Theology course: Week 8 reflection

This week’s lesson was sort of a continuation of the last one. It was about “perspectives on the problem of evil”. This was just more philosophy, rooted around the age-old question of: If there is a God and He is a good God, why does He still allow evil and suffering to exist? or, If evil exists, God cannot be good, because a good God would eliminate evil and suffering.

Personally, I have never spent much time wondering about this. We know that the Fall corrupted our world and introduced sin & death to mankind. Suffering is part of that; and as to why God would allow it, I think that’s just part of free will. Adam & Eve had free will to choose in the Garden of Eden, but they made the wrong choice, and therefore the perfection of the Garden was marred and mankind was doomed to suffer in one way or another (the man having to do painful toil to get the land to yield fruit, and the woman to suffer great pains in childbearing – which apparently includes PMS, monthly period cramps, wild peri-menopausal symptoms and crazy menopausal symptoms as well. I have a bone to pick with God: He never said anything about all this other stuff! But I digress).

So it’s not that God doesn’t want to stop suffering, but it’s part of the ‘curse’ that came with the Fall, so it couldn’t be removed because once Pandora’s Box has been opened, you can’t stuff all those things back inside it once again. You can’t go back to the way things once were. That’s why we have the Redemption story and the sacrifice of Jesus.

Anyway, to get back to the lesson, apparently there are two ways of dealing with the problem of evil, one of which is ‘theodicy’ – trying to explain why an all-powerful, good God would permit evil to exist, or in other words, trying to vindicate God from accusations that He hasn’t eradicated suffering because He doesn’t care that people are suffering; the second is a ‘defense’ which argues that there’s no problem with a scenario where God and evil co-exist, that it’s logical for them to do so – therefore, the presence of evil doesn’t automatically negate the presence of a powerful and good God.

But, if we ask, How can evil exist if God is all-good and all-powerful?, first we need to know what ‘evil’ means. So then the class got a few interpretations of ‘evil’, from Augustine, Irenaeus, Reformed movement, and Heiser.

Augustine’s view is that evil is a defect or lack. Thus, everything that God creates is good (because He’s a good God) but then evil came in and caused a ‘defect’ – thus we have ‘natural evils’ where because we live in a “defective” world, there are natural disasters, diseases, and other things not directly caused by human actions; but we also have ‘moral evils’ which result from human choices and misuse of free will, such as when a person commits a crime. So the idea here is that God isn’t behind evil, it’s humans making wrong choices that lead to evil.

Irenaeus’ view is that evil and suffering are permitted because they aid in moral and spiritual development; after all, “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Rom 5:2-4). To Irenaeus, suffering contributes to sanctification.

The Reformed view comes from Calvin’s theology (::sigh::) whereby, if God is absolutely sovereign and has determined all that will happen, then evil exists within His plan and is ordained for divine purposes – but moral evil still arises from human choices and is not God’s fault. Compatibilism and all that (see week 6’s reflection).

Finally, Heiser’s view opposes Calvin’s in the sense that Heiser believed God does foreknow all things, but that doesn’t mean that those things are predestined; God can know all possible outcomes without ordaining them. The lecturer used the example of 1 Sam 23:9-13 where David asked God whether Saul would come to the city where David was, and God said yes. And then David asked whether the citizens would surrender David to Saul, and God said yes again. So David, being smart, left the city, and those incidents did not occur. The argument is that God has foreknowledge of what could occur, like, “If A happens, B will happen” but it is not predestined that either A or B will happen. Humans still have free will to decide, so one can decide not to do A after all, and then B will also not take place. In this way, free will (leading to possible evil) and divine omniscience can coexist, so God again allows humans to make the choices that may lead to evil.

I like Heiser’s explanation and Augustine’s view; I think that Irenaeus’ idea about God allowing suffering in order to help us to mature and grow spiritually was probably a ‘by the way’ thing, like in Rom 8:28-29 – in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose, because He wants us to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. Sin and suffering have entered the world, so He had to redeem this somehow as He is the Redeemer, and I guess He therefore decided, why not make use of it? lol

After that, we got into “the logical problem of evil” based on J. L. Mackie’s philosophical thought experiment, and Plantinga’s response. I don’t want to get into this too much, because it is too convoluted. It involves propositions which are challenged and then re-formulated. Like, it takes a statement such as, “There are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do” (thus God would have the power to do anything), then proceeds to challenge the statement: Can God do the logically impossible? Like create a square circle? If He can’t, is this a limitation on God’s part? Then maybe the statement should be amended with a qualification: “There are no non-logical limits to what an omnipotent being can do.”

So, like, since we say that God is good and therefore, we think that He should eliminate evil or suffering because He is good, that means we believe that a good being would always eliminate evil as far as it can. But let’s say that eliminating this evil would bring about a greater evil, or it would somehow end up eliminating a good as a side effect – a good that outweighs that evil. Then would eliminating the original evil still be the right thing for a good being to do? So maybe we shouldn’t assume that a good God ought to remove all evil for the sake of removing it. Maybe some evils can’t be removed without removing certain goods because life is rarely black and white, and people aren’t all bad either. Like a thief and swindler who is a caring father to his children.

Likewise, maybe God, being good, values free will – because He is good and therefore doesn’t want to force every being to toe His line. So in His eyes, freedom is of “greater value” than ensuring zero evil by forcing people to follow Him like robots, therefore it’s worth the risk of the possible evil that may arise if/when humans misuse this freedom. And that’s how we conclude that the existence of evil is logically compatible with a good, omnipotent God.

The thought process is really logical and relies heavily on reasoning, so it was easy to follow, and didn’t feel like one was trying to turn one’s brains into a pretzel to defend the indefensible (like Calvin’s determinisim and compatibilism). But still, it’s … so much in your head. It’s very intellectual. Like you’re living in your own head, you know?

I get that all of this is important for apologetics because the problem of evil and suffering is a big one that trips up a lot of non-Christians… but eh. I can do this kind of thinking & reasoning, but I don’t like it because I feel that it’s unhealthy to be too much in my own head. You get too removed from the real world, I think.

The average person who is upset about the problem of suffering is usually upset because either they themselves or someone they care about has experienced great suffering. These kinds of thought experiments aren’t going to help them, neither will they convince them. You cannot argue a person into the Kingdom of God. People who want to argue are people who are already entrenched and firm in their belief; their mind is made up, they are not seeking to be convinced otherwise. They just want to prove they are right.

Which means that, in the end, this kind of philosophical thinking & reasoning is mostly just for your own intellectual satisfaction. You want to understand, so you go reason it out. But in understanding, I don’t know if anything really changes. Sure, now I understand – in my head – how God and evil can co-exist and why it is perhaps not logical to expect a good God to remove all evil & suffering from the world purely due to the fact that He is good and should not be able to tolerate evil. But if I were wounded in this area (like, if I or a loved one had suffered greatly and I was upset with God as a result), I don’t think that understanding this intellectually would change how I felt. Feelings are rarely affected by logic.

So, I don’t really know what to do with this information. Yay, we reconciled the issue of trusting a good God who allows evil to be present in this world, because we now know (or think we know) that He values human freedom… even though He was aware that humans would misuse this freedom. Uh… ok, that’s great, but so what? I am reassured that I’m not a robot being manipulated like a pawn on a chessboard, but apart from that, I don’t see much practical value in this information…

Theology course: Week 7 reflection

This week’s lesson was on faith & science. I admit I rolled my eyes at the topic. Because, if God is Creator, then obviously He’s also the creator of science, right? He created the earth and everything in/on it, and science is a “careful study of the structure and behaviour of the natural world” (as per the Cambridge Dictionary) so obviously science must be compatible with Scripture. WHAT ACTUALLY IS THERE TO DEBATE?!?!?

By now you can probably tell that theological studies are not agreeing with me. I think I’m lucky I took this subject as an “experiment” instead of signing up for a Masters in Christian Studies or some other similar thing. We’re only halfway through (lesson 7 of 12) and I already want to quit. But… I also shouldn’t stick my head in the sand and maybe, just MAYBE I need to know some of this stuff – it might be good to know – so I’m gonna make myself stick it out. Urgh. Adulting does suck.

Anyway, there are apparently four models used to interpret the relationship between faith & science (or the lecturer chose to highlight four, maybe there are more – he did say that sometimes there are too many things to cover, so he has had to choose the most common or prominent theories/concepts). The four are: the conflict model, the independence model, the dialogue model, and the integration model.

The conflict model puts faith and science in conflict due to a literal interpretation of the Bible. Like, you believe that God really made the world in seven 24-hour days but it conflicts with what we know of evolution. The independence model sees faith & science as independent – separate fields of enquiry – and therefore the two don’t overlap; science focuses on the “how” of things (how things work), while theology focuses on the ”why” of things (meaning, purpose, and value). The dialogue model sees science & theology as informing each other due to shared concepts like the origin of the world and acknowledges the differences between the two. The integration model sees theology & science as integrated, i.e. “belonging to one truth” (quoting from the lecturer’s slides) – both form a single coherent picture. No prizes for guessing which model I’m in favour of.

Then we moved on to views of creation, namely how the “7 days of creation” are interpreted. ::sigh::

For me, if you start with the position that Scripture and science cannot be in conflict because God created science, then there must be a way to understand and interpret Scripture which allows us to see that it does not contradict what we know to be true. Therefore, the seven days of creation can’t be literal 24-hour days.

So, apart from the literal (or traditional) view, which I have just thrown out of the window, we have the “day-age” view, which is still somewhat literal as it takes 2 Pet 3:8 (“With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day”) and says maybe the “day” in Genesis is representative of a longer period of time; but the other two views see “day” as metaphorical – the symbolic view says maybe the “days” aren’t actual days; based on the literary structure used in Genesis, maybe the author was just using “days” to give us an idea of the various stages of creation, since we humans only understand chorological & linear time; the analogy view says the “worked for six days and rested on the seventh” thing is supposed to help us understand God’s pattern of work & rest (by using an analogy) and it isn’t even meant to really focus on creation at all. I’m really much more inclined to the symbolic view; I think it’s the most logical. I don’t think the analogy view makes sense because there is too much detail in each of the six “days”, which would be unnecessary if all the author wanted was to emphasise the need for rest after working for six “days”.

Next, the lesson went into creation vs. creationism and various views of creationism – attempts to interpret when the creation of our known universe actually occurred. This is also an attempt by theologians to reconcile the age of the universe and the earth (as have so far been proven by science) to what is written in the Bible. So, I was also meh about it because again, I’m convinced that science and Scripture cannot contradict each other. I’m quite happy to admit that I don’t understand how it all works but I do know that God’s Word is Truth, but we also know that not all of the Bible is literal (hello, Song of Solomon and Revelation) so WHY would we insist on reading the account of creation literally? Some people are just hard-headed… like the Israelites ::cough::

(I should not say that. Mana tau got plank in my own eye but pointing out the speck in others’ eyes. Aiyoyo. Repent, repent)

Anyway, I am starting to wonder if I’m deficient in some way, because CLEARLY, my classmates are extremely interested in all these theological theories and debates and have read up about the various viewpoints and had questions about them. Do I accept things too easily? Am I too credulous? Have I been sticking my head in the sand? Bleargh.

Together with views on creationism, we have views on Adam & Eve: Were they real people? Does all of humanity really only descend from a single couple? But science and genetics apparently have suggested that humanity descended from a population of several thousand, not a single pair – this I learnt from my lecturer, I didn’t know it prior. Ish, all these are pointless thought experiments to me. I understand why it is important to some people to resolve these so-called “discrepancies” or figure out how to harmonise scientific knowledge & what Scripture has written. But it just isn’t important to me.

We talked about ancient and modern cosmology – the understanding of the universe and how it works – because, the lecturer said, we need to understand the view of the time in order to read the OT in context and understand the imagery/descriptions used. He showed us this video, which was very interesting:

Then we covered biblical inerrancy: “hard inerrancy” which means that all the content of the Bible is inerrant – all historical and scientific information included in it is also considered to be inerrant; vs. “limited inerrancy” which holds that Scripture is inerrant in matters of faith and salvation, but it was not intended as a science textbook so it may not be accurate in matters of science and history.

I think the latter makes more sense. Yes, Scripture is inspired by God, but I think God’s purpose in giving us His Word would have been to help us understand how He relates to us and how He wants us to relate to Him – the story of salvation and redemption. I think He wouldn’t be that concerned with correcting the authors’ understanding about how various aspects of nature work. It doesn’t matter if they didn’t know how rain is formed and what causes heavy rains leading to flooding, as long as they knew that God has ultimate control over the elements and that He can decree rain or drought. So it makes sense that they would have wrote about these things based on their understanding at that time.

Theology course: Week 6 reflection

This week I think there was too much jargon and I was disgruntled as a result. I think I was more annoyed by the pre-class reading materials, which caused me to approach the lesson in a less conducive frame of mind. Why was I so annoyed? I complained to my brother that the chapter on “meticulous providence” by Oliver Crisp was worse than the law textbooks which I had to read for my undergraduate degree! It’s like the theologian was not writing English, even though he was!

I needed more background knowledge in order to be able to understand Crisp’s writing. He started off by mentioning the Heidelberg Catechism and its definition of ‘meticulous providence’ in the first sentence as if he already expected readers to be familiar with both the catechism and the concept of ‘meticulous providence’. I had never heard of either in my life. Obviously, I was off to a bad start.

In fact, when I attended the lecture, I realised I didn’t even understand the topic: divine providence. Because one of the first things the lecturer pointed out was that providence is different from provision… which I didn’t know (oops). And that ‘providence’ refers to “God’s foresight and governance”. So ‘meticulous providence’ is about how God’s sovereignty plays out in the way He governs the world: that nothing can happen outside of His will, therefore everything that happens must be within His specific plan or decree.

This only led to more jargon, namely ‘determinism’, which I understood to mean more or less the same thing. I think it is called “determinism” from the root word ‘determine’, as in, “Everything that happens has already been determined beforehand, as it has been decreed by God.” If God is all-powerful and sovereign, then nothing can happen outside His purview, right?

Then we go to the thorny issue of free will. Because, if everything is already decreed by God, then do we have free will? The lecturer said that there are two types of free will: a) Free from coercion, and b) Free to have options (if only option is available, then arguably you don’t get free will to choose since there is nothing to choose from).

After that we went to primary and secondary causality. I did feel like we were bouncing around a bit cos this didn’t seem connected to the issue of free will. But anyway, God is “the uncaused first cause” (i.e. the primary cause) and any other factor or agent that causes something to happen in this world would be considered a secondary cause. The power that we humans have to cause things to happen is derived from God. The lecturer gave the example of a craftsman’s tools such as a hammer, saw, or chisel, which are secondary causes that enable a chair to be built. They derive their ability to “cause” a chair to form & come together from the craftsman himself. As an arts & crafts kind of person myself, I liked that illustration.

I just have to say here that I don’t care about all the arguments about how is it that God is sovereign and in control of all things, yet humans are still able to have free will.

Calvin’s view, as presented by the lecturer, makes him (Calvin) look silly cos he wanted so much to defend God’s complete sovereignty (God ordains all events, and nothing happens outside God’s will) that he then he had to twist himself into knots trying to explain that humankind could still retain free will even if they are doing things that were ordained by God before the beginning of time.

Somehow, in Calvin’s viewpoint, we have the freedom to voluntarily decide what we want to do, and our decisions end up magically compatible with God’s sovereign will even though God did not manipulate or ‘determine’ our actions. This is the concept of ‘compatibilism’ (more jargon!). It was invented to explain that determinism does not cancel out free will. In my notes, I wrote:

Soft determinism = people can still make decisions because of compatibilism. But although they make decisions, they did not really have a possibility of making a different choice because God had decreed from the beginning of time that they would do what they did. They think they have a choice and it feels like they have a choice, but the choice they actually make always aligns with God’s decree.

If reading that gave you a headache, imagine me sitting in this lecture.

We were also presented with viewpoints from Arminius and Molina, but I don’t care enough to go into them and they didn’t take as hard a stance as Calvin.

The next part of the lesson focused on our understanding of ‘foreknowledge’. We understand time in a linear way but God isn’t bound by the boundaries of time as we know it. So, for God, omniscience means that He sees everything at once instead of seeing events sequentially: that’s how He was able to see it all and know it all even before the dawn of creation. That’s timeless knowledge.

For us humans, because we think in terms of a chronological sequence of events, the fact that God knows the future is ‘foreknowledge’; but actually to God it is just… knowledge. It’s not that He knows what is going to happen – it’s that He knows everything, all at once. Being omniscient and omnipresent, He’s outside time & space so for Him there is no yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

This was very interesting to me and a new way of thinking. It helped me to understand what we mean when we say, “God has a plan” and “God is in control”. It’s not that God is in control so things will work out in the end or God is in control so He’s capable of turning things around at any time. It’s more like He is in control because He already knows it all, therefore events and situations will unfurl as they should. I am very tired so my thoughts may not be 100% clear.

The last part of the lesson was on predestination, again from Calvin, Arminius, and Molina’s view. I don’t care about that either, and I apparently didn’t take notes on this part although it is included in the lecturer’s slides. I think I am supposed to care because, just like with determinism, if one could be predestined as stated in Rom 8:30 then it might mean that our choices aren’t real choices and don’t really matter, because (especially in Calvin’s view) it was always going to happen anyway.

Then it would mean that, perhaps, there is no need to evangelise because the people who are going to be saved will be saved anyway. But it would also mean that God decides not to select certain people, which the lecturer said is called “double predestination” because some are chosen to be sons of God, while others are chosen not to be sons of God. Which sounds rather cruel, really.

But then that also reminds me of that parable where the labourers were recruited at different times of the day but promised the same wage, so at the end of the day it seemed unfair that the labourer who had worked since the morning received the same amount as another labourer who had only worked for two hours or something. I never really understood that parable. Like, is it meant to tell us that God's concept of fair is different from our concept of fair? Or, that God is always fair because He adhered to the terms of the contract, and gave the labourers strictly what they were owed, not comparing the contributions from each of them? But if He knew He was going to offer all workers the same amount -- and He should know, since He is ominiscient -- then He would also know that some workers would be getting the same amount of money for less amount of work. To refuse to give the earlier labourers more was kinda callous and cruel, in my opinion.

Anyway, going back to the lesson: So if one can be “not chosen” and God allows that person to follow his/her own sinful inclinations and eventually become subjects of His judgement & justice, it seems unfair and cruel. Then again, in the OT, God also chose Israel and didn’t choose other nations. Hmmm.

The lecturer posited that perhaps, predestination is not to be saved but to be conformed to the image of Jesus, as stated in Rom 8:29 – sort of like to restore the natural order. We were made in God’s image but the Fall marred that image, so in the context of this Bible passage, I think predestination is about being selected to partner with God in restoring the world to what it was originally meant to be.

We were reminded in class that Israel was also chosen (as I said earlier) – but they turned to idolatry many times and eventually got exiled from the promised land. So, the theory is that being chosen or “predestined” does not mean that one is saved. If Israel had been saved, they wouldn’t have continued to worship other gods.

The suggestion was: What if to be “the elect” means you were chosen to have access to the truth, to have access to God and His teachings and warnings and exhortations? Israel was supposed to be a testament to God’s power and goodness to the nations around them – the elect is supposed to teach others about God because they know Him and love Him. But having access to the truth does not mean you will put your trust in Him and commit yourself to Him – as seen with the Israelites. They still had a choice whether to do that or not (or so it seems. Calvin would have disagreed).

I like this “being predestined doesn’t mean one will automatically be saved” interpretation of the Scripture. It seems less harsh and unyielding compared to the idea that to be predestined means you were chosen to be saved, while others were chosen to be ultimately cast into hell. But 1 Tim 2:4 says God desires all men to be saved, so that interpretation doesn’t work for me.

John Piper explains 1 Tim 2:4 by saying that what God desires, He doesn’t always do; for example, He hates murder of the innocent (Prov 6:16-19), yet He decreed Jesus’ murder at the hands of Pontius Pilate (and all those who clamoured for Jesus to be put to death), in order to put into place the means of salvation. So, Piper says that God doesn’t choose to give the gift of sovereign grace to everyone, which means they don't get His help to open their eyes to the truth which would have brought them to belief and repentance. I don’t know why sovereign grace couldn’t be given to everyone; Piper wasn’t real clear about it. He wrote, “God is more committed to glorifying His own free and sovereign grace than He is to saving all.” That statement makes zero sense to me.

Anyway, Piper is Reformed and the Reformed “comes down from Calvin”, as my lecturer said. Calvin again… forever giving people headaches.

Theology course: Week 5 reflection

Last week we looked at the incommunicable attributes of God, so this week the lesson was on the communicable attributes of God, namely holiness and love.

Just like what I said about last week’s lesson, these attributes are by no means unfamiliar. But the fact that there were only two attributes (as opposed to five last week) meant that we could go at a slower pace and there was more space for the lecturer to explain or elaborate on various points. Also, most Christians should be familiar with the idea that God is holy and God is love, and no weird jargon was involved, so the lesson was more digestible for me 😂

The lecturer said these attributes are considered “communicable” because they are qualities that God shares with His creation, although humans can only possess these attributes in a limited and imperfect way. To me, using the word “share” was a bit odd, because it’s not like I share a slice of cake with you and then you have some cake and I also have some cake. Like, God is holy and then He says, “Here, have some holiness”?

Hmmm… but now that I think about it, He does actually do that. I mean, when we look at what Christ’s sacrifice did for us on the cross, that’s precisely what the Father did, isn’t it? We are only able to be holy because He makes us holy by cleansing us of all unrighteousness (1 Jn 1:9). And we are only able to love because He first loved us (I Jn 4:19). So… shared attributes. Hmmm.

The lecturer said that these shared attributes “are the very qualities that allow us to reflect God’s image”. I think that’s interesting, especially in relation to love, since Jesus did say that people will recognise us as His disciples by our love for one another (Jn 13:34-35). And because we humans are able to possess these attributes (even though in an imperfect way), we can kind of understand what God is like and relate to Him – we know what it is to love, so we can somewhat understand what it means when Scripture says, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).

Of course, we interpret ‘love’ through the lens of our own experiences, upbringing, and cultural background, as I mentioned in last week’s reflection. So maybe our understanding of God’s love will also always be imperfect, just as we will not be able to love Him (or anyone else) perfectly. Speaking of understanding God’s love, this is something that I shared during the week 3 class when we went into breakout groups and talked about an experience that helped us understand our Christian faith: I always knew that God loves us unconditionally; I was taught this from the time I was a child. But I didn’t truly understand it until my little nephew was born. I remember holding this tiny baby in my arms and being just totally in love with him... despite the fact that he had done nothing to make me love him. But I still loved him so much even when I had to change his stinky poopy diapers and clean his bumbum. This little guy was totally helpless and literally could do nothing to earn my love. He didn’t even know who I was at that point! That was when it hit me that this must be how God loves us. God just looks down on us and is filled with so much love… we don’t have to make ourselves worthy of His love. Coming from a home where I felt I had to meet parental expectations in order to be “good enough”, this was a lightbulb moment for me that I’ll never forget.

Most Christians know that God’s love is known or characterised as “agape love”, which CS Lewis made famous in his book The Four Loves. I never properly read that book but my parents had a copy, so I was aware of the concept, and maybe in my 47 years of life I’ve heard one or two sermons on God’s agape love along the way. ‘Agape’ is a Greek word that is usually translated as a sacrificial, unconditional love. The lecturer referred to the interpretation of agape love based on a book by Anders Nygren, a Swedish theologian: Agape and Eros.

Agape flows from God’s nature, not the worth of the object. Because, like I said earlier, my little nephew could do nothing to make himself worthy to me; likewise, we humans can do nothing to make ourselves worthy to God. So agape is not moved by worthiness or merit, but it creates value in the beloved. Like how I loved my baby nephew, and my love then gave him value, if you see what I mean. Agape is therefore transforming – the example given by the lecturer was like how by loving and accepting Zacchaeus, Jesus called him into a new life (Lk 19:1-10). It also always acts first and does not wait for the other party to initiate (mostly, I think, because we can’t. We can’t even have faith unless the Spirit enables us (1 Cor 12:3)).

The lecturer talked about agape being a motif of Christianity, meaning that it’s a recurring theme in the Bible. He gave a very detailed explanation of ‘motif’, along with ‘nuance’ and ‘metaphor’, but I personally think it is understandable by just saying that motif is an idea or theme that is repeated throughout a narrative. Maybe I’m biased because I have some understanding of literary devices due to my background in linguistics, but I do think that examples of the agape motif throughout Scripture would have been sufficient to help us see how this concept constantly shows up in the Biblical narrative.

Since the lecturer was referring to Nygren’s book, he also included Nygren’s understanding of ‘eros’, a different kind of love. Nygren’s interpretation is different from Lewis’ interpretation – the latter referred to eros as erotic love, which if I am not mistaken is often considered physical sexual love. But Nygren’s view of eros sees it as “arising from need and lack, seeking what it does not have”, a selfish kind of love that wants to acquire and is motivated by the value of the loved one (or the object). Like, you see something beautiful and you want to own it or be like it, maybe even be it.

The idea is that while God is agape, humans are eros? That’s what I understood from the lecture. That humans love God with this selfish kind of love that seeks self-fulfilment and desires beauty & immortality (because we want to hold on to those beautiful things forever)… and therefore eros helps us find our way to God because God is the “Absolute Beauty” and we “strive upward”? I mean, this concept is kinda weird to me and I don’t really see the point in including this in the lesson because at this point we had deviated from God’s communicable attributes, moving instead to a human attribute. But still, okay I agree that humans are inherently selfish but I don’t agree that this selfishness causes us to strive toward God because we know that idolatry exists. If this concept of eros were true, the Israelites wouldn’t have ended up worshipping the golden calf… just sayin’. I know the lecturer was only able to give us a very brief summary of the concept and maybe I didn’t understand it properly, but this is what I got from the class, so… 🤷🏻‍♀️

Moving on! The other communicable attribute of God is holiness, which was highly emphasised in the Old Testament. I think it is interesting that holiness is not as emphasised in the New Testament. It is certainly mentioned, but in my opinion the focus of the NT seems to be more of what Christ has done for us and how we should respond in return. God’s holiness seems to take a back seat as we no longer have to “fear” Him in the way that the Israelites did (we no longer have to face consequences like the guy who got zapped dead just because he dared to touch the Ark of the Covenant to prevent it from falling off the cart drawn by oxen, in 2 Sam 6:6-7). We also no longer have to follow the long list of rituals and offerings for sins which are listed in Leviticus. Those served to remind the Israelites that God was holy and that they had to take sin seriously, because His holiness would not allow Him to dwell among them if sin was present.

Something new that I learnt from the class is that “sin pollutes not only individuals, but the community and the sanctuary itself”. Our lecturer spoke at length about the Jews’ annual “Day of Atonement”, or “Yom Kippur”, where the high priest would make atonement for himself and his family first by sacrificing a bull, then make atonement for the Israelites by sacrificing a goat. This was for unintentional sins that he and the community had committed over the period of the past year. Because, even if we don’t deliberately sin, due to our sinful nature (and the Fall) all of humanity is already inherently impure – this is my understanding – and also, don’t forget that there are also sins of omission, which we often do not take into account or do not realise. We would also have had fleeting sinful thoughts and/or perhaps less fleeting sinful attitudes (including stubbornness and rebellion!) which we also may not have noticed or err, have been in denial about 🙈

So on Yom Kippur, the high priest was to take the blood of the sacrificed bull and goat and enter the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle, where he would sprinkle the blood over and in front of atonement lid, or mercy seat, to “make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been” (Lev 16:16, NIV), then go out to the altar of incense in the Holy Place to place the blood on all the horns of the altar and sprinkle the blood on the altar seven times, using his finger. After completing all this, he would have made atonement “for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar” (Lev 16:20, NIV).

To be honest, my eyes have always glazed over while reading Leviticus, so I did not realise that even the Tabernacle itself had required cleansing. The lecturer told us that sin defiles not only people, but also places and items. As stated in Num 35:33 (NET): “You must not pollute the land where you live, for blood defiles the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed there, except by the blood of the person who shed it.” Whoa. Now I am thinking of Sudan and Ukraine and Gaza, and other lands where war and bloodshed have occurred. Oooh boy. That is a lot of defiled land. 

The “scapegoat” part of Yom Kippur, that one I knew. The high priest is to place his hands on a second goat, confess all the sins and transgressions of the people over it, “put them on the goat’s head” (Lev 16:21) and then the goat is sent far away into the desert. Our lecturer said this served as a visual demonstration of how sin must be expelled in order for God’s presence to remain – because He is holy and cannot dwell among a sinful people. But I believe it was also a foreshadowing of how one day Christ, the Lamb of God (erm, okay, not goat 😅) would remove our sins “as far as the east is from the west” (Ps 103:12).

Actually, in the course outline, this week's class was also supposed to cover grace, mercy, longsuffering, truth, and lovingkindness (plus righteousness and goodness, but I guess those kinda overlap somewhat with holiness and a few of the others). I guess the lecturer tweaked his content, maybe after the experience of teaching last week’s class where it was so difficult to fully explain so many concepts all at once.

Theology course: Week 4 reflection

If I thought last week was philosophical, this week’s topic almost did me in… 

The topic was “The incommunicable attributes of God”. Why are they incommunicable? Apparently because they are not passed on or “communicated” to humans or other creatures, because these attributes belong only to God. Ummm my first thought was: that is not how I understand ‘communicable’ 😅 But now that I’m writing this reflection, I remembered (or the Holy Spirit reminded me) of the term ‘communicable diseases’ which kinda uses the word in the same context, so yeah, I get it. I guess it was just such an odd context in which to hear this word being used, because when it comes to God, I don’t normally consider that He has any characteristics which are shared… He is so separate from us and so ‘other’ that I had not really considered that we have much in common at all!

The lecturer covered five incommunicable attributes of God: Aseity (I knowwwwww. What on earth is that?!), independence, simplicity, immutability, and infinity. Of all of these, I had only heard of “immutable” and “infinite” before, as applied to God. ‘Immutable’ describes God’s unchanging nature (“the same yesterday, today, and forever”: Heb 13:8). In my experience ‘infinite’ usually refers to His infinite love, but in this class I learnt that by itself, ‘infinite’ refers to the fact that God is not bound by time or space because He is Lord of it; that’s how He is eternal and omnipresent. These are all pretty familiar concepts. So far, so good.

The lecturer asked us to consider how God’s immutability jives with the parts of Scripture that say, “God changed His mind” (after someone prayed to Him) or “God was angry with Israel for her disobedience”. Apparently, some people suggest that this cancels out immutability because changing your mind is… change… and getting angry is also a change of emotional state, which is… change. I was like eh?

I cannot conceive that there are people who enjoy nitpicking and arguing about such things. God’s immutable nature means that His core personhood – His values and character – does not change. Is that not obvious? He’s the Rock of Ages (Isa 26:4), that means you can trust in who He is. That’s about His core personhood. 

I liked how the lecturer further elaborated that the Bible uses “anthropomorphic language” to describe God in human ways because that’s the only way we could understand certain things. You always interpret and understand something (or someone) from the lens of your own background and experiences. We don’t have anything else that we could use to describe God, or that could help us to understand Him. So we would ascribe certain human reactions to Him – this certainly explains why He would say, “I am a jealous God” to the Israelites (Ex 20:5; Ex 34:14), which seems odd for an all-powerful being to say, especially one that has no need for people’s allegiance, because He is self-sufficient.

Which brings us to the attribute of ‘independent’: God is self-sufficient and doesn’t derive His power, holiness, or knowledge from any external sources; He also isn’t dependent on anyone, as He is all-powerful and sovereign; and He makes decisions based on His own will, not forced by any outside source. So why then did He create us, if He doesn’t need us or need our worship?

The lecturer explained this by giving us Thomas Aquinas’ analogy of God being like the sun. The sun radiates light and gives out heat due to its nature, not because it intends to or wants to; likewise, God creates (created?) because it is part of His nature. But I’m not so sure about this because, if so, God should be constantly creating. Is He constantly creating? If we just look at our Earth, well, maybe He is. He’s not creating something from nothing, like bringing us into being, but He is creating in the sense that there is new life sprouting every day from the ground, and new babies being born, and baby animals too. Can be considered creating? I guess so.

God is Creator and therefore He is the one who came before everything: This is another attribute, the one with the weird name (well, it’s weird to me – turns out it’s from Latin): Aseity. I have heard of God being “the uncaused first cause” and that’s basically what ‘aseity’ means. I have to admit I was put off by the name because it feels like jargon. I know every field and industry has its own jargon, but I often feel like jargon makes ideas and concepts inaccessible to people because the words are unfamiliar and scary and it freaks people out, making them think that this is some incomprehensible piece of knowledge that only those with some kind of specialist training or expertise would be able to understand.

Anyway, the idea that God was there before time even existed and that He exists “of Himself, in Himself, and through Himself” is also not a new one to me; it’s just that I didn’t know what that characteristic was called. As the Creator, all creatures exist from Him, through Him, and for Him, that’s why He’s the sovereign one and Lord over all creation. Logical, right? 

Perhaps if the lecturer were to lead with the description of the attribute before giving the name of the attribute, it would not seem so scary and it would be easier for us to grasp. Cos the moment I saw that foreign word, it was like my mind threw up a mental block and I was already bracing for a complicated and difficult concept. But actually, it is not that difficult nor abstract. Also, the lecturer led with this attribute before going into the other four, and I think I know why because everything seems to flow from God being "the uncaused first cause". But at the time, because my brain felt overloaded from the start trying to make sense of this unfamiliar term and the philosophical thinking attached to it, that made the rest of the lecture feel like wading through quicksand 😭

Here is said philosophical reasoning, quoting from my lecturer’s slides:

“Aseity is what makes God a necessary being (one that cannot not exist). If God lacks aseity, then God is a contingent being (one that could not exist). His existence would depend on some prior cause, condition, or reality.”

It was a bit difficult to wrap my head around this part, but in the end, it still boils down to the fact that God is not a created being and He existed before everything. Because, if He were created, then He wouldn’t be God – He would be on our level.

And, because He is “the uncaused first cause”, He is the source of everything else and can call things into being out of nothing. Whereas, as my lecturer said, if God were created, then He wouldn’t have this power: “He would be more of a shaper or organiser of reality rather than its ultimate source.” Think about it; when we humans “create”, we can’t make something out of nothing. We can only take existing materials and make something new with them. Like, when we’re painting, we need the paint and canvas for us to bring that piece of art into existence. But God doesn’t need to use anything else to create because He is self-sufficient.

So yes, I think it is a pretty straightforward concept wrapped up in complicated language. The last attribute of God was “simplicity”, which in this context has a different meaning from the everyday word. It means God is not made up of parts or divided attributes – “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut 6:4). The lecturer contrasted this with the Greek and Roman deities, where each deity was assigned a different trait, such as the god of war, the goddess of love, etc. But our God doesn’t just possess those traits; they are an intrinsic part of who He is, e.g. He is love (1 Jn 4:8).

This reflection is too ridiculously long (MS Word tells me it is currently 1298 words) but I’m also writing to help me remember the stuff I’ve learnt. I would fail if I was actually doing this for my assignment, cos the lecturer only wanted 300-400 words 😂 Overall, I think I understand better after writing this reflection than when I was listening to the lecture, cos there was so much information packed into the 2.5 hours and it was all just touch and go, touch and go, moving so fast that I started to feel like I was experiencing information overload (especially when it’s 10pm on a weekday, after working a full day and battling 1.5 hours of traffic to get home in time to log in to Zoom at 7:30pm). But now that I’ve had the opportunity to process the information, I find that it wasn’t that incomprehensible or overwhelming after all.

Theology course: Week 3 reflection

Aaaaa I am behind in my reflections! The lesson took place on 4 Sept and look what date today is… *eep I am a bad student* 🙈

   

In this lesson, we covered the last source of theology (religious experience) from last week and then went on to how God is revealed to His creation. Using human religious experience to understand Christian theology is something that I guess most Christians do, but maybe the charismatic or AOG (Assemblies of God) churches rely on more? I know that I’ve definitely noticed how the “rah rah churches” (as I like to call them) use music to create an atmosphere and stir up the emotions, particularly during altar calls. I’ve come to distrust this as I see it as a kind of psychological manipulation. 

I remember attending cell group leader training at one church and being taught how to select songs which move from fast to slow so that you can build up the atmosphere… yes, they really said that! “Build up the atmosphere”! It made me wonder, do we actually believe that the Holy Spirit can move people or are we feeling like we have to “help” Him – or worse, simulate His presence?

Anyway, to move on before I get stuck here and write 1,500 words on this alone, there’s also intellectual experience and religious experience, so not everything is about emotions and psychological experience. Religious experience includes divine encounters (such as the moment you are convicted by the Holy Spirit and decide to accept Christ) but also just simply trusting God’s promises and participating in acts of worship such as praying and singing worship songs. All this is not an issue for me but I feel that there’s a fine line between divine encounters and psychological experience because I think sometimes we want something so much that when we pray for it, it’s easy to misread the “signs” and interpret them to mean whatever we want them to mean.

When we moved on to the “revelation of God”, things turned so philosophical that I gave up on even writing notes at some point. The lecturer sends us his slides after every class, but I prefer my notes because I try to write things down in a way that I can understand them. He does go through the slides so fast that I can barely write anything down sometimes, but I still try to take things down because I can’t just sit there and listen – I would fall asleep 😂

We started with “natural theology” and what I think was a chronological progression through the views of natural theology through the ages? That is a question mark because I’m not sure lol. But first we were given Thomas Aquinas’ views on natural theology, then John Calvin’s views on it, then the concept of “God’s two Books” during the Renaissance in the 17th century, then the Eastern Orthodox view of natural theology, then Karl Barth & Emil Brunner’s opposing views of natural theology. So I looked it up: Aquinas lived from about 1224 to 1274; Calvin from 1509-1564; Barth from 1886-1968; Brunner from 1889-1966. That is chonological. But the Eastern Orthodoxy concept of natural theology pre-dates Aquinas (it was already being spread during the Byzantine era, as stated by Bradshaw (2020)) so I’m not sure why this was in the middle of all the others instead of being the first?

I think I kinda understand natural theology because Rom 1:19-20 states that God's “invisible attributes” (ESV) have been revealed and therefore can be perceived in all of His creation, in the natural world. So Aquinas' idea that creation carries God's fingerprints definitely is Scriptural. I don’t think Calvin's theory contradicts Aquinas; Calvin said that we can understand or know God as Creator by reflecting on His creation, as it reveals His divine wisdom & grace. So they’re all essentially saying the same thing, even the Eastern Orthodox dogma, except for Barth, who was against the idea that you could get to know God by studying His creation, and insisted that we can only rely on revelation from God through Christ (at least, that’s what I understood from the lesson). Everyone else seems to have accepted that you could have both sources of revelation. I would have liked to know how Barth interpreted or explained Rom 1:19-20. 

After that we moved to “philosophy of religion” – this is where I stopped taking notes, and I didn’t really absorb anything until we moved on to “revelation of God”, where we got back to Barth and his concept of the three forms of the Word of God. But I was confused why we went from “philosophy of religion” to “revelation of God” – because isn't natural theology also part of the revelation of God, so shouldn't it be a sub-topic? Therefore this topic of “revelation of God” should come first, and “natural theology” come later as natural theology is a more specific form of revelation? (To be precise: revelation through God's creation) 

I quite liked the “revelation of God” part, in particular Barth's concept of “three forms of the Word”. So we have the revealed Word (Christ), the written Word (Scripture), and the proclaimed Word (teachings and sermons which contextualise Scripture and make it relevant for today’s believers). All this makes sense to me; also his 3Rs concept that shows that each member of the Trinity is involved in revealing God to us: The Father starts the ball rolling by revealing Himself, then Jesus is sent as a concrete embodiment of God and a tangible revelation, not to mention He is the Word (Jn 1:1) so this revelation also includes the Bible, God’s Word. Lastly, the Holy Spirit dwells in us, helping us to understand God (Jn 16:13), and illuminates Scripture as well, making it come alive for us. The 3Rs are not a new concept to me, just that I had not heard them presented in such a neat package next to each other. They are called 3Rs because the Father is the Revealer, Jesus is the Revelation, and Holy Spirit is the Revealedness(!). From the point of view of an English teacher, I really think Barth was trying too hard with that last R...

Theology course: Week 2 reflection

This week the lesson was about four sources of theology: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. We covered the first three. Theology is said to be “conducting a study of God in order to understand Him and our relationship with Him” (a loose semi-paraphrase based on my understanding of last week’s lesson). The branches of theology, which I wrote about in last week’s reflection, are tools and methods used in this process of trying to understand God. So this week it was about where do we get the information about God in order to understand Him.

I put off writing this reflection because I found the class very theoretical. Like, there was a lot of information -- new information -- and I felt that I was being bombarded with all this new information without being given the time to absorb it and understand what it means or why it is important to know. For example: Under ‘Scripture’ as a source of theology, I learnt that the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the OT) is called the Septuagint, and that was good to know since I had heard of the Septuagint before but didn’t know what it is (seen it mentioned in footnotes in some of my Bibles, in passages where a word has possible alternative interpretations). But I don’t just want to know what it is, I want to know other stuff like perhaps how accurate the translation is considered to be, who translated it, and when it was translated. The lecturer did say that he’s just giving us an overview or introduction and that we would have to delve into the various topics more deeply on our own if we wanted to know more, but I was frustrated nevertheless. 

When the discussion moved to ‘tradition’ as a source of theology, I could identify with this somewhat since I'm in a church which is fairly liturgical and still recites the Apostles’ Creed (usually on Holy Communion Sundays, once a month). Then again, I have never thought of liturgy or the Apostles’ Creed to be sources of theology; I have thought of them as reflecting theology, which is to say that doctrine comes first and liturgy & the creeds need to correctly portray the doctrine, otherwise they ought to get thrown out. 

As I was writing the above, it occurred to me to wonder what’s the difference between theology and doctrine, so I did the usual thing and googled it. Two quotes:

Theology, or Christian theology, is the more general term. It refers to the study of the God of the Bible. Doctrine refers to the specific teachings about God that are found in a study of theology such as the “doctrine” of salvation or the “doctrine” of the afterlife. —Don Stewart, Blue Letter Bible

...doctrine typically refers to the primary teachings of a particular denomination or church. Orthodox Christian doctrine elaborates the dogma (core beliefs) that have been set forth in the historic and orthodox creeds (e.g. the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed). Though most churches embrace the creeds as the core of their doctrinal teaching, different doctrines have emerged from this core. ...Theology explores the ways in which doctrine (and dogma) are understood. ...Christian theology is the study of God based on the teachings of the Bible—a study that includes all aspects of God, including his deity, nature, purpose, attributes, relationship to the world and other beings, and more. —Ted Johnston, Grace Communion Seminary

 Oooookay. Getting technical here. 

Anyway, then the lecturer went into the Reformation and how the Reformers waged war against tradition because accepting tradition as a source of theology had allowed practices & doctrines such as indulgences, purgatory, and dogmas about Mother Mary to develop and be accepted into the church even though they weren’t rooted in Scripture. I can see their point, which is why I said earlier that doctrine should come before tradition, but since I have just found out that doctrine refers to the teachings of a particular denomination (which, come to think of it, explains why the Roman Catholic church continues to hold on to the teachings about purgatory and Mother Mary) then it makes sense that the Reformers’ battle cry was “Sola scriptura” -- Scripture alone. Scripture should shape both doctrine and tradition; I totally agree with that.

I think the lecturer was laying out historical events in a chronological order (how tradition had originally been accepted as a source of theology, then the Reformers turning against it and insisting on going back to Scripture alone) but somehow I got confused... maybe because I didn’t understand the difference between theology and doctrine. 

But he lost me totally when he went on to the third source of theology, which is ‘reason’. Scholastic theology I understood, even if I wondered if it was really necessary to know what a “syllogism” is and to know that Thomas Aquinas used that. But Enlightenment Rationalism (an intellectual movement of the 7th-18th centuries) rejects the need for divine revelation and tradition, emphasising human reason as the supreme authority for knowledge (I am plagiarising from my lecturer’s slides here... heh). So it seems to reject God? Then why is it included under “reason” as a way to understand God? And then we have analytic theology, which came after Enlightenment Rationalism (in the 20th-21st centuries), and I understood that too, but I didn’t really understand the difference between scholastic and analytic theology (despite the nice table that the lecturer put up to show a comparison of the two side-by-side). And analytic theology didn’t seem to be a response or pushback against Enlightenment Rationalism? So why was the latter even mentioned? Superrrrrrrr confused. 

I think mostly I felt that the lecture was a bit dry, perhaps because so much information was packed into 2.5 hours that the lecturer did not really have time to dwell on any of the points. It was just touch and go, touch and go, a bit like a choo-choo train and I didn’t understand the significance of some of the things we were being taught. I’m a person who always likes to know, Why do I need to know this? or, How is this applicable? 

The main takeaway I got from this class is that it’s dangerous to rely on tradition as a source of theology because tradition can kinda take on a life of its own. As humans, we get very comfortable with the way we do things. We find comfort in the familiar. Each Sunday, we sit in the same place in church even though we have the option not to. Habits are formed, and later become so ingrained that they’re hard to break. In a sense, traditions are simply one type of habit. I can understand why the Reformation caused the split from the Roman Catholic Church. It would be hard for the church and all her leaders to admit that they had gone wrong and believed in -- not to mention taught / practised -- the wrong thing. There would be ego involved (although there shouldn’t be) because leaders are human beings too, and even if they did accept that they were wrong after being confronted, there would probably be the concern, “If we do admit to this, then what if people turn against the church and start leaving the faith?” Tradition needs to be rooted in Scripture, not just be “something that we do” or “the way things are done because we have always done it this way”.