Election: The Calvinist View vs. The Biblical View

The Calvinist concept of Divine Election which funnels toward Unconditional Election as propagated by their TULIP teaching is a deviant philosophical slant from that of many of the Biblical propositions and/or examples or precedents.

The Jews were certainly elected as God's chosen people, yet many of them are condemned to an eternity without God. King Saul and several of the kings of Judah and Israel were definitely chosen or elected by God. However, they were subsequently rejected based on behavior and obedience to God's prescribed paths.

To emphasize, read 1 Samuel 10:24, ..."Do you see him whom the Lord has chosen, that there is no one like him among all the people?" Samuel declared this statement when the omniscience [see related blog which clarifies that omniscience does not cover the future but only the past and present] of God was supposed to already know David the shepherd who would eventually become king to replace Saul.

In many Biblical cases, God's election is just that... just a choice with no extraneous implications nor guarantees of eternal bliss or unconditional salvation.

Unconditional Election is therefore at best a logical Greek concept. Unfortunately, there is very little Biblical basis for its Calvinistic slant.

Classicists and Calvanists almost always revert to Ephesians chapter 1 to prove specific predestination. However, note that foreknowledge was not even used in this chapter. Foreknowledge implies that God has seen the future and therefore what He has seen CANNOT be changed. "Predestined", however, has been and can be read under the context of God's will, not the will that is etched on stone but the will that means intent or intention.

This divine will is similar to the will of God in the Lord's prayer. "thy will be done on earth..." clearly implies that God's will is NOT done! At least, NOT YET! But clearly, this is a will that can be temporarily thwarted. Hence, substitute the word "intention" to replace "predestination", "intended or designed" to replace "predestined" in Ephesians 1 and one would get a revelation that is far from the Classical Calvinist version but rich in theology and application.

[Added 2017-10-29]
Note that whenever predestination is mentioned in Scripture, the subject is ALWAYS PLURAL. Hence predestined events or actions refer the what God planned for the church or the "elect" and not for any specific individual. Note also that all mention of THE ELECT is always in the plural form with the ONLY EXCEPTION that of the "elect lady" in 2 John, but even then lady is only elect because of the group that she belongs to.

Hence, it is NOT the individual Christian who is elect but it is the church that is elect.  Nor is the individual Christian predestined to anything other than what God had predestined for the elect or the church.

This is the same flavor as the "chosen people" of the Old Testament. God does not refer to individual chosen persons but to the chosen people as a nation or group.

This VERY IMPORTANT distinction is what the Calvinists either have missed or ignored, hopefully, not intentionally.

Will a Loving God Make People Suffer in Hell?

If anyone has ever heard or read of Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", this particular piece of blog will remind you of it. However, in contrast to Edwards' mostly fictitious descriptions of how God would pour His wrath on unrepentant sinners, we are going to review how history actually sheds CLEAR light on the way sinners fare after God completely abandons them.

See Zedekiah's punishment. See Josephus version.

If God could see this happenning and see to it that it would happen, then He CAN condemn people to SUFFERING in hell. If there are creatures that are "beyond" the Love of God to save like Lucifer and one-third of heaven, then God can allow people to suffer.

The Goal of True Theology is Knowing The True God

It is a common presumption of many theologians and students of theology that such a pursuit as THEOLOGY is one where we analyze logical and natural evidences to derive WHO God is or if there are many gods.

Western religious thought has finally "logically" matured to the point of either concluding or assuming that there is just ONE God. Such a presumption may be attributed mainly to Judeo-Christian teaching and partially through the monotheistic propositions of Platonic theosophy. Prior to these two schools of theological thought, most civilizations were either polytheistic or pantheistic. In fact during Paul's day in the book of Acts chapter 17, while in Athens, there were still strong evidences that Platonic theology was ignored by the majority of the Hellenistic world.

Everyone has their own opinion about God, both Christians and pagans. When does this stop and who is right and which is the correct theology.

If theology is the pursuit of the understanding of God, we must first make sure that we are studying the One True God who is none other than the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the I AM.

Of all religious documents that exist, only the Judeo-Christian Bible claims to be words coming out of God's own mind and heart. The theological propositions of these writings claim to be no less than divine revelation. Most other religious writings are were simply penned by individuals simply opining about what they think God is or should be. Many others are traditional beliefs, the content of which defy both reality and history in many of its premises or historical or scientific contexts. a theory and not a law. In fact, much of the Old Testament historical and archeological claims have been verified even when they were initially opposed by the existing sciences of the day, and even when they were initially set out to be disproven.

The Bible on the other hand, has never been conclusively proven to be false either in its historical contexts nor its propositional concepts. Even creation, for example, cannot be contradicted and evolution has been shown to have too many contradictions that it has remained a theory and NOT a law. This is where, for example, Mormon theology is suspect as its historical context are not verifiable and can fall in the realm of fiction.

Theology, therefore, to be completely meaningful and worth any value has to be the study of the ONE True God and not just the study of someone's god.

For the Christian Theologian, theology has to be the pursuit of God according to Jeremiah 9:23,24. God has to be discovered from the viewpoint of inspired scripture and not just any philosophical writing like those of Plato or Aristotle. This means that even if these great Greek philosophers discussed a monotheistic deity, their concept of God is still sans revelation and must be considered faulty or flawed.

This implies that Hellenistic philosophical concepts of God's attributes including timelessness, immanence, transendence, impassive, changelessness, sovereignty, etc have to be discarded or reinterpreted in the light of what Scripture reveals.

To know the one true God, one has to discover Him through the pages of revelation and with the eyes and viewpoint of a Jew. Any other viewpoint will miss too much from the revealed word and, at worst, will lead to misleading concepts of God which would be logically tantamount to idolatry, the sin of creating one's own God apart from revelation.

Now you can see quite clearly why this blog on relational theology rejects or defies classical Christian theology in many ways. Many modern concepts of God and His attributes are legacies of the Christian scholastics like Aquinas, who possibly wanted to have a concept of God that would be acceptable to a predominantly Hellenistic intelligentsia; and that is their greatest downfall, ignoring revelation in favor of pleasing the prevaling and popular bias of those who were the known intellectuals of their world.

It is unfortunate that many in our modern Christian theological world do not see this and accept these classical concepts of God hook, line and sinker. Theology of any form should always be discussed with skepticism knowing that God can defend His own and True theology will prevail amid all the muck.

Relational Theology as presented here seems to survive any skeptical onslaught. I have opened this blog to generate challenges from any quarter. So far, there has been a lot of silence even from the theologies I explicitly criticize.

God's "Trial-and-Error" Attempts to Create a People of Faith for His Kingdom

Why did God create man? Although this blog is entitled "God's Trial-and-Error Attempts to Create a People of Faith for His Kingdom", God forbid that I would claim that God makes mistakes. Most probably, He does NOT. Why most probably? Isn't God perfect? Well, if we believe in revelation and revelation alone and not our personal "dignum Deo" opinions, take a look at this passage from Hebrews 10:7-13:

7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

8 For he finds fault with them when he says:[c]

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
    when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
    and with the house of Judah,
9 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers
    on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
    and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
    after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds,
    and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
    and they shall be my people.
11 And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
    and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest.
12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
    and I will remember their sins no more.”

13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

Now, note the words translated as "faultless", "find fault" (derived from the Greek, memphomai, meaning "censure, blame, reproach"), and "obsolete" (Greek, palaioo, meaning "worn out and old"). Nothing can be more explicit, and if that does not, at least, hint of trial-and-error, then I don't know English nor Greek at all!

It is important to point out that even the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament by Kittel, ignores the language and states:

" In the NT we find memphómenos in Heb. 8:8, where God finds fault with Israel (Italics mine) for breaking the covenant, and for this reason gives promise of a new covenant."

[NT New Testament

Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1995, c1985). Theological dictionary of the New Testament. Translation of: Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament. (580). Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.]

God DID NOT find fault with Israel as the TDNT states. He finds fault with the COVENANT. This is Scripture twisting at its worst as the intent is obvious!

Regardless, it seems that God makes calculated risks and we already have proven that in another blog on Implications of Biblical Theomorphism.

God is All-Sufficient in Himself and among the Persons of the Holy Trinity, there is intense and fulfilling fellowship and love. However, God seemed desirous of embarking on a divine experiment with the end in view of expanding the coverage or scope of His love and relationships.

The following narrative highlights, among others, the Omni-Competence of God (see OmniCompetence- the Divine Attribute that distinguishes the Judeo-Christian God from the Pagan gods).

God's ultimate goal IS to create a people of faith who would be kingdom-minded and would willingly and deliberately love Him the same way He would love His creatures. Remember this goal (and NOT "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever" as the classicists claim. That "chief end of man" is NOT biblical at all. It has no foundation in Scripture. See my blog).

It seems that His very first experiment was the creation of the angels. He even had a favorite whom He made commander of the heavenly host and his name was Lucifer, the day-star. In this particular experiment, He took one of His first risks to His Divine Sovereignty: He was going to create servants who would be endowed with free will (with the intrinsic ability both to love Him or reject Him). However, it seemed that because He created a race of servants, His main criteria for relationship was loyalty and obedience, qualities that were a bit devoid of emotional elements. This must be why we seldom hear about happy or angry angels in scripture. Even when Satan was doing any of his activities, although intelligence was exercised, emotions seemed to be suppressed or non-existent. Same is true of Michael and Gabriel during their message errands.

With the fall of a third of the angels led by Lucifer, God decided to modify His creation significantly and even take a greater risk: God created MAN.

1. They would be created in God's image, and therefore have free will, the ability to love, hate, accept God, reject God, exercise faith, exercise doubt or skepticism, demonstrate intrinsic intelligence, etc.
2. They would NOT be created as servants but independent and autonomous individuals
3. They would be limited by physical bodies.
4. They would be given a choice for eternal life (The Tree of Life was in the middle of the garden of Eden).
5. They would be given a choice, and it would be the acid test to this experiment, to either remain innocent and live with God forever in the garden of Eden in a wonderful relationship between Creator and creature or become "like God" being able to distinguish between good and evil, becoming guilty due to disobedience and now being accountable for sin and hence be condemned to eternal separation from God.

Nonetheless, His objective of creating a people of faith who would love Him was not diminished. Only His method changed by modifying the type of creature He desired to have relationship with.

Of course, we now know what happened with Satan's intervention, Satan knowing fully well that these were creatures that were autonomous and capable of exercising intelligence and self-will.

But God does not give up and continues to exercise His omni-competence, sometimes actually intervening in His creative work to change the course of events to redirect towards His will but never forcing His will upon the hearts of men but continually courting them as a demonstration of His lovingkindness and tender mercies.

He had a few successes with Abel, Enoch and finally Noah when He realizes that man was generally evil when left to run his life and He even relented in creating man. This is when He finally decides to annihilate the world with a great flood by literally breaking open the windows of heaven for 40 days and nights. He exempts faithful Noah and attempts to re-create the human race through him.

After God promises never to destroy the earth with a flood again with a rainbow to remind Him, He even intervenes at Babel to create multiple languages to prevent man from being too powerful. Because He finds delight in the childlike faithfulness of Abram, He now proceeds to alter His method toward meeting His objective of creating a people of faith, to actually choose a segment of humanity through Abraham promising that this would be His chosen people. He even went through great lengths to isolate Israel especially in Egypt, to enable His chosen people to be a pure race whom He would set apart to be the people He would build a loving relationship with. It is quite important to note here that God said that the "nations" would be blessed through Abraham. Hence, God still had the whole of humanity in mind in His love and redemptive plan. However, He had to start from scratch again.

We now know that this experiment essentially failed, at least temporarily. God called the Hebrew nation, His own people harlots because they always forsook Him for other gods and other priorities. God placed them in exile to show how jealous and full of wrath He was at this demonstration of faithlessness and defiance. Although He would Himself be pained by the punishment He would mete, He also had to show that He stood for justice. Nevertheless, this experiment yielded gems like Moses, Joshua, Caleb, Gideon, Samuel, David, Asaph, the prophets, etc.

Finally, God creates His Church, a project that He prophesied about in Isaiah when He said, "...a people who have not known me..." In this final project, God would create a people of faith whom He no longer forces to be called His people in the same manner he chose the Jews. God's over-arching criterion for this people is that they willingly surrender back their independence and return God's love from their heart. His invitation to His people is no longer forced like the Jews were forced to be THE chosen people, and His invitation is open to all ("whosoever will"). This would be a people who, although He created to be independent and automous beings with free-will and the capacity to rebel or reject His love, would instead surrender back this independence to God and love Him with all their heart, mind, soul and strength.

For such is the essence of the relationship He desires. The realization that the risks He originally took in creating theomorphic man would redound to His expectations of willing submission and love.

Conclusion: I have presented a perspective on why God created man and finally the Church. Whether it seemed like a trial-and-error process or simply stages in God's unfolding revelation of His final plan to build His Church and for us to appreciate its unique attributes compared to the other stages or dispensations (this is NOT dispensationalism please), it is up to the readers to draw their own conclusions. I believe that God NEVER makes mistakes, theoretically. However, practically speaking, it is hard to declare that the millions of people going to hell without Christ is NOT some kind of mistake. However, the trial-and-error view demonstrates overwhelmingly the Omni-Competence of God while the concept of unfolding plan simply highlights His sovereignty.

This is why relational theology proposes a happy logical view where mistakes and risks are based on God's goal of demonstrating His love. From the viewpoint of classicism and Calvinism which emphasizes the sovereignty of God at the expense of His other attributes, it is quite difficult to logically justify that God did not make a mistake since millions of His beloved creatures are hell-bound. If one says that man goes to hell by his own sin, then we can go back and say that the creation of man is either a mistake or has mistakes involved from the viewpoint of absolute sovereignty at the expense of other attributes.

However, since relational theology emphasizes God's Love and that the over-arching motive for God's design and will is to demonstrate and consummate His love, we begin to see that millions going to hell is not a mistake but a risk He had to take, in the same way that He took the risk of sending His Son to not only suffer and die on the cross for our sin but to actually experience separation from God at the cross, so that we who would be redeemed would be exempted from such a tormenting experience. It costs God a LOT to build His Kingdom Project

Natural Law is God's ordinance

Reference: Jeremiah 31:35, 36; 33:25 NKJV

What is Natural Law? What is its role in God's participation in His relationship with His people?

Natural Laws are what the New King James Bible calls "ordinances". These are physical or metaphysical routines or behavior that have been ordained and established by God. Gravity is one example. The orbit of planets in the solar system and the exact distances between celestial bodies so that there is very little, if ever, possibility of collision between the planets are another example.

Other examples are consequences of events. For example, heavy rain clouds mean the high probability of rain. If the temperatures were at freezing point or below, we would have falling snow or hail instead. Two cars driving directly into each others way will collide head-on.

Less obvious examples are consequences of behavior. Too much refined sugar or high-fructose corn syrup in one's regular diet would lead to diabetes or other metabolic syndrome diseases like hypertension or even arthritis. An overdose of aspirin, sleeping pills and alcohol could lead to death.

Now, you may ask, what is the point of discussing the above and others like them?

The answer is a key to understanding the biblical perspective on answered prayers and rejected prayers.

Prayer is a petition to the God who ordains these natural laws or these divine ordinances, to intervene into the natural course of events as he originally ordained and, by such intervention, to change the course of events into something that is favorable to the petitioner. It is obvious that petitional prayers or prayers of supplication seek to change the mind of God either by altering His natural law or by simply changing the natural course of events had He left things alone as He originally ordained them.

This is such an important concept to bear in mind of a Christian who claims to have a real relationship with God. The petitioner needs to know if he is requesting something that would please God and honor Him, or is the petition tantamount to tempting or testing God in a negative sense.

Let me explain. Does God give us privilege to seek healing for a man born blind? or for a leper? or for a demon-possessed person? or for a child bitten by a venomous snake either due to the child's carelessness or adult negligence? In most cases, I would tend to think so, and I believe that the petitioner is in a strong position with the loving God to expect a favorable response.

On the other hand, similar to the Israelites continually tempting God in the wilderness during the Exodus years, does a Christian have the right to ask God for strong lungs if he is a habitual smoker? Can he petition for a healthy liver and kidney if he is a drunkard? Can a Christian who overdoses on alcohol and sleeping pills ask for a long life? More subtly, can a Christian who habitually stuffs herself with refined sugar diets and high fructose corn syrup juices have the right to ask God to heal her from diabetes?

In such cases, I think that these are patterns for prayers that will be rejected by God. In the same way that God wants us to reckon ourselves dead to sin in order to be alive to God, the above scenarios require a drastic lifestyle change before God can even begin to deliberate on the petitioner's case!

It is important for a Christian in relationship with God to realize the strength of his petitions based on what he has been doing with or against the natural laws of God before he even begins to make request for divine intervention. Christians who continually and stubbornly defy these ordinances, e.g., the cult where they play with poisonous snakes in their rituals should not expect any response from God at all. These are all part of "turn from their wicked ways" before God can "hear from heaven and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14). This could be another angle in understanding what it is to pray "according to His will".

On the other hand, we must realize that natural law is something we NEVER have to pray for. Gravity will be gravity without our prayers. A man jumping from the top of the empire state building does not need to pray to God in order to land somewhere down below. We never need to pray that the planets in our solar system will not collide. They just won't until God decides to end everything. We don't need to pray that the ground gets wet when it rains.

Hence, petitional prayer is essentially a request for divine intervention for God to change the natural course of events in our favor.

...to be continued...

Other related topics:

• God's "Trial-and-Error" Attempts to Create a People of Faith for His Kingdom
• Covenant-Relationship Theology in a Nutshell
• Relational Theology Makes Prayer Meaningful
• Relational Prayer that gets Answers vs. the Vending Machine God
• Prayer that God does NOT answer, NORMALLY
• The concept of Faith from a Relational/Biblical Perspective
• Relational Theology Makes Evangelism Meaningful and Critical
• Relational Theology Makes Finding God's Will a Meaningful and Useful Experience

The concept of Faith from a Relational/Biblical Perspective

True Biblical Faith Defined

Faith is one of the most corrupted English word of the 20th/21st centuries. It is ironic that Bible translations are "forced" to do a word-for-word correspondence between the original language(s) into say, English. This is also one of the biggest reasons why it behoves a Christian who truly loves God and His Word to have several translations and sometimes paraphrases of the Bible as well as diligent study and analysis either individually or in a group situation in order to minimized the miscommunication of revelation from God to man.

The Greek word pisteuo for the English belief or faith is no longer what it used to mean. Unfortunately, attempts by classical expositions further confuse listeners and readers and they normally leave a sermon message without anything tangible that they could change in their mindset and/or behavior.

While the Greek word means exercising a believing trust based on reliable logical foundation, the 20th century meaning of faith if translated back 2,000 years to the Hellenistic culture would find that the closes Greek word for it borders on "sheer stupidity". The very phrase "blind faith" which is common to most, if not all, religions comes to mind.

To illustrate to simple extremes, a person who is about to jump off a 30 storey building to the ground exercises faith when he knows that based on the laws of gravity, he is going to fall and most probably die in the process. Note that he has NOT done it yet, but he already KNOWS! That is really what the Biblical pisteuo means.

On the other hand, a person who thinks he can defy the law of gravity without any assistance from technology (or demons), and believes all he can truly exercises STUPIDITY and NOT FAITH at all. This current generation with new age beliefs et all has it the other way around!

To take this a step further, if I book and subsequently ride a plane from Los Angeles to New York for arrival on March the 5th, I am exercising faith that I will be in New York on March the 5th. Note that faith is exercised BEFORE I even reach New York, I ALREADY believe that I will be there on March the 5th.

True faith or pisteuo is based on trusting some reason, logic, scientific or historical foundation. It is never faith on having much faith which is not blind faith but truly stupidity.

That is the reason we know we will be in heaven in the presence of God when we physically leave this life. We exercise faith on the One who promised that we will be there if we follow certain conditions and parameter that He has set.

When we book that plane to New York, there is always the possibility of failure. We may miss the flight, the plane could crash or re-route to somewhere else or just be cancelled. Nothing in this world is perfect, so we did exercise faith but on something that is not 100% reliable.

However, God is 100% reliable because He is God. The Lord Jesus Christ is 100% reliable because He is perfect. So we are actually more certain to be in heaven when we die than to be in New York on March 5th!!! And THAT... is what faith in an infallible God implies.

In the same way that wisdom is the application of knowledge, faith is also the application of knowledge. Note that knowledge has to be true and correct, otherwise both wisdom and faith utterly fail.

How is True Faith Developed or Increased?

Knowing the true Biblical definition of faith, the next question is "How then is faith developed and/or increased?" Why did Christ exclaim to his disciples, "Oh, ye of little faith"?

The Wrong Concept

The simple none-theological but very Biblical answer: The development of faith (or believing trust) has nothing at all to do with nurturing faith. On the contrary, it has almost everything to do with nurturing its OBJECT. What this means is that faith is an "automatic" or "natural" result of really knowing the OBJECT of faith. It could be a scientific fact, a historical fact, a natural law like gravity, or a proven concept. Note that it CANNOT be just a theory like the Theory of Evolution. So many people, including scientists exercise this blind faith, trusting something that is no more than just a guess, perhaps it is an intelligent guess but it is still a guess nonetheless and not a completely proven scientific fact (the missing links in the evolutionary path ARE STILL MISSING TODAY after all the research and technology behind it).

The same is true with the homosexual rights concept. It is already quite scientific that there is either a penis or a vagina for each person. People who do not fall under this category like the hermaphrodites are considered SCIENTIFICALLY ABNORMAL. Since when can it be mandated that a person with a correct sexual organ but the wrong brain orientation be considered "normal"? These last centuries have corrupted definitions with relativistic thought applied to extreme, that is relativism applied where IT SHOULD NOT EVEN BE APPLIED. Clean distilled water is scientifically CLEAN DISTILLED WATER even if I try to believe with all my might that it is VINEGAR or a form of vinegar!!!

Common sense has just gone out the door and the main stupid proponents call themselves scientists, teachers, philosophers or even theologians. The loudness of a lobby does not make it right. They consider themselves intelligent where universally, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth to agree with them.

I have not really digressed because these cases are examples of blind faith - putting your trust and belief system on a belief and not on simple universal and logical FACT. Again, if you gave these example to the Hellenists 2,000 years ago, they would simply call this STUPID, and stupid is as stupid gets.

So either the object of faith is fact or faith is just plain stupidity. I hope we have clearly laid that out. This is the day and age where one can redefine things and I simply refuse to get into that kind of non-sensical relativistic bent.

The Correct Concept

So to increase or develop faith, one has to not only get familiar with its object but study and analyze it to the point that everything about the object that is relevant to the exercise of specific faith (YES, all exercise of faith is specific and not general) becomes established FACT in the person's mind. Note that in order for the exercise of faith to be genuine, the object has to be an established fact in reality and an established fact in the mind of the person exercising specific faith.

After it becomes an established fact in a person's mind, he then has to truly and sincerely believe that fact for true Biblical kind of faith to start being exercised. Let us apply this to a real example. In a normal world, trust is built between people as they get to know each other better. The more they know the other person's character, behavior and responses to given circumstances, the more they can sort of "predict" what they would do under certain situations or stimuli. The TRUST that such and such is what a person would do if a certain action or stimulus is applied to him. This would be entirely based on one's knowledge of a person as well as experience dealing with him in various situations.

The same is true with God and Jesus Christ. The more I know them, the more experience I have with them as to how they respond to events, people's behavior, etc., the more I can sort of "predict" what they would do when certain events occur. The unique and peculiar reinforcement to the exercise of faith is that God's character never changes and the Lord Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. So there is a sense in making them not exactly more predictable but to state it in general, the basis of the exercise of our faith when it is founded on the Lord Jesus Christ or The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is more reliable. Call that predictability if you will but that definitely helps your faith in them.

For example, if I need healing from God for a specific ailment or disease, it has to be an established fact both in reality and in my mind that God can heal and that God will heal and if He gives conditions for me to be healed, I make sure that I abide by those conditions. Knowing that God fulfills ALL HIS promises within the Kingdom context (you must be a Kingdom child with a real and meaningful relationship with the King) and/or if you abide in Him as He abides in you, He promised to "ask anything in my name and it will be done to you" (John 15:7) or "whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you" (John 15:16). The Lord Jesus even encourages ask to ask in John 16:23,24.

For those who still doubt, what kind of God will make so many promises and either not be able to fulfill them nor would not act to fulfill them??? May that never be so. Fortunately, the Bible does declare over and over that if a Kingdom child continues to live within the Kingdom context, the fulfillment of ALL 100% of His promises will be experienced in reality.

The problem is not with the Promise-Giver for He truly is a Promise-Keeper. The problem is with the Kindom child who so often has one foot on the Kingdom and the other in the world. This is one reason why Christ said, "you cannot serve God and mammon". Christ meant that anytime one is a fence-sitter, he is in reality NOT living in the Kingdom context and that is why God's promises do not find fulfillment and that is why most Christians do not have the right faith to believe and make things happen.

Let us look at passages in Scripture

Now that we have established the true meaning of pisteuo and its implications...

...to be discussed...

What did Christ mean "faith as big as a mustard seed"?

How did Christ respond to "help thou mine unbelief"

What did James mean by "prayer of faith"?

Who is God? - from the viewpoint of Relational Theology

No systematic theology is considered complete until it declares its concept of the character and attributes of God.

To be more specific, "Who is the God of the Bible?".  We don't care about other gods which are created by the best guesses of men. We need to know the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible, the God who revealed Himself through the Bible.  On this one single point, we NEED to be Barthian in our basic approach to addressing this question.  We need to declare that NO ONE CAN know God WITHOUT the benefit of revelation.

What this means is that no man can know God even through the best of human research if the Bible is not part of the study.  Yes, the Bible does claim in Romans 1:18ff that the evidence about God is manifest (obvious) if man does not "suppress the truth in unrighteousness". However, the ultimate end of good theology is that of knowing the mind and heart of God Himself, and not just evidence of His activities and existence.

Jeremiah 9:23-24,

"23 Thus says the LORD: 

      “ Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
      Let not the mighty man glory in his might,
      Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
       24 But let him who glories glory in this,
      That he understands and knows Me,
      That I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.

      For in these I delight,” says the LORD."

If theology ended merely with the classical conclusions of God as Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, First Being, Unmoved Mover, Perfect Being, Timeless, Impassable, ad inifinitum, ad nauseaum, then they have tragically missed the boat completely on who God is.  The bible does NOT even bother with such terminologies nor their long-winded definitions.  In fact, the truth about God is revealed "to babes".  Christ Himself said, that we must have the faith (and perspective) of a child, if we are to know and experience the best of God.

Here are some of what the Bible SIMPLY and EXPLICITLY declare are:

God is Love, Truth, Righteousness, Lovingkindness, Faithfulness.

God is Love, Light and Life

God is Jealous (this one God Himself declared in ALL instances!).  In His jealousy He visits judgment on man and to his children's children to the fourth generation!

It is obvious the the Judeo-Christian God desires for man to search and know His Heart and not just the evidences of His abilities or His activities in the cosmos.

Furthermore, classicism (especially through the scholastics like Thomas Aquinas) is a thoroughly misled approach to knowing the God of the Bible.  Hellenistic academics popularized by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle was the intelligentsia status symbol of that day and Thomas Aquinas and company got sucked into its aberrant thinking, albeit well-meaning since it attempted to offer to an unbelieving world, a logical concept of the existence of God.  Unfortunately, it falls short of who God really is.

Indeed, the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God.  The Greek concepts of God are futile attempts since they are man-made and originally almost totally devoid of divine revelation.  In simpler words, Greek concepts of God have ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT of revelation. They are purely man made, and hence border on idolatry. Hence, at its very best, it simply erects another idol and declares that "here is God", consistent with the conclusions of Paul in Romans 1:22-23:

"22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—..."

Classicism has subtly gone around this but effectively came out with a still "different" God from that of the Bible.  Christian classical thought is really a descendant of Gnosticism which in essence attempts to amplify the infinite difference between God and man (another unbiblical concept, since man is theomorphic) instead of demonstrating how God is like man simply because man was created to be like God (man was created in God's image!).

Because of classicism, there is a huge number of Christians, like the Hyper-Calvinists, who claim that they believe that God is a personal God but related to Him as if He were a force!  Theologies like theirs show God primarily as wholly-other (which is correct in the sense that God can exist without the rest of creation), but in so doing portray Him as impassable or having no emotions (which is not biblical, e.g.,  Jeremiah 32:29-31).  Their concept of God is one who is unaffected by what man does (correct only in the sense that it does not change the character of God) but make the unbiblical claim that nothing man does can affect God.  They forget that God was affected intellectually during the construction of the Tower of Babel.  They forget that God was always affected emotionally when His people turned to idolatry and unfaithfulness.

They portray God as timeless (which is correct since He is not dependent on it) but in so doing proposes non-sequitur behavior like micro-predestination (every small detail in history and future events have been pre-determined (and this is definitely non-sequitur and non-biblical).

Classicism further portrays God as Perfect (which is correct in concept) but is misapplied to mean that God does not change His mind (not biblical, since God relented so many times as EXPLICITLY described in Scripture); that God does not have emotions of anger (grossly unbiblical since He exiled Israel in anger because of His jealousy against idolatry).  

This discussion will not go into attributes of God that have been countlessly discussed in many great references on systematic theology.  However, we will attempt to discuss what we believe are biblically erroneous concepts of God (perhaps from these same references) and attributes of God that these systematic theologies have overlooked simply because they have placed God in a box with their dignum deo concepts based on classical beliefs.

One of the first things we have to clarify, if this has not been clear yet, is that as far as the concept of God is concerned, we EXCLUSIVELY deal with Biblical Theology.  Every other concept to us which is extra-Biblical is simply an idol dressed up with the elaboration of philosophical jargon.  Hence, this is not the place to inquire about these misguided (lack of Divine revelation) concepts.

The next thing we have to be clear about is, if we are to deal with Biblical theology effectively, then we have to employ conservative hermeneutics in the interpretation of the text.  This means among other things that we have to look at immediate context of Bible references in terms of language grammar and common usage (discussed by scholarship) , time in history, before we look at the greater context.  It also requires that we look at passages from Jewish eyes and not Gentile eyes for BOTH the Old Testament Hebrew and the New Testament Greek (Both have their own relative contexts).  This also requires that we never generalize a derived theological concept (like predestination) when it was meant to be specific only to what was declared, and it is still logical to confine it ONLY to that instance.  Generalization is one of the greatest errors of Classical Greek thought.  They tend to paint every miniscule concept they find with a broad brush and hence, paint "God" into a corner.  (Pls see my blog on Axiomatic Foundations for a deeper discussion on hermeneutics.)

Having settled our hermeutic principles, the next thing we need to accept and digest is...

God is the Best and Greatest Communicator and has chosen the Hebrew and Greek languages at the correct timing (context) in history to reveal Himself in writing to man.  Being The Great Communicator, He speaks in simple terms understandable to the common man (by common man, we mean a man who has the capability of social communication and a basic understanding and articulation of human behavior and emotions as well as events in his world).  God means what He declares in Scripture and declares what He means in Scripture and there is no need for any man to presume arrogance and re-interpret anything that God has declared.  All man has to do is understand what God says like a human communicating intelligibly with another human.

...under construction...to be discussed

God is Omnicompetent, a greater level than Omnipotent because it is the kind of Omnipotence that takes risks and competently and perfectly addresses the consequences of those risks that He took.

God is Love and He sought and He seeks man's love.  This divine pursuit has developed into a need. God desires relationship with man and wrote Scripture to describe its source, origin and foundation.

There is nothing in the behavior, emotions, and mind of the Incarnate Christ that would be any different from God the Father nor God the Holy Spirit. If Jesus wept (John 11:35), God can weep and He does.  Jesus is further proof of the concept of theomorphism.

The One God is a plural God. This is definitional and is the God of the Jews and Christians. Hence, He is not Allah and never was.  Nor is He the god of the Mormons nor the god of Jehovah's Witness.