CADRE Comments

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 56, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 57.] God. Is. Dead. God is dead!! Just as we always knew: He can die! Now we are free, free of Him, free to be the gods we want to be, free to be our own laws, our own inheritance! Free to decide what is good or evil! We live, though God is dead! We have overthrown the Highest, beat the Invincible! ...well ...we didn't actually 'beat' Him; He gave up the game. But we always wanted to make Him give up on us anyway, yes? Then we would show Him that we didn't need Him, that we could outlast Him! Ah, but this is even better! We showed Him that His hope is futile, that the Truth which surrenders itself will be digested and expelled as waste! He put Himself at the mercy of His own creations, and we killed Him! What did the Great Fool think?? That people would just fawn over Him for showing up late to the party!? That af...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 54, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 55.] I have no clear idea of how this Child would think, as He grows into manhood. God will have poured Himself out, continuing to enact His own specific part in the story of humanity. We might say the finger of God will be gently touching the earth; a mere hum of His voice; a finite trickle out of the river of His eternity. I can only use metaphors, and I am well aware of the problems involved in imagining this accurately--which, I am also well aware, is likely to prove a stumbling block for an honest sceptic. But I appeal to the reasonableness of what I have said before. I am quite sure God exists, and has particular characteristics including a particular personal character. I am quite sure of my own sin and corrupted character. And I am reasonably sure of how this all fits together. Consequently, I am quite sure that sooner or later, God ...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 49, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 50.] God must come to us, to give us the best possible chance of understanding Him. Not only in the ministry of the Holy Spirit to every person, inspiring and judging us in fair-togetherness, but even more directly than that, more obviously as a Person than that, more able to reveal the truth of His character in action we can see, not merely hear in our hearts. That doesn't mean we necessarily will understand what is happening; we might still make our own honest mistakes about it, or we might still try to fudge our way around it to protect some inflamed sense of our own self-importance. But this leads to a number of questions about the act of God I am now considering: what should I mean by God coming to us, each of us, personally, in this manner? Well, there have been odd tales, throughout history, all over the world, about encounters ...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, chapter 25, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes chapter 26, "God's Relationship To Nature".] Although I was unable (yet) to deductively remove from the option list the concept that what we call 'physical Nature' is God, I will remind you now that my own status as either a rebel (even if only occasional rebel) or as a deluded victim of illusion, indicates (even if nothing else did) that I am not fully divine in and of myself; and this indicates that at least two levels of reality, or two substantially different systems, exist: God and (in one way or another) not-God (namely myself). Therefore, although I could only give a conceptual strike (not deduction) against 'practical pantheism' in the previous chapter, I do think I have deductively argued that pantheism must technically be false: not everything is fully God, because--as far as it is possible for me to tell--I a...

"I do not need to take a bull from your household or goats from your sheepfolds. For every wild animal in the forest belongs to me, as well as the cattle that graze on a thousand hills. I keep track of every bird in the hills, and the insects of the field are mine. Even if I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all it contains belong to me. Do I eat the flesh of bulls? Do I drink the blood of goats? Present to God a thank-offering! Repay your vows to the sovereign One! Pray to me when you are in trouble! I will deliver you, and you will honor me!” (Psalm 50:9-15 NET) "The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God." (Psalm 51:17 NLT) I have two main reservations about the traditional penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. The first is that it seems to clearly contradict a fundamental principle of biblical justice, that the only one who can be justly punished for wrongdoing is the wrongdoer h...

A few weeks ago, Layman began a discussion concerning some difficult claims, disputed to some degree among various schools of Christian theology. The record of this discussion so far can be found here and here and here. In the second round of discussion, I was asked by Puritan Lad (one of the other regular contributors to that discussion), to explain if I could the case of Absalom, son of David. PL’s contention was that Absalom counts as an example of someone pre-determined by God to do things for which God would then hopelessly damn him. (At least, if this was not PL’s intention, then bringing up Absalom’s case would be kind of useless, since this is the topic we were discussing at the time. {s}) Specifically, PL asked me to explain (tacitly meaning explain in another way, if I could), the prediction testified to in 2 Samuel 12:11-12. At the time, I opted to answer as well as I could according to principle, rather than according to story context, seeing as how principle would be of ...