Blessings!
-R. Eric Sawyer

The whole problem is inscrutable. I have sympathy for the idea that epilepsy is a syndrome and not entirely somatic.

I think most problems that plague humankind are like that.

But yep, “Don’t feed the trolls” is a good response. There are still people who post stuff into the ether just to get a response. It makes them feel significant, important.

Certainly the idea that if you come for healing prayer and nothing happens it is your fault. Sometimes we do ask people when praying for them if there might be something blocking their healing. Yet God is greater than that. So he is sovereign over blocking effects of our own sin.

On this side of heaven we will never understand why some things are healed and other things are not.

So when people say things like that I try not to feel offended. No one really knows and people with less faith try to resolve these tough issues. But they are unresolvable.

Where it different than the whole construct would collapse and we would not be here discussing this issue.

Do you know that when matter and anti matter collide and destroy each other, we get light.

Let there be light is based on the destruction of all that is.

Light is the nothing that manifested everything.

Now whether or not a higher plane of existence continues this recycling or takes on other forms depends on understanding the consciousness that manifested everything.

fUny1.blogspot.com

I can work within the framework of love being a part of that uncreated ground of being metaphorically. I run into problems though when I apply the overarching conception of God I have that has God creating everything, even things that to us are mere concepts (or atributes) and barely definable, if at all. Here’s one way to describe this: anything we can (or do) comprehend is necessarily a part of creation. God, not being a part of creation, can’t then be any of those things. I would argue that we comprehend love quite well. So I have a hard time thinking that love is a part of the uncreated ground of being. One could overcome this by suggesting that it’s love in a different sense (like for instance calling love an “attribute”), or we don’t really understand love, etc. But then I think we’d just be using the word love to mean something different.

I think it all works well metaphorically though. And the NT passage that says “God is love” is sandwiched between statements about God being “in” people. To me then it’s obviosuly metaphor.

Speaking of metaphor, some recent reading brought the following to my attention: Trinity = 1 God in 3 persons. 3 persons? What, like homo sapiens? I think not. It seems to me that the word “persons” is a metaphor. So, maybe 3 is a metaphor too. And if it is, I would suggest that it’s quite a beautiful metaphor. Just think of all the “magic” that surrounds the number three in so many parts of life. How fantastic that one of the metaphors that we’ve crafted to describe the incomprehensible reflects so much meaning and truth in the natural world!

When it comes to the good/evil thing I think you might be connecting God to closely with creation. Just because God is active in creation (by which I only mean to not appear as a deist) doesn’t mean that creation in any way necessarily reflects God. What I mean is that God could be good and creation evil or the other way around. I think what I’m trying to say is that we might need to question the assumption that either god or evil is a baseline. In any case, it is interesting to note that good and evil don’t seem to exist independent of each other and as such are extremely relative. One might argue that the existence of evil is evidence of God’s altruism because it blesses us with the knowledge of Good (not a Garden of Eden reference).

Finally, when I say God is not love, I don’t mean that God does not love. (Well, sort of I do…because God doesn’t have emotions like we do.) The point is that we can’t say God is literally love in exactly the same way we can’t say God is literally a rock or music or anything else that’s created. When we do say things like God is love, etc. wht we are describing is not God Godself, but rather the way in which God relates to creation – or more accurately, the way in which we perceive God’s relationship to creation. It’s a metaphysical anthropomorphism.

I any case, I haven’t really responded or clarified. I was just tipped off by the Tillich quote and kept writing.

Thanks!

I haven’t been able to find time to render a reply with the honor you post deserves, and I hope to do so; but for now, just a few quick thoughts:

As to love existing before creation requiring a more primary I’m not sure I understand you. It seems that your question hinges on the status of ‘love’ as a created thing. I would class it not as a ‘thing’ but an atribute. something inherent to the uncreated “ground of being” and thus always part of Him. This is part of my argument for the necessity that God be forever plural, although One.

I certainly follow that if God had boundaries, there could be more that one. I think that arguement is spot on. I also see your point that definitions give boundaries, thus God is inherantly undefinable. I like that construction quite a bit, as it gives me a further way to understand trancendence.
But I think defining “love” only raises a problem if we say that “love is God” instead of the converse. Any words we use about God are definable, else we are saying nothing. But it would be a vast mistake to think that once we have defined what we mean about a particular aspect of God, that we have plumbed the depths of His nature.

As to the unique nature of the Son as the complete expression of God, If the Son, the Logos is the “complete expression of God” how could there be another without that other being a copy? I could see another only if the Son was a perfect (but limited) expression. A second “logos” would be faithful, but with different limits.
neither would be complete, and the Christian assertion from Colossians is that “the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwells in Jesus.”

The question of duality v trinity is more difficult, there are competing ideas as to the nature of the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity. The view of the western church, as articulated by St. Augustine, makes sence to me, thinking of the Holy Spirit as eternally arising from the relationship between the father and the son.
The model in my head is something like that of a magnet, with the north pole, south pole, and magnetic field. (of course, this image breaks down in that neither pole, nor the field is the fullness of magnet, let alone all three!)

The more intriguing and difficult part of your reply is of course the central one: Is God, in fact, love?
I as a Christian take this on faith, and belive it to be confirmed experientally, but this does us no good in arguement. Obviously both good and evil exist; so it seems something of a “glass half full/half empty” question.
About the only thing I can offer now is that “good” can be corrupted into evil, but how can “evil” be elevated even to an illusion of good? Or restated, given the at least apparent reality of both good and evil, if we assume ‘good’ as the base condition, then evil is understandable. If evil is the base condition, then how do we explain good?

Thanks again for stopping by, and for joining the discussion.

-R. Eric Sawyer

What I think I like most about your explanation of the Trinity is the acceptance of its mystery. I find myself often just dissapointed and annoyed when people try to use “logis” to explain something that is inherently illogical.

Here are some ponts of confusion for me:

You suggest that God is love. You also recognize how that cannot be true. But, the Trinity solves one of the problems in this for you. The Trinity allows God to have love partners (a necessity of love) prior to creation. But, for this to work you have to suggest that love existed prior to creation. How can you explain a created concept existing before creation? Was there more than one creation? If so, and love is the source of creation, how was love created? Did it create itself? Etc. etc.

Also, love has a definition. Definitions imply boundaries. God has no boundaries, for if God had boundaries, there could be more than one. Earlier in the post you get how reason requires the unity of God. But you leave that reason behind when you give God the boundary of love.

In your conclusion you hinge the ability for us to reason our to the Trinity on the assumption that God is love. But reason really shows us that God is not love. This is the case because reason brings us to God’s unity, pre-existence, etc. So, if God is not love as reason show us, your rationale for the Trinity is indeed based on something other than reason.

Your discussion of why there can only be one son also confuses me a bit. First, you suggest that you can beget a number of things that are truly you (kids, words, etc.) Ignoring the fact that whether or not those things are truly you is undetermined and unclear, if you can beget multiple things that are truly you, why can’t God?

Also if to even begin to accept the Trinity we must depart all dimensions which we can comprehend (fabulous example with the lines, by the way!), why do you then bring us back to the dimensions we can understand in order to justify that there can be only one son? You do just that when you suggest that two sons could not be co-equal with the father. What if there’s another dimnesion which we can’t see or comprehend (like the lines running parallel into the paper) on which those two sons really are co-equal with the father? Another question on this: why, if there’s only one son must he be justified as co-equal with his father?

You also suggest that there can be only one son because the son is God’s perfect expression of Godself. So, can God only perfectly express Godself once? Why the limits on God? God has no other expression of Godself makes some sense. But why then a trinity and not a duality, or better yet, a unity?

I really like the way you explain the Trinity as a good and effective doctrine because of how it helps us relate to eachother, etc. However, this does not further indicate the truth of the Trinity. Rather, it further underscores our amazing ability as humans to create God in our image.

Thanks for posting this. Although I disagree with the conclusions I think you’ve put together one of the best explanations of the Trinity I’ve come across. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts.

I’m also in the process of discussing that God is not love (nor anythng else for that matter), over at my own blog: thediscursionists.wordpress.com

Surely it is not so much the *amount* of death in the world that would prompt one to question the goodness of God, but rather that there is death *at all.* Whether one tends toward a young or old view of creation, so long as one holds to a view that the world is in fact deliberately and purposefully created by the infinitely intelligent and omnipotent Creator who also reveals Himself in the Bible, then it seems to me that we are obligated to a view that this death that we see is – more than anything else! – both a result and a reminder of sin – our sin.

Finally, just a passing thought in regards to the idea that the eating of plants is a form of predation. While that is certainly true in some cases (for example, a carrot), I think that the harvesting of much of what we would normally eat from a plant would not kill that plant. The harvesting of the ‘fruit’ of a plant (including leaves, grains, etc., which is, after all, what God first ordained to be to be eaten) does not normally result in the death of the plant. From a ‘young’ creation point of view, it is not unreasonable to to think that death itself was a completely new to factor within the created order introduced into the universe following the contamination of sin.

Second, we do not have the ability to chose to be different. A person cannot chose to stop being an angry person, for instance. Many people try, but fail to change on a fundamental level. Absent the ability to transform oneself permanently and become something different, there is no moral judgment that God can judge with, because we have no ability to chose to be good in a real way. We can want to change, which is what most people do, but how many of them actually do change?