because he has punished someone else in their place is to depict God as unjust.

So there is a serious disagreement between Christians like Mohler, who claim that if you don't believe the Atonement is about penal substitution, you don't believe the Gospel at all, and Christians like McGrath, who believe the penal substitutionary model is unhelpful and not actually what the Bible teaches.  

Where do I fall in all this?  Somewhere in the middle, actually.

It seems to me that at times the Bible does present the Atonement -- Christ's death on the Cross-- in the light of penal substitution.  Isaiah 53:8-10 does say, "[F]or he was cut off from the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. . . Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand."  But this is not the only picture or description of the Atonement in the Bible!  And it seems to me that viewing the Atonement in terms of penal substitution casts God as a monster only if you insist on taking it as a literal fact instead of as a picture or description to help us understand something which is actually beyond the ability of finite minds to fully understand.  

I believe that like many mysteries of the divine, the Atonement is not something we can even talk about except in terms of analogy and approximation.  Narrowly taking one of the Bible's analogies/approximations and claiming that it is the only truly Christian way to understand the Atonement, seems to me to leave out all the other analogies the Scriptures use to help us understand.  And rejecting the idea entirely, though it may help those who now find it barbaric, doesn't do much for those who really have been helped and comforted by the idea of their sin as a criminal debt that has been paid (see Colossians 2:13-14).  

But the Bible also presents the Atonement in terms of ransom.  Jesus said, "For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."  We tend to look at ransom nowadays in terms of kidnapping or hostage-taking: a criminal has stolen your loved ones and wants payment before they can be released.  But in New Testament times, "ransom" was a word referring to the paying of the monetary value of a slave, in order to set that slave free.  Sharper Iron Forums puts it this way:

The ransom is the price that is paid to set the slave free. In the manumission ceremony, the money that the god paid to the owner to secure his freedom was the ransom. The verbal picture this word created in the minds of those in the first century was both graphic and meaningful. When Jesus announced that he was giving his life as the ransom, people understood that he was paying the price which would set them free. The analogy with slavery was graphic. They saw themselves as the slaves and Jesus as the one who paid the price. The price to set us free from sin and death was not 3 1/2 minae of silver; it was the very life of Jesus.

The Atonement is also presented in the Scriptures in terms of victory.  Colossians 2:15 says, "And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it [the cross]."   As theologian/apologist Greg Boyd teaches in his blog "The Christus Victor View of the Atonement":

The central thing Jesus did, according to Peter [in Acts 2:32-36], was fulfill Psalms 110:1. Jesus had been raised to a position of divine power (the Lord’s “right hand”) over his defeated and humiliated enemies (who are now his “footstool”). In an apocalyptic Jewish context, this is simply what it meant to say that Jesus brought the kingdom of God. To say the kingdom of God has come was to say the kingdom of Satan has been defeated.

The Atonement is also presented in the Scriptures in terms of sacrifice, which, though related to penal substitution, also encompasses all the meanings of the various sacrifices of the Old Testament.  Jesus is our sacrifice for sin according to Hebrews 10:2, but He is also our Passover Lamb according to 1 Corinthians 5:7 (a sacrifice that was more about deliverance than it was about sin).   His sacrifice is also about reconciliation and peace with God, as Colossians 1:20 says: "And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things to himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven."

So all these different pictures, models and analogies define the Atonement for us in the New Testament.  It seems to me that all of them together are needed to approximate as closely as possible what the Atonement actually means.  The Bible's analogies are set forth in terms of what would be most helpful and understandable to the peoples and cultures in which they were originally presented.  If we take any one of them, such as penal substitution, and insist that this is the one and only way to view the Atonement-- when no one in our times and cultures, including ourselves, really understands deep down what a substitutionary sacrifice would have meant emotionally and intellectually to a reader back then-- is to hamstring the message of the Gospel as it might more deeply reach our minds and hearts today.  And to remove any one of them could mean to lose a piece of the whole picture.

I can understand why it doesn't make sense to to many people to look at the Atonement and say, "God just had to punish someone, and the perfect One to punish was His willing Son."  So I'm going to present a more modern picture of how the Atonement looks to me, based on the passages about it all taken together.  Keeping in mind that mine, too, is an attempt to describe the undescribable, this is how I see it:

The universe, as the Christian sees it, has a deeper reality underlying (and overarching) the physical world. The physical world came into being at the will of God. God is the Source of all Being-- but not in the deistic sense that God just started things off but remained detached or absent from them. God continually sustains the universe by His constant will.  [Note: this is a generic pronoun I'm using for convenience and is not meant to make a statement about the gender of God.]

All other consciousnesses spring from the consciousness of God. This doesn't mean God constantly directly interferes in the workings of the universe, however; God desires that humans, who are made in His image (having self-awareness and the ability to make choices) should be free agents.

The other thing about the underlying reality of God is what can best be described as pure, absolute goodness and love-- that is the nature of God. We can refer to it as spiritual Life. The free-will agents that God made, however (and I think God made other free-will agents than humans: beings without physical form, just as God is without physical form), having their own wills, separate from God-- they chose to separate themselves from God. But to separate yourself from absolute good and absolute love, is to become other than good, and other than loving. It is to introduce evil and hate. This evil and hate-- we can call it spiritual Death-- has stained the physical universe. It is a blight, an uncleanness, which exists in the universe but cannot ultimately survive within the absolute goodness and love which is God. And it is destructive. It tears apart the relationships which God intended His self-aware beings to live in, with God and with each other. This blight is known as "sin." It's like an infection which cannot be tolerated; it must eventually all be removed, because left alone, it will eventually destroy the creation.  God has to do something about Death.  He can't just leave it alone; it's going to have to go.

Now, here's the problem. Humans are not only infected with Death (remember, we are not talking about physical death, but something else entirely), but they are also making choices, every day, to continue in Death. So-- how to remove the infection without destroying the humans it has infected? God, being absolute Love, does not want to destroy the beings He made for the purposes of loving and being loved.

First of all, God has to get the humans to understand that the infection exists, and that it has to be removed. So He picks one human tribe thousands of years ago, for a start, and begins to restore His broken relationship with humanity through them. He sets up the Law, with its system of blood sacrifice of animals. He makes sure the people understand that the blood represents life, because only life can cleanse/remove the death that is sin.

Once the idea, Blood Equals Life (Leviticus 17:11), is firmly in the people's minds, then God can do what He intended to do all along. His absolute Life will cleanse the Death that is evil and hate. But He can only do this if He becomes able experience Death Himself. The Death is affecting the physical world, so God has to become physical. He incarnates Himself: He becomes human.

Now, because He is God, He can become not only a human-- He can become the Representative Human for all of humanity. In the spiritual world, as the Representative Human, He can identify Himself completely with all humans, so that all sin which has infected humanity can be imputed to Him. Once this is done, because He is also the Source of absolute Life, the physical blood He sheds can represent His Life. His Life can cleanse the Death, once for all time.

But there is one other problem. The free-will agents He has made are still free-will agents. He wants them that way-- because He wants them to love Him, and love that is forced isn't love.  It's worthless to Him. As free-will agents, they have to choose to partake of the cleansing He has accomplished-- or not. Also, because of the choices of the free-will agents, the cleansing of Death has not removed Death from the Creation. Eventually, God is going to have to destroy the Death entirely, and that will destroy any free-will beings who continue to embrace Death. But now there's another choice.

Just as God chose to spiritually identify Himself with all humanity, so each human can choose to identify him/herself with God. If the human identifies with God, then the act in which God's Life was poured out against Death is imputed to the human, just as the human's sin was imputed to God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The choice the human makes is called "belief" or "faith" in God. But this is much more than just mental assent to the idea that God exists-- it means that the human places her/his trust in God, giving up her/his life of sin, and identifying her/himself with the pure Life and Love which is God. Through identification with God's Death, the human "dies" to sin (see Romans 6:4).  A spiritual transformation takes place within the human, in which the Death which was in the human's spirit is changed into the Life of God. To the human, this is experienced as an act of surrender. The human "loses his life for Christ's sake, and finds it" in Him again. The life which the human then walks in, is the life of God within the human spirit (See Galatians 2:20.)  Though the human's body is still living in the tainted universe, and the human still experiences sin as a struggle between the changed spirit and the unchanged body, one day we humans will live free from Death and sin, completely at one with God (1 John 3:2-3).

This is the "identification" model of the Atonement, and I have no doubt it has probably been described more eloquently by someone else, somewhere.   But I think it incorporates all the biblical ideas of penal substitution, ransom, victory, sacrifice and reconciliation, into a coherent picture that makes sense to me.

I hope it will be helpful to some of you, too.

Forests

This is the last of my introductory posts, which are about my foundations: what makes me who I am. They wouldn’t be complete unless I talked a little bit about the woods and mountains.

I was raised in the Rocky Mountains, in a house surrounded by pines. I live in the Pacific Northwest now, and I find its softer, greener mountains just as beautiful, in a different way. I love the beaches here too-- their grassy white dunes, and the trees that sometimes grow almost down to the sand. And I love the wetlands, with their cattails and cool, still waters, and the smaller trees that thrive with their roots wet nearly year-round. But it’s the mountain forests that call to me.

I remember my last visit to my favorite woods-- a mix of evergreen and leafy trees, with bark dust and needles, flowers and ferns, covering the rising ground. The air was warm that day, and heavy with the morning's rainfall, the sky a brilliant blue. I left my car and stepped under the trees. The forest, familiar but never quite expected, surrounded me like friendship. I placed a hand on a moss-covered trunk, feeling the rough, wet bark under my palm, my ears filled with birdsong and the humming of insects.

The path curved over a low hill. I stood at the top, feeling the presence of the trees. I passed through a grassy oak savannah, and then back under the pines, which gathered thick and dark around me. I shivered a little with pure pleasure as a squirrel ran across a branch over my head, and I turned back towards my car.

The woods are where I belong: the place I lived before I could talk; the place I called home before I even knew the word for home. I have not been able to live there for years, but the forest, to me, is the most real place on earth.

Every day I drive to the office, spending the hours with phones and fax machines and endless paper. Every evening I return to the four walls of my house, to television sets and video games and kids asking for help with homework. But when I can find time to return to the forest, when I take a deep breath of moist woodland air and feel the bark dust beneath my feet-- it is then that I think, "This is real life. This was here before I came and will be here when I'm gone.” My life falls into perspective in the shadow of the pines, in the silence that breathes behind the hills.

Whenever I’m troubled, or stressed, it’s under the trees that I find my center again. The forest is where I find it easiest to find God. And I find it impossible to doubt God there. The forest is where all my doubts and fears disappear in the quiet.

I love my husband, and my kids, and my work, and my life. But in the very deepest, innermost place of my being, the woods grow endlessly. And my Father walks among them.