CADRE Comments

The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 57, can be found here. If the reader arriving at the site for Easter Day wants a quick overview of why all the things I've been talking about for +700 pages matter, please see my Easter Sermon from last year 2010 ( "Why It All Matters" -- don't panic, it's only five minutes' reading tops. {g}) This book has been my testimony, for why I believe what I do. Despite its length, and its frequent complexity, it comes down to this: why am I a Christian? The thrust of my argument throughout my book, has pointed toward the conclusion that I should expect God to act in our history in certain ways. I have tried to allow for a potentially wide range of variables in how those actions will someday be (or have already been) carried out. I have even tried not to hang the story entirely on the timeframe in which I think the story actually was carried out. But I do think the story has been carri...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 48, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 49.] What shall God do? The devils have betrayed His love; and do betray those He loves. Yet, as the eternal ground of all reality (including theirs), still being intrinsically Love in His own unique and independent self-existence, God still loves the rebel angels. The humans have betrayed Him, too; and are betrayed in turn by higher tormentors; and also betray whosoever they themselves can find to have power over. Yet, still, God loves them, too. God will do what He can, to mitigate the suffering that His beloved children cause, in their quests to affirm their own self-importance. Such a quest will always involve perverted suffering: for to make suffer, in pain or in pleasure, is to exhibit power over; and so to exhibit power over, in any perverted way, will be to make suffer. Yet God has given them such power that they pervert. And although...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 47, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 48, "The Story From Theology"] In the four previous sections I have analyzed dozens and dozens of metaphysical propositions-- over 600 pages worth! --deciding for various reasons between them, building and shaping a metaphysic, and arriving at what Christians have historically called ‘orthodox trinitarian theism’. I have arrived there without reference to scriptural authority or claims of special revelation; right or wrong, any sceptic could in principle arrive here, too, by following out the logical trail in regard to data commonly accessible to any of us. I am a trinitarian theist, and this is why I would be a trinitarian theist, even if there was no such thing as historical Christianity, or scriptures to seek out testimony on. I worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Su...