On God

Hello. From time I like to put my thinking about theological and other topics into words. I have previously placed some such articles on Christian Cambridge (the website of the Deans and Chaplains). I’ve decided here might be a better place for now because it allows me to post tentative and incomplete reflections, and also gives me the opportunity to have your input on my thoughts even if I don’t find the time to write a complete article. Having said that, I realise this is a pretty epic post, but this is one I’ve been working on for a while.

I’ve been thinking about the being of God. When God meets with Moses in the book of Exodus, he says, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14)

This is a name which reveals who God is in himself, but it is also God’s particular covenant name through which he identifies himself as the God of Israel:

“God also said to Moses, ‘Say to the Israelites, “The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.” (Exodus 3:15)

This is because God reveals who he is by what he does – God reveals that he is the one who is present by being manifestly present with his chosen people. God reveals that he is all-powerful by rescuing his people from slavery in Egypt. In this way, in revealing his name, God identifies himself both as the Creator God, the eternal self-existent God before all things, and as the covenant God, the God who chooses to relate to his people and intervene in history.

Roger Forster comments on this passage:

When God introduces himself to Moses as ‘Yahweh’, ‘I am who I am’, in Exodus 3:14, we can take the traditional view through Greek philosophical eyes and say, ‘Ah, yes, God is making an existential statement about himself – “I am the self-existing God, the God who exists in and of himself, the self-sufficient God, the God who is ultimate being, the God who exists regardless of whether people know him or acknowledge him!”‘

Well, all of that may be true, but it has nothing to do with what God was saying to Moses when he said ‘I am who I am’ or, perhaps better, ‘I am that I am’ or even ‘I am am-ing what I am am-ing’! God was trying to communicate. He was not discussing his existential state of being, but rather his evident activity and involvement in the world: ‘I am the God who your fathers worshipped! I am the God of Abraham, I am the God of Isaac, I am the God of Jacob! I will certainly be with you just as I was with them! I am that I am; I am am-ing it. I am active and at work! That’s why you can trust Me when you are before Pharaoh!’

(Roger Forster, Trinity, Authentic Media, 2004, p.21)

Forster identifies an important point here. “I am who I am” is not just an abstract philosophical statement. It is not just that God is, but that God is continually being what he is continually being. (Language tends to break down when dealing with the almighty infinite maker of all things, so this might get a bit confusing in places.) However, Forster’s keenness to stress what he views as Hebrew dynamism over Greek abstraction might suggest a false dichotomy – that this passage reveals God as the living and active God committed to his people rather than the absolute self-existent one. It seems to me that God, in revealing himself and making covenant with his people, reveals both his absolute self-existence and his dynamic relational character.

The combination of absoluteness and dynamism implied in God’s covenant name is difficult to resolve, but in the New Testament the God who revealed himself as YHWH is revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is in this Trinitarian revelation that absoluteness and dynamism can be resolved. The God we worship, the God who has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ is the one and only true God, the absolute Deity. He is also a community of three persons, who dynamically interact with one another. God is not just an abstract hypothesis – God is always living as the three persons of the Godhead continually enjoy one another by giving themselves to one another in love. So God is active being. He is not just a perfect being in a static sense but is actively being all the time. He is the ever-living God, not just the eternally existent Deity. The perfection of the Godhead is dynamic but not contingent.

Some philosophies, such as Platonism and monism, stress the absolute oneness of ultimate reality and so come to denigrate the finite and the contingent. (In some of Plato’s later works there is a tension which comes when he seems to begin to value the fragile beauty of contingent things, what Martha Nussbaum calls “the fragility of goodness”, in a way which pulled against his commitment to the Good being a single absolute entity. Some scholars think this is due to Plato having fallen in love, and thus perceiving a beauty in a particular person which could not be assimilated to an abstract impersonal Good.)

Some philosophies, such as the process thought of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, stress the important of the dynamic, that things have to move and change and develop in order to be alive. In this way they excuse pain and imperfection and suffering as being just part of the process of growth, and “process theology” teaches that God is caught up in the process, changing and growing into perfection along with the finite universe.

Both poles of this dilemma lead to serious problems philosophically. If all reality is contingent there is no stable point of reference to give things meaning; yet if ultimate reality is static there is no reason to attribute significance to variety and relationship. Christians have a unique solution, in that we believe in a triune God. God is not contingent – he is self-existent, not dependent on creation or anything outside of himself in order to live. Neither is God static – he is not just an abstract principle of goodness, but a community of three persons, continually loving one another, giving and receiving life and love and joy from their continual eternal interpenetration of one another. So we as Christians have a unique vantage point – the God we have come to know through Jesus Christ gives us a basis both for claiming a stable ground of meaning which allows us to think and speak meaningfully, and for valuing difference and relationship, since all things find their true meaning in relation to the triune God.

Contingency, being dependent on something else, is not in itself a bad thing. It is the status of all that is created. It is our true status. We are contingent beings, dependent on each other, on the world around us, and ultimately on God. It is when we are rightly related to God, the source of all things, that we become rightly related to all that is around us.

John tells us “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16) and also “God is light” (1 John 1:5). We are right to be reminded that it is wrong to stress one to the exclusion of the other. If all we say is “God is love” we are tempted to forget God’s pure and absolute holiness, but it seems to me that this is not because “God is love” is an incomplete statement but because our human conception of love is faulty and limited. It is God’s perfect love of all that is good which unavoidably entails his hatred of all that is evil. It is the love within the Godhead which is the standard of goodness and the ultimate basis of ethics.

The actions of God in the world can be understood as the overflow of the love between the persons of the Trinity. To debate why God chose to create the world when he was happy in himself can quickly become a fruitless discussion. But could it not be that the pleasure of the love within the community of the Godhead gave the three persons a desire to create other persons who could share in and experience that love?

We are treading on very tricky ground here, but the plan of salvation can be understood in the same way. Every so often, people ask what God spent his time doing before creating the world. Aside from the issue of what time might mean “before” creation, Calvin and Augustine suggest laconically that God spent his time building hell for people who ask such stupid questions. Some have suggested he spent his time deciding who would be saved, referring to passages such as Ephesians 1 and Revelation 13:8. To think of God spending all eternity writing a list of names seems too cold and calculating, since God is caught up in the eternal joy of a dance of mutual love. Yet Ephesians 1 does teach that we were chosen in him before the foundation of the world. Perhaps we can understand election (= God’s choice) to be the overflow of love amongst the persons of the Trinity.

The Indian Christian apologist and Bible teacher L.T. Jeyachandran suggests that John 3:16 is the overspill of John 17:24 – that it is out of the love that Father and Son have for one another by the Holy Spirit “before the creation of the world”, that “God so loved the world” enough to send his Son into the world to save us. I think he is right, although the overspill should not be understood as accidental or involuntary. Rather, it is God’s conscious choice to direct the love which he has in himself outward in order to save a people for himself.

Some of the seventeenth century Reformed theologians taught that prior to the “covenant of grace” (the agreement by which God promises to save all who trust in Christ on the basis of Christ’s finished work in living and dying for us) is the “covenant of redemption” (an agreement in past eternity when God the Father agreed to give the Son a people for himself, and God the Son agreed to come to earth to die to purchase this people for the Father, and God the Holy Spirit agreed to be the executive agent empowering the Son to carry out the work of redemption and applying this work to believers by uniting them with the Son). As with much of “Reformed scholasticism”, I am not sure if the technical precision involved in some of this analysis can be clearly demonstrated from Scripture, but the impulse behind the idea of the covenant of redemption seems to be the right one – that our salvation flows out of the eternal life of God himself and is not simply God’s reaction to historically contingent events.

fun & games

Since the Harry’s weekend, I have been to three birthday celebrations (Chris, Shinae and Mark - pictures below). That brings the total to eight this term, an average of a party a week, though they were clustered towards the beginning and end of term. That’s partly because birthdays which fall over the holidays tend to be celebrated at the end of the preceding term or the beginning of the following term.

I’ve also been having fun going backwards and forwards between HSBC and the police. Apparently someone cloned my card details and withdrew money from my account. I’m grateful this was picked up quickly by HSBC’s fraud protection squad.

More seriously, I’ve been following the case of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan who was nearly sentenced to death for becoming a Christian from Islam. Whilst it is wonderful that he has been released, one should note carefully that Abdul Rahman was not found innocent; rather, the case was abandoned on a technicality. The Afghan government thus avoided an international relations embarrassment without in any way disavowing the judiciary’s view that apostasy (leaving Islam) is punishable by death. The death penalty for apostasy applies in many Muslim countries, including some allies of the West. In countries where it is not enforced by the state, the authorities will often turn a blind eye to the killing of converts by their families or vigilantes. There is a helpful article on ‘What Islam says on religious freedom’ at the BBC website.

On Sunday Richard came back with me after church for lunch, which he cooked. It’s nice to have people take pity on me, but it perhaps doesn’t reflect too well on my hospitality skills. In the evening I obtained a chicken souvlakia from Gardie’s, being accompanied by Catherine and Helen from Madgalene. Yesterday I went to a book launch at SPCK for Paul Weston’s new book Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian - A Reader, which was good fun.

(If you want to read Paul Weston's classic account of his first conversation with Newbigin, then take a look at the first paragraph of Paul's article 'Conversations with Newbigin' on page 34 of the Ridley Hall newsletter.)

"Sooner or later we all quote our mothers." (Bern Williams)

P.S. My posting times are inaccurate. I think they're on some American time zone and I haven't yet worked out how to switch back to British time. Any advice would be appreciated.

Natalie's scrumptious biscuits 

Fridge 

Mark 

with Shinae and Dan Shaw  

noodlage 

Korean cooking 

Chris Rice x 3 

Sam et moi 

brunch and Harry's photos

Have had brunch today:
sushi roll, Cadbury's caramel chocolate bar, Korean sweet potato crisps left over from Shinae's party and bacon sandwiches.

Below are a few photos from the Harry's weekend. There are more photos on the Harry's website. I plan to put some of my photos up there soon so if you are interested in seeing more, keep a look out.

Tim looking cool, and Naomi and Josh 

Rachel with halo 

Ko 

Ikumi 

Game of sticks 

Clowns 

Hiding in the wall 

Action shot at Lyveden New Bield (unfinished house) 

Cheese and tuna 

Guitar playing 

The creation of the world (Act 1 of drama) 

Harry's & more birthdays

Well, the Harry’s weekend was fantabulous. It was somewhere near Kettering and we stayed in log cabins. Highlights including acting in a five episode drama of the story of the Bible, helping Naomi in the kitchen (for some reason I was nominated as kitchen assistant) and playing Tim’s party games. Though we didn’t visit the beach this year (being inland) we maintained the (rather English) tradition of having our Saturday outing (to an unfinished 17th century house) in the freezing cold and making the most of it. It all adds to the fun. Sunday was Chris Rice’s birthday so we sang happy birthday to him over breakfast.

Chris had his main birthday celebration on Sunday evening at Nando’s – Joseph has a nice photo. Yesterday was Shinae’s birthday and she had a party at Jesus College. This was another Korean party, but this one was a bit calmer.

In other news, today I handed in my funding application for next year.

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
(Groucho Marx)

"good, merry, glad and joyful tidings"

We had a fire alarm in the UL the other day, which entails a bleepy noise followed by a measured English male voice intoning “Emergency. There is a fire in the building. Evacuate immediately.” It would give a false impression of the sound to punctuate this with exclamation marks. Anyway, the fire exit door in the rare books room was opened and we filed outside into the cold and rain. It takes quite a while to get round from there to the front of the building, but I guess I got to see a section of the outside of the UL I’m unlikely normally to see. The general sociability of the UL holds even outside in the rain – I saw three people I knew to speak to. Three fire engines came, and after things had been checked, we were let back in en masse. After I had been back working in the rare books room for about ten minutes, a voice came over the intercom to inform us that the alert was now over and we were free to recommence our activities.

Today’s been fairly manic but good in its outcomes. I handed in my textual bibliography project on Calvin. Getting to this stage involved a few glitches including a power cut and not being able to find a treasury tag, but this work is now done, which is a good feeling. This evening I sang in a concert at Great St Mary’s (big church in the marketplace) with Revelation Rock Gospel Choir (aka Rev), which was a great way to celebrate. Chris Rice was even allowed to introduce his Elvis act into the cabaret bit, since it was the last time he’ll be performing with Rev. I suspect he’ll find a way to transport his talents as a performer into the classroom. The concert reminded me of something William Tyndale wrote:

“Evangelion (that we call the gospel) is a Greek word; and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him sing, dance and leap for joy.”

Tomorrow I go away on the Harry’s weekend. I’ll report when I get back.

Walk by the river 

'the mythical Tesco' 

Koreans having fun 

Nicola, Will, Alex and Hannah 

sleep & sociability (and Kate & the cat)

I've been reprimanded for not having posted lately. I've been mostly sleeping and hanging around the UL, sometimes at the same time. Last week I varied my sleeping habits through a visit to King's archives to track down a book from 1549.

The other week, Chin Hwa, Trudy and myself met up with Jameela Lares at Teri-Aki (the third time I'd been to Teri-Aki this term!). Jameela is an American academic at the University of Southern Mississippi I'd been in touch with by email and sent us lots of useful references for our work. We all chose the same thing on the menu (I think with a slight variant on Trudy's part), and we had a great time together.

One day I travelled to the basement of the English faculty and found Kate (girl from Christ's) very patiently trying to get hold of a cat. Kate and the cat would have made a good photo. The cat was discovered to have a tag reading 'Selwyn College' round its neck and I think found its way back home.

I managed to see the bumps (rowing race on the river where boats try to 'bump' the boat in front) for the first time in my Cambridge career the other week. It still took me two hours of wandering up and down both sides of the river before I found the people I was trying to meet, and I didn't quite work out who was winning the competition, but at least I saw boats going up and down.

I was wondering whether I've been being too sociable recently. I'm maybe making up for not having been so in adolescence. This week I've been to two parties. Joseph had a surprise birthday party on Thursday, at which I was one of two non-Koreans (for the first hour I was the only non-Korean). Here we played vicious Korean games which involve hitting each other. Yesterday the inhabitants of 27 Acrefield Drive (now sadly depleted in number) had a gathering. This weekend Nicola Purser's been back in Cambridge, and she met up with some of the Christ's CU people on Friday afternoon.

I liked this sentence I read recently from John Carey:
"But all we know for certain about Donne's wife is that she was generally pregnant, and that no one recorded for posterity any clear impression of her character."
(John Carey, John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (London: Faber & Faber, 1981, 1990), p.60)

From C.S. Lewis, ‘On the Reading of Old Books’

“There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about 'isms' and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.”