A Grand-Child's Faith, A Grand-Father's Doubts

Doubt is as Necessary to Faith as Faith is to Salvation

Related to A Teaching Lesson#9 on II Peter 1: 12-21

Lesson #8 We are All Grand-Children before We are Children

I've never seen him, touched him, received a blinding light of introduction, or heard his voice audibly speaking from within a cloud, the ground trembling all around me. Yet I believe in Jesus. And so do you.

When I was in college I spent the better part of a year, maybe two, asking one question. "Do I feel this need to believe in Jesus because it is intrinsic to my creation or does my need for faith emerge from conditioning?" Put differently, "Am I Christian because Christ is and I am made for him or because I am, and Christ is written by others into my story?" I think I decided it was both/and, as usual.

There is no human faith tradition like our Christian one. A communal God who fills the universe in the vastness of unseen Presence as Creator, Father (Grand-father)1 ever inter-acting, sustaining, guiding and nurturing—who, in creating mass and time in tensions of emergent complexity and entropy, is now incarnate, literally holding our observable universe and beyond as the Cosmic Christ, intimately Present in both actuality and in spirit, by way of The Spirit' whose Person emerges from within and between the Father and Son.

At this writing I'm in the middle of my 1,567th moment of 'doubt', about Jesus, and of myself. These two inner senses of life, it's possibilities and risks have danced within my whole life like a ping pong ball in the hands of two expert players, pinging and ponging me above the net, barely, sometimes into it and at other times flying off the table of life.

This is the essence that leaves me in a kind of Trembliing, fearful love as I consider the invitation of this Trinity of God to be an 'image bearer'. That God is always good and only love. How could such a vision be other? So what's the problem, Terry? It's me and perhaps, God.

Doubt Concerning Myself

It is a contest between what is of Christ in me, good and right and the worst in me whose life is possible only as I trun from Christ. My own fagility and derived existance, especially as a wounded, sinful person is certainly part of it, but the lessor for sure. Still, on those days, though few in number, when the temptation to lust overwhelms me like a 'dry drunk' I am suddenly aware of the presence of background noise. I have not in these 1, 044 days of healing nurtured or acted on it. Will I ever? I pray not.  In this doubt, of myself—not God—I am sometimes afraid.

Where would I ever go, but to Christ? I know that if I should return to sin's addictive pattern it will be the end of me and sorrow upon sorrow for those I love. I do not live in this question and it's fear for I would dispair. The very fact that sin's alure can still cast a shadow over me is the real delimma. So, I turn toward my Christ who ever remains close in Spirit and flesh (Holy Communion) and by Word and personal multi-layered communications I cannot dismiss.

Doubt Concerning God

Of God, my doubt is as deep as the eschetology that forms the back and forth rhthyms of my mind as I contemplate the gospel of Christ in light of a world moving toward chaos, like the space craft Voyager I; vulnerable, fragile, sensors at rest to conserve what limited

battery power that remains. Suddenly this human made, 1970's vintage craft with a computer whose sophistication is not much greater than my original flip phone, self-starts and sends a message from it's position in deep space that commuicates far more than it was ever programed to understand, much less message. The possible explanations are exciting and dangerous. Perhaps our craft with its golden record giving the sounds, sights, languages, songs, and math has been heard by another sentient species who just initiated a dialogue and we're not sure if we should say "damn" or "awesome", perhaps both. Maybe it is just background noise. That was our first assumption, now perceived unlikely, given our quantim computers analysis of the noise heard and layered icons delivered in mathmatically esquisite form. It's just so exciting and frightening.

God remains so exciting and frightening; at least my perceptions of God are dangerous and frightening. Will I allow Christ, whose faith in me informed my childhood and redeems my life in circular rhythms of love, be who I don't want him to be? Does he really throw persons who live in rebellion into a hell without escape? For eternity? If I object and am wrong, will God simply rebuke me in love as he did Job or throw me in that, place?

Up to the age of 72 I have kept faith with the Church's classical view of God both within and beyond the universe—with significant nuance. The question of evil certainly troubles me. The emerging Open Theology alternative seems too rational, by half. 2 I am grateful for its sensitivity to science, finding that I actually hold most of its concerns in common and my own nuances within the classical view are expressive of what Open Theologians are writing.

Its the fundamental premise whiich troubles me; as it is necessarily reductionist—

like getting a Corvette Stingray as an electric car powered by a sun-soaking roof, yet even more expensive. Less, costing more.

In the same way there is a real cost experienced by elevating Creation to the Eternal place that is God's alone. We are effectively unraveling the creational premise and super-imposing upon God the very universe whose chaos is inevitably the ultimate source of evil in such a system. Such a God, though the most powerful and knowledgeable of all who share in the universe's experience is no God at all; at least not as Creator.

Which is worse? A God neither powerful enough, nor smart enough to live apart from the growing knowledge of experience inside all reality or a God, wholly able to stop true evil, but doesn't—at least not in our times and places. And why? There are several good reasons:

1) Because the possiblities in Creative and loving outcomes are worth the risks; many of which can be amelirated in the end.

2) Further, God is the ultimate bull in a china closet. A too active and prescient God dimishes the very creative freedom necessary to being human, which is the prime project.

3) The invitation to become 'image bearers' is at heart a Divine imprint, efffective only as genuine free choice is available.

4) Risk is at the very center of Creating free, moral and loving Persons capable of imprinting in the earth God's very communal heart.

5) God's Otherness and Intimacy plays equally important and nurturing roles in the procss of making humans—assuring freedom of communal and personal choice. Paul describes this dualism well in Romans 8: 16-19

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.

The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again;

rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.

And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ,

if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing

with the glory that will be revealed in us.

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.

For the creation was subjected to frustration,

not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it,

in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay

and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

C.S. Lewis writes that the Trinity of God is far more expansive than a thousand universes. This quality of God's Otherness would frighten the hell out of us, who are mere creatures, excepting for the hallowing purpose of God. That remains true. But, who wants a Stringray that sounds like a wind up toy? Assuming God is love, I'll take God Almighty any day of the week.

Two interweaving feelings/ideas keep this creature rooted in The Trinity of God as the only Eternal Communion in any universe or none.

1st: Paul reveals we are chosen from before the universe took shape. Before Light exploded from within gravatational waves whose rhythmic flow creates multiple tensions, ultimately revealing electromagnetic particle waves that to our limited perspective look like crystaline ice, God had chosen each of us to a shared reality. To the Ephesians he writes: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight" (Ephesians 1: 3-4 NIV).

2nd: We are chosen for intimacy; To know and image the Divine. The invitation forms a prayer for God's people: "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe" (Ephesians 1: 18-19a NIV). The invitation to inter-active, expressive 'Reverance' and 'Love' echo from within the dreams, visions, imaginings, fantasy's of the Father and Son, via The Spirit. "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God" (Romans 8: 26-27 NIV). Otherness and Intimacy dance human, each a part of the other.

Thus, it is not the issue of power or knowledge that drives me to both nuance and remain within the classical view of God, but their creative tension. I quite agree that God's knowledge, power, love is not a static reality, calculable by merely extending to infinity all of God's qualities and character. Indeed the very atonement offered by the Father, in the Son, efectuated in the Spirit is a risk of eternal significance—for God and apprently us. It is the Trinity of God who is most significantly impacted in the eternal inter-active exchange of our shame and guilt for God's knowing peace and joy. It is the impossibility of realizing our human vocation without The Triune God interwoven in time and timelessness, that keeps me rooted in a nuanced classicl view. A God who is boxed in an eternal universe is inadequate for redemption and a new heavens and earth.

The universe increasingly appears to be dynamic, responsive to perception. If God and the universe are C0-Eternal then God's redemptive work is exclusively nurturing, evolving toward a less chaotic future. True, redemption is at least that. However, the classical view is that human sin and that of the angelic rebellion before has directly affected and effected the evolution of the Cosmos itself, introducing a kind of chaos rooted in outcomes God never intended; this being the real source of evil in a moral sense. As a created order God's saving acts are restorative as well as nurturing, lifting humanity out of the inevitable loss of self, and the sacred that results from living in deterministic patterns that form a prison of social isolation. This is why ancient, first nations civilizations look for a 'who' and not exclusively a 'what' when considering causation.

In college, I was first introduced to Rudolf Otto and his understanding of 'holiness' rooted in the "numinous"3a; the primitive, pre-moral, even pre-love experience of God's majesty, leaving us as creatures in a 'tremendium awe' of which there are no words. Even now, my heart is re-drawn to him and the idea of its non-rationality; believing that God's goodness is indeed a two-sided sword, that I do not wish to entirely tame.

If it turns out that God is only the most intelligent Person, given God's relation to all experience and not, in fact, the cause of all that is good, then please let us welcome God as a fellow traveler, albeit significantly more influentual. But if what is, did not come from what is not, and by the Word of God then creation in every meaningful sense is greatly diminished and our communal and individual participation is no longer as open to new possiblities that derive from God's purposes within and beyond the universe.

About Time

Did God know more than possible outcomes? I cannot ultimately say. Even if God can see what is 'not yet' the vastness of the dance of Love and the Mystery of Awesome dread that envelopes this expressive Love's reality cannot enter the experience. It is one thing to envision and quite another to fully enter in and taste the time-space chaos of death fully grown; ripe and ready for the fullness of time. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5: 6 NIV). And in the Biblical Story, that is just what happened; God tasted the death inside our sin and wounded spaces.

Open Theologians and quite frankly Calvanists (whose purposes are opposite one another) would both argue that what I call the 'Otherness—Intimacy Tension' is no tension at all, given God's eternal perspective, allowing time's reveal or forekowledge.

If timeless eternity is simply another space, apart from God, I would agree. Then God would be living within that space with immediate access to all time based realities, knowing the beginning and the end, even what is not yet revealed within time and mass. That assumption is because we tend to look upon space-time and timeless reality as two parts of the same reality. I think that assumption is wrong.

I am not convinced that God the Father, Eternal Son, Spirit necessarily know the

circular-linear experience in Time beyond what has already happened; especially from a reality where space/time and eternity (or whatever replaces the dirt upon which we live) are not inter-dependent. The assumption seems to always be that time/mass live inside or perhaps along side a bubble of timeless eternity.

If that were true and time is circular then God would be able to see all that is alive before God. If space/time is, as scripture indiicates, a creative process held in unity by the Cosmic Christ who lives in and between every partical wave, then God cannot see what is not, as yet. All potentialities, yes. Jesus himself said, "He is not the God of the dead but of the living" (Matthew 22: 32b NIV).

Further, Jesus prayer to his Father indicated that eternity's relation to us who are currently 'in time" is relational: "Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17: 3). It would be proper and easy to dismiss this as simply poetic, illustrative, spiritual word-pictures were it not for context, where Jesus is self-disclosing that he has "brought you (the Father) glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began" (John 17: 4-5). This is a non-scientific, existential word piture that Jeus is disclosing to his dad. It is consistent with how 1st Century Christians thought about the unseen world, very close yet distinct, much like we today would refer to as parallell universes. Paul tells the Ephesians God's intent "was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, 11 according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Ephesians 3: 10-11).

So, of what do I doubt about God? I doubt that part of the tradition and scripture that promises Divine punishment, beyond what is required to awaken humanity and the angelic host to the tragic consequences that flow from turning away from the loving purposes of our God, in this or any uviverse The Trinity might dream of.

Put differently, is the Father, Spirit in any loving sense less than the revelation of Jesus? This premise is ofcourse challenged—though not exclusively so—by the Old Testament in multiple places. Though that may sound like a shocking statement, it shouldn't be, given our Wesleyan understanding that All Scripture is God-Breathed and an inherently reliable witness to Salvation History. We do not conclude that all Scripture is equal, but rather an expansive and progressive Story reaching its zenith, ultimate fullfillment in the Jesus Story.

My doubts are not rooted singularly in a doctrine of the Bible or tradition, but in what is referred to, often incorrectly, as 'End Times.' (While it is about Time, it actually ought to be called "New Creation Time", begun with Jesus birth and moving toward the Renewal of All things.)

I remain convinced that the Church's mission is not, nor ever has been, intended to replace Israel's role in God's self-disclosure. It is not difficult for me to see that God's inter-active communion with The Father's Son in Israel remains, and will continue to provide a prophetically fullfilling Story about God's faith and goodness and love.

Where I struggle is the Calvanist over-emphasis upon God's Sovereignty as a maximal judicial resolution of human sin and offenses beyond the very real need for God and us to face our self-destructive nature—for both God and our sake. For God, atonement is necessary as a responsible partner in Creative outcomes. Its cost is—according to our narrative—The Trinity of God's full embrace of our chaos in our time and God's communal eternity.

In the Revelation we are given a pre-time glimpse into the Communal decision of God the Father-Eternal Son-Spirit to be fully present in "the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world" (Revelation 13: 8c NIV). Bending the perceptive and intrinsic nature of a universe reflecting God's character, the Father-Spirit entered fully into the Eternal Son's experience of the death of sin—by participatory, existential love and humility (Romans 5). And so God died; More accurately entered our death and for the frist time in space and time the Three unique Persons of God knew intimately something other, foreign to their Communal love, integrity and playfulness. They knew and know now, profound loneliness.

Who has ever heard of such a thing, of such a One? In Jesus of Nazareth, The Eternal Son "made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!" (Phillipians 2: 7-8). Thus, "God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (II Corinthians 5: 21 NIV).

The significance of this gospel cannot be overstated. Before time, knowing all possible outcomes God—Three Persons so united in Loving Purpose as to be One in Essential nature—anticipated the cost to both The Trinity and humanity; indeed to all life in the Cosmos. If humans, like some angels before, allowed the darkness of turning away to envelop God's space-time continuim then the Innocence that is God would be sacrificed as God The Son lay down before evil.

God's Atonement and Ours

Atonement is all about making holiness (reverential love) fully available in the Cosmos. That judgment and even redemptive punishment is nacessary, seems a given. So, my struggle with Calvanist dogma is the Biblically expressed and kindly heart of our Creator who lives fully present to every culture and tribe, as the Son fulfills his high priestly function and in The Spirit "intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God" (Romans 8 26c-27 NIV). The question of judgment is a matter of nuance, allowing for any one human or communities of peoples who live against God's moral law of love written into the very fabric of the heavens to be redemptively engaged in God's Soverign Love—including formation of just outcomes.

What makes this a struggle intense at 72 years of age is that I have been an armchair "end times" student, even as I came to enlarge my view of eschatology along N.T. Wright's ideas of the 'renewal of all things' and it's incarnation in the literal ultimate reign of Christ over the earth. I would much prefer an aumillinial perspective,3b but honestly hold to a Peterist/Continuing historical view3c with an important caveate.

Like much of scripture there is an original meaning given to the peoples closer to the originating event, an example being the promise to Ahaz of the sign of a virgin, before finding a husband giving birth to 'the deliverer' which seems clearly to refer to King Hezekiah. Ahaz, in arrogance, refused the sign but God remained faithful, gave him a virgin bride and King Hezekiah became the most righteous King of Judah, save David. 4

This sign whose literal meaning was fulfilled according to God's purpose was adopted by the Church, who interpreted its spritual fullfillment in the virgin Mary and Jesus birth. That is a consistent Biblical pattern. Psalm 22 was written to David while running from his Sovereign and Father in Law Saul, in the desert of engedi and fulfilled the purposes of its Literal Meaning in God's assurance to David. The Spiritual application was realized in Jesus last week, especially on the cross where Jesus quoted it's first lines; "My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me" (Psalm 22: 1 NIV). The Church rightly sees in it a living picture of the crucifixion scene.

The Revelation speaks to exilic 1st - 4th century Christians as they pray for:

• The Great Tribulation that has fallen upon them to pass, and;

• Babylon of 7 hills to fall before Christ and his followers, as happened. Yet it's refrains find a chilling fullfillment in Israel's holocaust securing Israel's return to its ancient lands, and;

• Rebirth of Israel after 2000 years (in one day), with;

• Jerusalem becoming the "Trembling cup" of Zechariah's prophecy, and;

• The gathering alliances of Russia, China and Iran together with the shifting sands of Turkey's military interests in Syria, just north of Israel.

All of these and more are accompanied with the increasing chaos of the world dealing with natural disasters, famine, pestilences and economic uncertainty. What is most disturbing is the apocalyptic sense of God's pending judgment of human personal and communal sin and the wounds that attend.

If the significant and destructive events come I/we have no where to run if anything like the pestilences, wars, hunger and loss happen—save Jesus. In Jesus i see:

1) "The Son" who "is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ...For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven" (Colossians 1: 15, 19, 20a NIV).

2) The One "who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us" (Romans 8: 34b NIV).

3) The promise of God:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine

or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;

we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,

neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,

will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord"

(Romans 8: 35-39).

There is no other place to stand, what ever may come.

Blessings! Terry

09/06/2025

1 Grand-Father is the term many Native American tribes use for God.

2 Open Theology is rooted in Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy that sees reality as fundamentally composed of dynamic, interconnected processes (actual occasions) rather than static substances, emphasizing becoming, change, and creativity. This philosophy of organism seeks to unify scientific, religious, and aesthetic experiences by integrating them into a coherent scheme. (Notes taken from A1 & my own experience)

Open Theology is one descriptive of the last 30 years that seeks to re-interpret the Christian faith in ways consistent with science, post modern reality. it is, in m opinion, a credible world-view and should be considered for it's many insights into the nature of reality, love and God's redemptive role.

Definitions: 3a-3c

3a Numinous; having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity (Oxford Divtionary).

3b Aumillinial: With respect to eschatology, Aumillinials believe that the 1000 year reign of Christ is to be enterpreted 'spiritually', having begun with the birth of the Church, forward.

The Apocalypse, antichrist, & 2nd Coming (Dr. Scott Hahn)

An Interesting Aumillinial take on the Revelation from a Catholic Theologian

3c 1 Peterist/Continuing Historical Eschatology; Is really a mix of two  eschatological visions. The Peterist believes that the prohecies of Matthew and Revelation specifically reference the early church history and were all completed within or very near the Apostle's time; predicting Jerusalems fall, The Temple's destruction and the ultimate triumph of the Church over Rome within 300 years. The Continuing Historical view often agrees with the Peterist view about the specific prophetic announcements but believe it was and is God's intent to communicate prophetic teachings and outcomes, emphasizing their relevance in every generation across time--as they are in a sense timeless descriptives of the struggle between the Kingdom of God and the forces of evil in all generations.

4 I wrote a Children's Christmas book that focuses on the way God's Story (This one about King Hezekiah) is told and reshaped, becoming our Christmas Story.

The First Christmas

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