djdaneh@pacbell.com (Dan'l DanehyOakes) (04/23/91)
In article <Apr.21.01.42.12.1991.19303@athos.rutgers.edu> lindborg@mirror.cs.washington.edu (Jeff Lindborg) writes: >But it happens here quite a lot and (according to many) happens in the >here after for nonbelievers too. Perhaps He doesn't *need* external >sources of satisfaction... perhaps He *wants* them.... And perhaps They need them, though not as "sources of satisfaction" as we know them. If (as many Christians believe) "God is Love," then by definition God needs something besides God to love. More on this in a moment. . . >You have failed to answer God's motivation in creating a race of beings and >then expecting them to behave and THINK in a way that satisfies Him. If they >don't he punishes them for eternity. This was the crux of my argument and >you ignored it completely... . . . and so we come to God's motivation. In fairness to my fellow-Christians, I must make clear that the following is my own interpretation, or at least my own wording, of what is essentially unknowable to us as finite beings. God loves God. This is one common explanation of the Trinity, in fact; for God to "be love," there must be a Lover (the Father) and a Beloved (the Son): but also because God is *love* and not merely *loving*, there is Love-itself, the Spirit. Now, there is a Lover and a Beloved and Love, all in a sense identical. But God might, as perfect and infinite Love, seek further objects for Their love. Since the Beloved is coinherent with the Lover and the Love, this all still comes in a way to Self-Love: which is not a bad thing (we are told to Love our neighbor *as* *ourselves*, with the implicit assumption of Self-Love that makes), but limited. And infinite Love seeks more. And so They created a universe filled with beings They could Love. Now, They could have created a universe containing perfect beings. But such beings would be indistinguishable from God: would effectively *be* God. Instead, the universe They created contains beings "in Our image," in the Image, that is, of Love. Beings with a drive to Love and to Be-Loved; and, since God's Love is creative, so we are also creative beings. Neither our Love nor our creativity is perfect, but they are *perfectible*: and this is the differentia that gives God something other-than-Themselves to Love. For we are perfectible, and as Christians we believe that the process of perfecting humans proceeds through the action of Christ. But even once perfected, we are not identical with Perfection-itself, which was never imperfect. The very fact that we have been perfected means that we are creatures with an inherent temporality (not temporariness, but an existence in-time); this will place us eternally in contrast to the Eternal existence of God. We, as beings who were once imperfect, and each in our own ways, will stand before God-the-Lover as perfect and unique objects for Their Love, and kneel before God-the-Beloved as perfect and unique subjects to Love Him, and be with God-Love-itself as unique perfected beings and so become Love-ourselves. ******************************************************************************** Now, regarding this question of "Hell" -- it is not at all uncommon to interpret sin as separation-from-God. In the light of my own rather mystical observations above, let me endorse that viewpoint. God Loves all Their creatures. To Love someone is to wish them good, and, more, to wish them the good they perceive rather than your ideas of what would be good for them. God believes (and we Christians believe that God believes rightly) that the greatest good for a creature is to come into the presence of God, to Love and Be-Loved perfectly and eternally. But God will not force this upon a creature. They will offer Themselves to, reason with, plead with, and even die for Their creatures, to try to convince them to accept this good: but They will not force Themselves upon them. And so a creature has the right (even if it is in a sense a wrong) to reject Love. God, Love, wishes for these creatures what they want. If what they want is to reject Love, then that is given to them. They are given a place where they can exist, Loveless. Or, perhaps, they do not even continue to exist; for as God is the ground of Being, perhaps that final separation is no more than a passing-out of existence. "Fire" is a common term in Biblical metaphors for utter destruction, and (perhaps some scholars can verify or deverify this, but) I believe that the tense structures of Hebrew and Aramaic are such that, for example, what is traditionally translated as "burn forever" can equally be translated "be burned forever," that is, cease to exist for all time. Christianity here takes on a very Existential turn -- the choice is always ours, and we are eternally free to make it and responsible for it. ******************************************************************************** >How do you determine when the Bible is being figurative as opposed to >literal? Anything that is difficult to rationalize is figurative? >How convenient... No. The Bible is revelation, but only one (and the weakest) form of revelation. Anything in it which seems to require rationalization, when viewed in light of the more powerful revelations of (1) God's Word as embodied in the physical world, and (2) God's Word as spoken directly to each of us as Love, is not necessarily "figurative," but is definitly not being understood correctly by those who are rationalizing. That is how to determine when it is not literal, but the answer is never to rationalize, but to *dig* *deeper* and find out what *is* meant rather than the misinterpretation that requires rationalization to maintain. The story of Adam and Eve, for example, is not "figurative," but neither is it "literal." It was a form of revelation-through-story, which was valid then and is valid now. What we must understand from it is (1) there is a personal creator who (2) had life in general and humans (or perhaps sentient life) in particular, and that (3) we are separated from that creator. ******************************************************************************** >Well then I know a lot of 7 year old Christians... Many people believe in a >literal hell. Are you saying they are somehow less intelligent than yourself? No. Simply that we do not agree with them, and that this belief is not essential to Christianity. Many people, convinced they have the True Interpretation, insist that others are Wrong. I do not insist that they are Wrong, except in their insistence. Ah has spoke! -- Pansy Yokum The Roach