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How God Acts – Non-interventionist Divine Action
“The Ancient of Days”, William Blake, 1794
Throughout my life I’ve experienced a wide range of beliefs: from Evangelical to agnostic, then to atheist, then a period of dabbling in Eastern religions, to Pentecostal, then to Presbyterian/Calvinist, and now, well, to where I am today let’s just say.
Once you think you have grasped a firm understanding of God, you come across something that catches you off-guard and makes you re-evaluate everything you’ve believed in. As St. Augustine once said, “God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand, you have failed.“
Over the recent years, as I have delved a bit more into the scientific underpinnings of God and theology, as well as my ruminations of the Bible, I’ve adopted more of a “non-interventionist” viewpoint of God.
What is God Like? Does God Change? Is Everything Predetermined/Predestined by God? Has God Settled the Future? – Greg Boyd
Does God change?
Does God know the future?
In most churches today, if you would answer in the affirmative to the first question and negative to the second, you’d likely be branded a heretic or “liberal”. Many people seem to be so set in his or her ways that they won’t even carefully consider a different opinion or viewpoint about God or other theological matters. But it makes sense – for many, his or her view of God that they’ve grown up with or have adopted over the years, they’ve formed a close, emotional (not just psychological or spiritual) bond to it that’s hard to let go.
The very notion of entertaining the thought of God NOT knowing the future or that he can experience new things, or that he is NOT in absolute, complete control of everything (his omniscience, omnipotence, etc.) can be quite (emotionally) unsettling to even consider. (As a criticism of open theism, it may seem to anthropomorphize God a bit too much.)
Much of theology these days (and same goes to a vast majority of the view of God that is communicated through pulpits every week on any given Sunday) seem to be stuck in medieval or Reformation times, and seem to be unwilling to budge. As you know, much of history, science, technology, etc. has changed and progressed since that time, and the Church has had a hard time (or a very stubborn reluctance in) catching up to the rapid changes that are happening in our modern world, so it faces a crisis of remaining relevant to future generations if the Church continues on this trend I believe.
Perhaps our theology and understanding of God need to be updated.
Interesting viewpoints on God’s nature and action according to open theism.
From the website:
Does God know all future events? Only if the future is in some real sense already determined. God, to be God, must know every true proposition, including all about the future. But if the future is truly ‘open’, not even God could know the future because there are no true facts about the future to know. Why is this disturbing?
Has God Settled the Future? – Greg Boyd
Gregory A. Boyd’s profile and an interesting series on God and theology below his profile.
Do Animals Believe in God? Animal Spirituality
The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark (1613) Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625)
“But ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you;
or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you;
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every living thing
and the breath of all mankind.”
– Job 12: 7 – 10
Came across a brief yet interesting article about the possibility of animals having a religion or a sense of God or the divine.
Although this might be highly speculative, I do not find it would be surprising at all if some animals had some rudimentary form of religion. Also, I have no problems at all with God communicating with animals in ways that only they can understand but we cannot. Just as animals cannot understand our ways of spirituality, it might just well be the case that we cannot understand their specific ways of worshiping God.
If it is proven that animals have a true sense of the divine (a sensus divinitatis), what would that mean for human spirituality and religion?
How would our ideas and theologies about God, creation, and our (human beings’) place in the universe change in light of this? How would we treat animals – particularly those that we eat as food – in light of this? Would it make a difference? How would it impact the theories of how religion came about in mankind or in general?
I haven’t seen much writing or studies on animal spirituality or religiosity, but I’m intrigued to find out more about it.
Abstract on “Do Animals Have Religion? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Religion and Embodiment”.
Gravity waves, the multiverse, and God
As you may be well aware by now of the monumental discovery announced yesterday with the evidence of gravity waves as predicted by Einstein practically a century ago, it will be interesting how this finding will affect theology, our understanding of God, and creation down the road.
One of the implications of this recent finding, other than validating the occurrence of the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago and the rapid expansion of space (faster than the speed of light) within a fraction of a second after the Bang, is that this will most likely further the case for the multiverse theory – that our universe is just one in a whole sea of an infinite number of universes – as predicted by quantum theory. Universes might pop in and out of existence all the time. In fact, we might even be living inside a much, much larger universe that cannot be detected by our current technology, something like the omniverse.
Such a thought is absolutely mind-boggling and unfathomable to say the least.
Does God Change in Response to Suffering? Motlmann, von Speyr, the Cross, and the Suffering of God, the Trinity
Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, chapel of the Hospital of Saint Anthony, Isenheim, Germany, c. 1510-15, oil on wood
Undoubtedly, suffering and death changes us in some degree or another. It’s a given in life. A death of a close friend, parent, or loved one can profoundly affect the outlook of one’s life.
I can only imagine the unimaginable pain a parent has to go through if their child dies. It would undoubtedly change the parent’s life.
Is it the same for God then? Did God change when he experienced Jesus’ death? Does God himself change in response to suffering, pain, and death?
Does God Play Dice with the Universe? The Role of Chance and Providence in Theology and Science
“God does not play dice with the universe.”
– Albert Einstein
“Einstein, stop telling God what to do.”
– Niels Bohr, in reply to Einstein
In Gerald L. Schroeder’s book, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, he describes the blind forces of nature that lie behind much of human grief:
“An earthquake shakes a bridge from its foundation, dropping it onto a crowded bus passing beneath. A chance cosmic ray smashes into an ovum, produces a free radical which in its natural drive to establish electrical balance tears and mutates a chromosome. As a result, a crippled child is born. The same Creator that produces the beauty of a sunrise and the colors of a flower must be credited with these horrors as well.” (p. 168)
Last year, while I was attending classes at a city college, I would always pass by a cerebral palsy center. From time to time, I would see patients from that center lined up outside, mostly in their motorized wheelchairs, waiting to be assisted upon by their caretakers or be helped unto a transport truck.
For some reason, thoughts and questions would run through my head each time I would see these patients –
What if I were them? What made me so special that I was born normal – even though my mother had a complicated pregnancy with me, I came out relatively normal? But what about these patients afflicted with cerebral palsy? Was God directly involved in contributing to their physical and mental conditions? Or was it by pure, random chance, with no discernible reason whatsoever that they were in the condition that they were in? Didn’t God have the power to divert the cosmic ray from hitting the ovum and mutating the chromosome perhaps? Did he do that for me? Why me then and why them?
Or perhaps there’s just no reason or purpose whatsoever in all this.
It was by pure random, blind chance that I was born this way and not another.
And you can run a billion what-if scenarios in your head and ruminate what your life would’ve been like if you made this decision or that, etc.
Did we even have a choice to begin with?
Through the Wormhole: Did We Invent God?
Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman is one of my favorite series to watch on tv that’s on the Science Channel.
From time to time, they’ll show episodes concerning God and science.
This episode explores the latest research done in psychology and neuroscience about where the origins of human belief in the supernatural may have come from.
This episode poses interesting questions, such as:
- Does God only exist in our minds?
- Is a belief in God “hardwired” within us?
- What is required to believe in a God or supernatural entity? Can animals believe or sense the divine? (i.e. at the bare minimum you need a theory of mind as far as we can tell.)
- Is belief in God just a remnant from our evolutionary past to explain what’s going on in our world?
- Is it just childish superstition that we haven’t outgrown?
- Did God create us? Or did we create God?
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