God. Always. Does. Everything.

OK.. it’s been too long, but I’m trying to get back to the initial project of this blog, to defend the theological affirmation, “God always does everything God can do.” I’ve been working my way through, with a few rabbit tracks along the way. Let me continue…

God. Always. Does.

Everything.

God is. Everywhere. Stating the omnipresence of God is sine qua non for orthodox theology. Why isn’t the omni-work of God? Though every Christian I know affirms the omnipresence of God, many (most?) apparently believe that God is only actively working at times, in some of the places where God is always present. Could we really believe that? But that conclusion seems a necessary, logical corollary to traditionally-stated theology.

If God is, in fact, everywhere at all times. And omnipotent (also sine qua non for traditionally-stated theology)… dare I ask: What is that omnipotent God doing?

I believe God is doing everything (every where, at every time) that God can (possibly) do.

Everything.

In times of crisis Christians pray for God to “do something.” (Though their language is sometimes more eloquently expressed!) Get down here… and do something…. But do we not hear what such prayer implies? If God is always with us, everywhere — why is God not already working? What more could we possibly expect God, whose defining characteristic is “IS-ness” (action), to do?

If a parent, a friend, even a compassionate stranger, came on the scene of a tragedy, can you fathom that person not doing something, anything, everything she/he could possibly do to bring healing, wholeness, resolution to the crisis? (What human being would possibly heal only one child if she actually had the power to heal all of them?) We would criminalize anyone who came into such a situation and just stood idly by. And wouldn’t it even be worse if someone actually claimed to love the victim, to have her best interest in mind, to believe some “big picture” justified her suffering — as he simply stood by, caring, but doing nothing?

Yet we allow a theology which justifies the very same inactive “compassion” to characterize our undersatnding of God! Could that really be compassion? By any possible definition?

God is everywhere. The Spirit at the center of all life, all hope, all goodness, all love, all truth. And God is always doing. And God is always doing EVERYTHING that can be done.

I do believe in praying (see my earlier post on the topic). Prayer, especially in moments of crisis, is an expression of our deepest soul. I understand the emotional outcry: God do something! I don’t understand a logic that attempts to explain this, to justify this, in moments of clearer thinking! And I don’t understand just blaming any moral, ethical, or theological inconsistency on our finitude. Yes, God is “omni…” In our finitude we will never understand God. But this does not give us the right to defend poor logic, in the name of defending a “Godness” that we defined in the first place! (The “omni” attributes are words and concepts of human language and thought.)

The Psalmist affirms that God is everywhere: “If I ascend to Heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol (sometimes translated “hell”), you are there” (139.8).

Surely a God who will go all the way to “Hell” for us, to “hold [us] fast” (139.10), will always do everything God can possibly do. Could the Psalmist have meant anything else?

God. Always. Does.

Everything.

God. Always. Does.

So, if God can’t do everything, God can obviously do nothing. Right? That’s the kind of look people give me when I say “God… can’t…” I know this idea (the non-omnipotent God idea) is new, even disturbing to many people, but where did I ever say I believe in an  Impotent God?

God is.

There’s the action.

The very name of God defies an impotent, do-nothing, characterization. The very name tells us that God cannot do nothing. God is action, movement, energy, being, doing. Though I have scant little of my Hebrew vocabulary anymore, I remember the insight I gained in learning that the Tetragrammaton (the divine name, transliterated by the English letters yhvh) is a name that essentially derives from the “to be” verb (haya in the past tense, hove in the present tense). (If the good Dr. Polaski is reading, I may need a little correction!)

So… when Moses asks for God’s name, it’s not Andy (you know, “Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me…”), nor Howard (“Our Father who art in heaven, Howard be thy name…”)… it’s a VERB. Just a verb — “yhvh” — which, with the vowels added, becomes Yahweh, and in an English translation becomes Jehovah.

My parents were both English majors. Especially my father. Meaning, he practiced his major throughout my childhood! (I’ve actually come to be greatly appreciative. I hope my sons will be one day as well, since I’m practicing on them now!) If I’ve been corrected on subject-verb agreement once, told “…’none’ takes a singular verb” once, corrected: “…it’s ‘this is he, not this is him…’, once, ’it’s these are they, not these are them…’” once… I’ve been told those things a thousand times. And I learned to conjugate, too: “to be” = am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been.

The name of God, then, the divine nomenclature, first given to Moses, standing there before that burning bush, might have been given in this fashion: “Tell the Pharaoh that ‘The Great I am-is-are-was-were-be-being-been’ has sent you.” Tell the old rascal that the Essence of Being — “Is-ness,” Itself… is on the way!

God is. That which Was and Is and Will Be.

So, if God “is” — and that is a verb, which describes action… what does The-Great-To-Be actually “do”? Isn’t this the heart of the difficulty? We need the “doing” to be more defined, more personalized, more specific. What does God do, exactly. And how and when and where does God do it?

In a quantum world, where science is proving God out of more and more “doing” (thunder is not long God’s literal anger, just charged ions in the atmosphere, disease no longer God’s wrath, just bacteria doing their thing…), what is left for God to “do”? In his most recent work, the acclaimed physicist, Steven Hawking, has announced definitely that physics no longer needs a “first mover.” The science is satisfied to say God is not necessary for the material world.

So what is there for God to “do,” for people of faith who are trying to take the science seriously, but who cannot give up on God? It seems to me that is why this word, “Does,” is so important. Liberal Christians have become skeptical (for mostly good reason) of the too-casual use of the word “miracle,” yet do we have to give up on the “doing” of God, all together. I think not.

God is.

We’ve just got to learn that this is action. God is Truth. God is Wisdom. God is Presence. God is Spirit. God is Hope. God is Love. What more could we want God to “do”? What is more true, or more powerful, the “miracle,” spuriously attributed God — or the “still small voice” (1 Kings 19.12, KJV) which cannot be denied? The “peace that passes understanding” (Phillipians 4.7), that does something the best medicine cannot begin to achieve? The mysterious spirit (or Spirit) which becons, calls, motivates more powerfully than can be explained? The Love, that may even call us to “lay down our life for a friend” (John 15.13)?

The Church needs to drop its defensive posture against science, which can largely attest for the “doing” of this world in reductionistic, naturalistic, materialist terms. (And what it cannot attest today, will likely be discovered tomorrow.) For the power which “God is” is immeasurably (infinitely) and immeasurably (non-empirically) greater.

God. Always. Does.

Because God Is.

Signs of an Emerging God.

The following entry (which I have made per request) is based on a Power Point presentation for a Sunday School class, in which we discussed the theme of my sermon: “From Mold to Manger: Seeing the Signs of an Emerging God.” Originally preached in 2006, the sermon can be found on the church website (www.parkroadbaptist.org) under the “Worship” tab, “The Park Road Pulpit,” August 8, 2010. The sermon texts for this Advent sermon are: “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me…” (Malachi 3.1-4). and, “In the fifteenth year of the reign of emperor Tiberius…” (Luke 3.1-6).

Power Point pages are separated by double asterisks. I have added brief explanatory remarks, but not a full transcript of the lecture.

**

Two Views

Theme for Advent 2006: “The Forest and the Trees”

competing, contrasting views of God

Does the Bible present one view or multiple views?

One truth or multiple truths?

In his book A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren takes on his own tradition’s view of scripture, and asks if scripture is to be understood as “constitutional law” (the traditional/conservative view) or “legal library” (McLaren’s new understanding).

**

Two Views

How many times have you heard, “Well, the Bible says…” (As if the Bible never contradicts itself, and if you can find it in the Bible… then it’s obviously right!)

So, consider…

For there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, for all are one in Christ… (Galatians 3.28)

…and…

For I do not permit women to have authority over men (1 Timothy 2.12)…  let the women remain silent… ask their husbands (1 Corinthians 14.34-35)… be submissive (1 Peter 3.1)…

**

I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. 3Within two years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of the Lord’s house, which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took away from this place and carried to Babylon (The Prophet Hananiah, recorded in Jeremiah 28.2-3).

…and…

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (The Prophet Jeremiah, recorded in Jeremiah 29.5-7)

**

For by grace are you saved by faith. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone boast… (Ephesians 2.8)

…and…

“Lord, when did we see you hungry?” And the King separates the sheep from the goats by what they did and did not do… (Matthew 25)

**

The contrasts/conflicts within scripture can be harmonized. (We’ve been doing it for years!)

But I believe it is better to let them stand as conflicts. Contrasting/competing ideas about God and the world. Scripture is a collection of experiences with life… with God… The Bible speaks the honest experiences of people, just like us, who sometimes have differing understandings.  

We don’t need “the answer” from the Bible – we need to allow the experiences recorded in scripture help us learn how to think for ourselves.

**

One Biblical View

“The God of the Forest”

For God is above all and through all and in all… (Ephesians 4.6)

Is God above all?

Is there a “big picture”?

In faith we say, “Certainly!”

But… how do we understand that truth?

Is it the only truth?

The only image of God? or is it One image among many?

Is it a truth for certain stages of life? (as children think of their parents)

Was it a truth for a different age?

**

On Developing a “Theology of Reality”

There was a day when this was the only truth.

God created…

            God controlled…

                        All things…

This is no longer what we believe.

Evolutionary process…

            Weather patterns and bacteria and mental illness…

                        God is no longer ascribed all control…

**

On Developing a “Theology of Reality”

We need not deny God to accept a new understanding.

(But we ought to accept the new understanding!)

**

The God of the Trees

Finding God among us. (Not necessarily beyond us.)

“This sermon offers the God of the slime mold and the manger. The God who has always been, and ever is, emerging from the seemingly insignificant, disconnected details of a complex world. From this view, the traditional understanding is exactly backwards. God is not out there … large and looming. Looking down. Controlling and capricious. Crafting and manipulating. God is here. With us. In us. The Word always becoming flesh (John 1.14) through every single detail.” (Sermon: “From Mold to Manger”)

**

A Word About Slime Mold

No brain.

            No “top-down” management.

                        Intelligence “emerges” from its collaborative behavior.

                                    No way to know: individual or collective

Ants also show “emergent behavior” (“Queen” – not really a Queen… just mother of all ants)

High level Computer Software is written using emergent processes (“Artificial Intelligence,” not “top down” programs)

What about God?

**

The God of the Trees

This is not the majority report of Christianity – but it is no novel idea of mine

Divinity: less the point of departure than the destination (Teilhard de Chardin)

Process Theology even God is developing/evolving with us

God is less a Supreme Being… than the “ground of being” (Paul Tillich), “In whom we live and move and have our being…” (Acts 17.28)

Robert Wright: “…maybe it is up to us, having inherited only the most ambiguous evidence of divinity, to construct clearer evidence in the future” (in his book, Nonzero).

**

God and Emergent Behavior

Are we moving to a new truth (with the help of science)?

God is not “out there…”

   “above…”

      “controlling…”

         “top down…”

God is emerging from within/among us

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among/within you.’” (Luke 17.20-21)

**

God and Emergent Behavior

When our eyes are open, we can see this emerging logic (logos) everywhere:

*When the fullness of time had come (Galatians 4.4)…

*She brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger (Luke 2.7)…

*And the child grew in wisdom and stature and in divine and human favor (Luke 2.52)…

In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Colossians 1.19)…

*He learned obedience through what he suffered, and having been made perfect (Hebrews 5.8-9)…

*God made him to be Lord and Christ (Acts 2.36)…

*That at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow (Philippians 2.10)…

*To all who believed… he [gives] the power to become children of God! (John 1.12).

**

The Trees – Nothing Insignificant

“Nothing that has ever happened in your life is insignificant. Not one moment that you have ever lived is disconnected from another, neither is a single of your breaths distinct from the life of this diverse and wonderful planet. Every day. Every hour. Every word. Every thought. Every action… stands on its own, as a discreet instrument in the hands of God. There may be a big picture, but we have only the details to work with.” (Sermon: “From Mold to Manger”)

**

…and the Forest

Faith leads me to believe there is, in fact, a big picture… Yet we cannot know it.

The point is that we are so often preoccupied with that big picture and that miss the living that occurs when we give ourselves to the details. We cannot know how our lives impact others, and how they are impacted by them. Life in faith should call us to live for the moment, in the moment, drinking deeply of each moment — for there we find God! 

God. Always.

In 1991 Amy and I left Southern Seminary, a year before completing our divinity degrees in Lousville, KY, in order to take jobs at First Baptist Church, Clemson, SC. When we moved to Clemson to become the Minister of Youth and Senior Adults (Russ) and the Minister of College Students and Single Adults (Amy), and to complete our seminary work at Erskine Theological Seminary (Associate Reform Presbyterian Church), we bought our first house. I’ll never forget the feeling of signing my name to that note for $84,000. I couldn’t imagine that much money. We even traded Amy’s Nissan 300ZX for a Dodge Spirit to make the payments! (Oh… what a trade!) Five years later when we moved to Birmingham, AL, Amy seven months into her first pregnancy, we talked about real estate before we moved, and thought that maybe we’d “splurge” a little, move up, stretch ourselves and spend maybe $100k there.

Yeah. Right.

Welcome to the world of Mountain Brook, AL, and the sticker shock that comes with moving just before the housing market bubble burst. After diligent searching, and a wonderful, patient real estate agent, we found something we thought we could live with — not in Mountain Brook, but close enough, and stretching, stretching to $107,000, in a wonderful little house that our realtor told us “had potential.” Boy, did it! (When you buy the cheapest house in the neighborhood, he reasoned… a house with “potential”… you can expect to make some money on it when you move, if you’ve been a little diligent to see some of that potential actualized.)

Because this blog is not about home renovations, I’ll spare you the details, but because of the hours and hours we spent on the house, when we sold the “cat house” (ask me if you care) a few years later, we had realized some of its potential, and were able to cash in a few bucks. That house had potential.

God does not.

God is always God. Fully actualized divinity. (Interestingly, in his book Jesus and the Inigma of the Son of the Man, Walter Wink says that divinity is actually fully realized, fully actualized humanity.) Fully realized potential. When God told Moses, “I am that I am” (more on this in the coming blog on ”Does”), we learned all we needed to know. God is not the God who will be… tomorrow. Maybe. If you pray the right words. Live faithfully enough. If all the stars are lined up right. If …

God IS. God. Always.

When people speak of the intervening God who is all-powerful, they encourage us to pray — because prayer “works,” and because God “answers prayers.” The implication is clear. God may be more for you (do more for you) tomorrow (in some time of need, in a crisis, when you get on your knees and pray earnestly), more than God is for you, today. This makes perfect sense to me as I think of friends, family. When the chips are down, friends and family have a tendency to come through. Thanks be to God. To be/do more in a time of need than they are any other day. But this no longer makes sense to me of the God who is the “I am.”

What more could God be or do (since God’s being is God’s doing (“I Am” is a verb)) on any tomorrow than God is today?

When I had a nephew in a coma, the result of a tragic Automobile accident, and we prayed that that inevitable death might be stayed… what did we expect? That God would do more tomorrow than God was doing today? That God was withholding some kind of potential, today, to wait and see if God would be more of who God could be… tomorrow? What a dreadful theology! When we prayed for God to “do something,” what did that mean? How could God possibly “do” more tomorrow than God is doing today?

In every moment in that tragic situation, along with every moment of every tragic, and joyful situation — God Is. Always. God.

God never witholds potential. How could “I Am” ever be more (or less) than “I Am” is, right now?

God. In Process Thought.

I’m getting to …Always. Does. Everything. God. Can. Do… I promise, but I had to add this short word about omnipotence from an article I just read in the Aug 10 edition of The Christian Century. It’s entitled “American Export,” and it’s a review of the place of Process Thought in China’s growing theological (and ecological and economical) expansion. Process Theology was founded by mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) on the principle that all things are interconnected, that we are “personally and communally responsible for the common good,” and that all things, perhaps even God, are moving, changing, evolving — hence, in process.

United Methodist, John Cobb, retired professor at Emory University and Claremont School of Theology, is one of the leading proponents of process theology. (Park Road-ians might be interested to know that our own, Emil Mialik, former pastor of Wedgewood Baptist in Charlotte, studied with Cobb at Claremont, and is a proponent of all-things-process.) Cobb was recently in China for a lecture when he found himself the center of “rock star” attention — apparently lots of Chinese intellectuals (Christians and Marxists, theologians and economists) are interested in Process Theology, which they often refer to as Constructive Postmodernism. These two paragraphs are from the article:

“Process theology occupies a modest niche in U.S. theological circles. It addresses the classic problem of evil — how can an omniptent God allow bad things to happen? — by positing that God is not all-powerful and not a micromanager of earthly events. Process theologians would say that God rejoices and suffers with humans in their ups and downs and is concerned with all levels of existence.

Cobb said that the Chinese do not object to the word ‘God,’ but ‘the idea that there is some center of control that determines everthing has never been a part of Chinese thought.’ From his point of view, Cobb said, ‘the problem of evil grows out of the terrible doctine of divine omniptence, which is not biblical but which became so deeply established that many Christians think you can’t worship without believing it.”(emphases added)

I knew that what I knew of Process Theology I appreciated. I didn’t know that I was a full-blown believer! I’ll be reading more on Whitehead and Process Thought in the coming days, but I needed to share these words with you.

Russ

God. The heart of all that is.

Sometimes when I speak my theology people respond to me  as if my “God” is really no God at all. (When the eminent biologist and crusading atheist, Dr. Richard Dawkins, was in Charlotte recently, in a Charlotte Talks inteview someone referred to the theology of the controversial Bishop John Spong. Dawkins’ rejoinder to the comment was that Spong didn’t believe in God, either — he just didn’t know it yet!)  Similarly, sometimes my hearers look at me with that “I thought he said he was a Baptist!?” look… and they don’t have to say any more, but I hear Dawkins’ comment, loud and clear. I don’t feel defensive about this — I’m neither ashamed nor insecure about these ideas. But this blog is about outlining my position… talking about these ideas… so to those who might consider me a closet atheist, too, I offer this affirmation:

“I believe that the reality of God is the heart of all that is.”

This is from a 2004 sermon, “Finding God: A Natural Revelation,” in which I renouce “Jesus in a tortilla,” and other similar “miraculous” manifestations of the external deity. (If you want to know about “Jesus in a tortilla,” you can find the sermon on our website: www.parkroadbaptist.org… worship tab….) Rejecting such clamor for the supernatural, in my view, is hardly equivalent to rejecting God. Equally defensible in my understanding is rejecting a God who intervenes, without rejecting God.

That’s right… I don’t believe in “divine intervention.” But I believe God is. The heart of all that is.

If this “non-interventionist God” sounds heretical, I beg to differ. It seems to me that the onus is on those who so fervently cling to an intervening God — to explain why God is ever removed from us, to begin with (thus requiring “intervening” action). The God of my non-intervening theology needs not — in fact CANNOT intervene — because this God is not, nor has ever been, apart from us. So whose God is indeed more powerful, the God who absconds most of the time, showing up inexplicably in tortilla shells — and in the rare and mystifying “miracles” of healing and the like (you know, the parking space close to the supermarket door when it’s raining) — or the God who is present, equally in all things and all times, blessing us with divine presence and energizing hope, comforting peace orconflicting initiative… but nonetheless ubiquitous here-ness — when we get our miracle, and when we do not?

I’ve made my choice, and it’s with the God of presence. Steady. Comforting (or conflicting). But day by day by day. The equal-opportunity God, who cares for all, not just the “faithful,” or the lucky. The God who cannot intervene, because whose eternal presence makes it not possible to do any more in any one moment than God is doing in every single moment.

“I believe that the reality of God is the heart of all that is.”

In God we live and move and have our being… (Acts 17.28).

God is above all and through all and in all… (Ephesians 4.6)

In all things God is working to bring about good… (Romans 8.28)

For the non-intervening God. Thanks be to God.

God.

“It started a billion years ago, a tiny trickle to the sea.

A grain of sand went tumblin’ down as helpless as can be.

But a gazillion grains for an eternal while left a canyon gaping like a snaggle-toothed-smile,

It’s amazing there – now more than the eye can see!

 

Some say it happened by a Hand controlling from on high.

 “Let it be,” and there is was – God only had to sigh.

Others say “that’s such a silly notion – like a little genie or a magic potion,”

And the canyon between them makes me want to cry.

 

Maybe there’s more to the ocean than thoughtless poetry in motion,

More the Grandest Canyon than pointless power, purely random,

More to faith and hope and love, and more than dreamers can dream of.

Some say there’s no more. Wouldn’t that be a bore… Maybe there’s more!”

 

As we were oooh-aaahing our way through the Grand Canyon on last summer’s sabbatical, I penned these lyrics to that minor melody that kept annoying its way through my frontal lobe. Struck by the grandiosity of the Big Gulley, and stuck in an affection for a scientific appreciation of it, I was trying to figure out how to affirm both.

 

Fully affirm both.

 

The science of a 14.7 billion year old universe, that has no end, that insists randomness is the key to our insignificant place in it. And the sense of transcendence that only a corpse on valium could miss, while rafting down those 48-degree waters and trying to take in the incomprehensible beauty of it all. As the boy said, “Something happened here.”

 

I believe we have to accept the science. All of it. We have no option. Unless we want to say that the open-heart surgery that just saved Dad’s life, the medication that keeps high blood pressure from exploding Mamma’s veins, the air condition that saved your life during last week’s heat wave, the internet that blows your kids’ minds (while threatening to simultaneously melt them down in a puddle of chaotic-constant-connectedness), and about a zillion more scientific advances… are all part of an atheistic agenda to turn the whole world against God.

 

Well, I don’t know about you, but I need my air conditioning (I actually believe in it!), so I’ve decided to do my part to put an end to the anti-science Jeremiad the Church has been waging against the godless Academy – even after it apologized to Copernicus and Galileo (albeit, 500 years too late!) I don’t understand all the science. (I’m not a scientist.) Come to think of it, I don’t understand electricity, either. (I’m not an electron, either.) But I’m pretty sure my air condition proves that all the theories about joules and watts and ohms and volts aren’t “just theories.”

 

Yet there is a gnawing… a nagging… an annoying… that won’t let me go. I’ve come about as close to trying to let go as any Baptist minister ought to try – but I can’t even get close. God is. On the worst days, that’s about as much as I can say. And on the best days, I realize how much that says.

 

God. Is. (The “more” in the universe.)

 

Why is there something and not nothing? Life, evolving upward? Consciousness, looking inward? Love, pushing the upward-evolving, inward-looking animal, in a sometimes life-ending gift of downward mobility? (What part of becoming a servant of all… laying down your life for your friend (your enemy?)… makes sense in the dog-eat-cat-eat-mouse-eat-amoeba frenzy of a blindly evolving, purposeless, meaningless infinity of inanimate soup?)

 

Maybe there’s more.

 

And maybe, somehow, beyond my little brain (and beyond the Particle Physicists’ big ones) there is some kind of fractal order to the chaotic randomness… some way to call meaning out of an evidently unplanned process…  some way to affirm both the godless Science, and remain Christian… some way to affirm the proof-less God, and remain intellectually authentic… Maybe there’s more.

 

“More to God than “Let there be.”

Less to prove than Faith can free.

Less to prove… More to see…

Less is More, indeed!…

 

I think there’s More.”

 

Russ

Defending the God who Cannot

 

One of the cornerstones of a traditional theology is the omnipotence of God. God, who created the universe, by the spoken word, out of nothing, has all power.¹ This tenet has been vigorously defended over centuries. For a pre-scientific people this was obvious. A plentiful harvest was the blessing of the all-powerful God. The famine was his curse. Storm and plague and every blessing… direct initiatives at the hand of the God who can do everything.

 

But hasn’t science really changed this? We no longer understand the lightning bolt as an expression of the anger of God. It is harder to say we have given up assigning the good fortunes of life as the direct intervention of God. How often have you heard someone say, “I’m blessed…”? This is code for, “Look what God did for me.” Yet, in a scientific world, it is more and more difficult to assign the day-to-day happenings of this world to the hand of God. Science affirms the chance ordering of nature, the random mutation which is at the heart of evolutionary process.

 

What if God is not all-powerful, in a strict sense – being able to push things around at his whim? Is a God who is less than all-powerful even God?

 

I believe we have misunderstood, and can, and should, make the case that God is NOT the “power” of the universe. Where the science of Newton (set laws that governed all natural principles) seemed to leave little room for God, it seems to me that the complexity of a Quantum world, again allows place for a divine mystery. Not divine control, intervening power… but divine mystery, the presence of a Presence, at work in and through all things.

 

What would a non-all-powerful God do? I explored my concept of a non-all-powerful God in a sermon in 2005. I just repeated it in this summer’s “Top Ten” series. It’s not yet been re-posted on the web, but can be found in the 2005 sermons under the “worship” tab on the church website: www.parkroadbaptist.org (Grasping at Silk: Everlasting Arms and the Problem of Pain).

 

Is it necessary to understand God as “all-powerful,” even from a biblical perspective?

 

If God is not “all-powerful,” does God cease to be God?

 

Might a God of presence and love be a more adequate expression of the God whom Jesus called his “Father”?

 

If God is “love,” what more would we really want God to “do”?

 

Russ

¹ Did God really create “ex nihilo,” even from a biblical perspective? Read the Genesis narrative carefully:  “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void…” Is it not possible to read this text and understand that when God began to “create” there was some manner of “stuff” already present? If so… perhaps the work of God is less “above” than “within,” less “controlling” than “wooing,” less “all-powerful” and more “mysterious presence.”