Category Archives: Genesis

If God is Trinity, then Freewill for Humanity is Guaranteed

07 Sunday Jan 2024

Posted by in Adam and Eve, Freedom, Genesis, Scripture, theology, Trinity

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When we talk about detailed theology—not bland generalities—of Christianity like the Church Fathers, we arrive at some decisive conclusions on the freewill/determinism dilemma. I’ve solved this dilemma in a scholarly article going to publication soon, but I wanted to piecemeal it out in my blog too. For those uninitiated, Calvinism holds that humanity’s freedom to choose God is nonexistent (a form of determinism). This means that when God saves someone, He changes their nature so that they are enabled and will choose Him. Those holding that freewill exists for humans usually think that God provided a prevenient grace (a grace prior to saving grace) that allows humans to choose God, but it does not compel them to choose God.

To be clear, I think both sides are wrong even if it sounds like I am siding with those holding to freewill. My trinitarian theology precludes both based on Genesis 1:27 – 28. God makes humanity, male and female, in His image: “Let Us make . . . .” When the disciples ask Jesus to show us the Father, Jesus replies, “Have I been with you so long and you do not recognize me.” The inner life of the Trinity (John 17 really gets at this in a grand way) is one of love, joy, and freedom; recall although Jesus says He was charged to give His life by His Father, He quickly adds, no one takes His life from Him. The Trinity is an interrelationality qualified by love, joy, and freedom; humanity is made in this image—incidentally, this makes sense of God’s image entailing both male and female, and then the entire idea of a family unit.

Most of us know it already, but healthy human life is not coercive. In fact, most love that is forced is rejected, met with scorn, or the “forcer” now sits in prison. This makes sense if humans are made in the image of God, and if we are designed to represent it and respond positively to it. The takeaway is that freedom is constitutive to love. There is no fully mature love that does not entail freedom. Said differently, love without freedom, based on the Trinity, is no longer love. Our prisons are full of the truth of this claim.

This means that if humans are made in God’s image, the ability to freely choose to love God must be. The Persons of the Trinity freely choose to love One Another; God’s image bearers must be able to do the same. Love is so central to God: humans made in His image must represent this central feature. The New Testament is sometimes called the Testament of love because of the dominance and centrality of love as its major theme. God is love, as John writes. It is a sizable issue to say that God made humanity in His image, but humanity cannot love like God can love, freely and without compulsion. Obviously, our human experience teaches us that I can love like God loves, choosing who I will love freely and without compulsion. Calvinists might say that we can do that only towards other humans but not towards God. This seems so strange though; what is qualitatively and clearly a better form of love can be given only to other humans and not to God. Others might object that “the fall” eliminated human ability to choose God—I wonder where in Genesis 1 – 3 it is discussed that this is a consequence of the fall?

I’m sure there are questions swirling in your mind, but I can’t layout the whole solution here. If God is Trinity, and humans are His image bearers, then humanity must be able to freely choose to love God. The Trinity’s love is eternally a love centered on another Person of the Trinity, freely and without compulsion yet decisively “other-focused.” This means that humanity’s love must entail this ability to center its love on a Person of the Trinity if humanity will represent this central feature of God as image bearer. Notably, Genesis 9:6 reminds readers that humans are made in God’s image and therefore certain evils must be punished severely, and this is long after the so-called fall of mankind. If the image of God prevailed after the fall, then capacities proper to it retain too. This is why the whole framework of Arminianism versus Calvinism simply does not work. Both positions concede that humanity lost abilities it had presumably in the garden paradise of Eden. It is strange, isn’t it, that the garden of Eden is thought of as a paradise when we know there was a heavenly rebellion of angels going on in the background (or at the same time)? Further, how does a paradise have an option for evil (tree) and a serpent (profound evil) there to push them into taking that evil option? If this is paradise, I am not sure I like the parameters.

If God is Trinity, then humanity must have the capacity to freely love the Trinity. This is central to who God is, which means that humanity must be imbued with the ability to do this as an Image bearer. If the only love humans can give God is of the compelled type, I am shocked that humans rotting in prison are there now. If compelling others to love you is most representative of how God forces humanity to love Him, why do we imprison humans for forcing love on others? I am not misrepresenting here: I was a Calvinist for a long time. Based on that framework, humans only choose God because God first changes their nature to make it happen. Calvinists are emphatic that humans do not have choice and can do nothing else to solicit this change in nature performed by God. In short, humans are not responding to God’s overture of love; instead, God is responding to God by putting an overture of love out there but only allowing Himself the ability to respond to that overture. Many may not have studied Islam like I did in my dissertation, but the Calvinist position here is frighteningly similar to how Allah loves. The larger point, and I will close on this, if love of the compelled type is how God interacts with humanity, it is a radical departure of the love God shared eternally in the Trinity. That is a huge problem.

Dr. Scalise

In the Beginning, God . . . The Grand Mystery

14 Thursday Jul 2022

Posted by in cosmic origins, Genesis, imagination, mystery, Science

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In the beginning, God . . .

 Scarce more profound a mystery be found. Aseity is how we discuss God’s self-sufficiency. To quote, Jesus the Christ, “I have life in myself as my father has life in Himself.” Although the Word of God only implies this attribute, aseity, to God here, the text invites us to conclude that God is indeed self-sufficient. We need not look for a reason or cause that somehow predates or precedes God. It touches our mind as a unfathomable truth that does allow us to fathom a bit of it. Applying the notion of time to God in this pre-history may be unfounded. Sequence may be merely a creaturely phenomenon that has no place for describing God’s divine pre-history existence.

We should not ask, “what was before God” because such a question already assumes that “time” is rightly applied to God prior to His creating. This is what boggled Richard Dawkins’ mind in his entirely insulting book, God is not Great. His claim was that we Christians only move the mystery back from the big bang to God but such a move, according to Dawkins, provides no more explanatory power than leaving the mystery at the big bang. I contend there are added benefits and explanation by supposing that God is and that the mystery resides with God rather than the big bang.

(1)  Locating the mystery of life with God and not the big bang provides a personal entity, God — rather than an impersonal force, the “bang,” — that is responsible for creating something entirely intelligently designed. This provides much explanatory power for why the universe should be here rather than not here. Only persons create organized and intelligently designed things. No sand castle has ever arisen apart from some child, a person, building it. No house erected from the arbitrary falling of logs in the woods; no a person comes and organizes it.

(2)  Dawkins is right that it moves the mystery to God but he is wrong that it does not provide us far greater resources in explaining the universe and purpose of life. A person such as God generating persons such as humans is a substantial foundation for purpose and meaning. If there is meaning that lasts beyond our life and the memories of descendants it will reside in the Mind of God, which would constitute our subjective meaning into the “objective annuls” of God’s mind, providing the complete basis for life not only to be meaningful in some daily yet ultimately waning sort of way, but then becoming actualized objective meaning.

(3)  Postulating a realm that God inhabited or simply was in pre-history breaks the need to explain (and ask) “what came before” — showing you are asking a question about creation rather than the Creator — by virtue of pointing out the fact that “cause and effect” implies sequence, but there is no reason to be compelled either from theological or scientific concerns to postulate that time and thus sequence existed prior to such a taxis and organization in the creation. Really, we have little idea what time is. Scripture states elsewhere and we live and move in God, and time might really be some realm or medium for humanity’s expression that is upheld by God although utterly different from Him. This is conjecture, but the point is that “time” is a humanly contrived idea that we use to describe our reality while also recognizing that “time” is really there even if in only abstract sort of way.

(4)  Given the law of entropy, there must be a generative force that is outside of or beyond the realm of nature or of the creation. Simply put, that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but yet energy exists, demands an “Energizer.” Postulating the natural world backward in infinite regression does nothing to solve this issue. In spiritual terms, there must be The Spirit for the life-energies of spirits to be.

(5)  God being Creator also provides us the resource of “intention” as a way to explain why the universe is and why it should have started at all. The big bang provides no such resource because forces do not “intend” anything. Rather than the universe’s existence being altogether arbitrary — as it would be if it were generated from an impersonal force — and just popping out of nothing, as though nothingness could produce something, a Personal Mind like God would simply intend to create, and such impulse to start something new is an experience each and every person has been involved with, analogously. Nothingness producing something is an experience no person ever has experienced in any real, relative, or analogous way.

Forces don’t have intention.

In the beginning God . . .  points to a fundamental relational reality you, me, everyone, will have with God. In every revealing there is a concealing. If God is such a Being that calls what is not into existence from resources of His own generation, then the Scriptural based claims of His infinite nature are not overblown (everlasting to everlasting). In an infinite series, there is always more ground to cover even if the ground upon which we currently stand is wondrous in its own right. Even here in Genesis 1:1, at the outset of all else God will say, this text maximizes attention on this single shining light, piercing through the veil of mystery which is the fact that God is. Period. God is.

Here at this moment, the moment, the moment that precedes all other moments, the moment that pervades all other moments as the mother of them all, here we find Creator and Lord in the one word, Elohim. He is before all and as such is over all. To lord, or rule, we discover entails the impulse to share, to serve, and to fashion something that is an echo, a “re-presentation” of all that Elohim is. Creativity, generosity, and gratuity are unveiled in these first three words, “in the beginning.” There is a start, and the start begs us to ask why. This Being, this God, cannot be compelled to create, clearly is not creating out of need or acting out of deficiency. Indeed, that God simply was already puts all such notions He could be deficient into the grave.

You share that creativity friend, you exhibit profound imagination. God went beyond what was to produce what was not. Why do you imagine things beyond your experience? Why do we love mythologies, DC, Marvel, Warhammer 40k? How intense this creativity is among all humanity; we all love stories and stories are evidence of our great making property that God invested into us: transcendence.  Surely, it is an absolute marvel to be screamed from the hill tops that you are a subcreator, with capacities to transcend. We go beyond, we break limitations as we press ever more into the mystery of the infinite divine. When you use that imagination, you are a representation of this first moment that made all other moments possible: “in the beginning God . . .” Art, recreation, these are the resounding chorus of God’s first paint stroke on the canvas of creation. You are part of that painting, and you contribute to that painting. What will you fashion this day? Will we find in you the same type of creator from deep resources uses your authority to bring into being something new and wonderful out of sheer pleasure and as a generous expression of your spirit, of who you are?  Will the ethos of Elohim mark you? Will you be a Lord and Creator who fashions life-giving ideals, models, truths, endeavors, hopes, to bring these into being as a participant in creation’s melody?

Take captive this moment, as it carries in it the memory of that first moment, “in the beginning God. .  .” Imagine, express, create: discern what is generous, and be about that this day. Life in not about prolonging days but about finding this life-giving moment, rehearsing its wonder, and drinking deeply from the well of self-giving rather than feeding the devourer, selfishness.

Presence

In the grand theater of cosmic origins, contained in only 4 words, “In the beginning God . . .” we find what is first and therefore foremost in the taxonomy of meaning, namely, Presence. There are really only two alternatives in the grand narrative of the universe: either Presence is the most basic reality or emptiness. Presence, friends, is the locus of meaning. Without presence, meaning is naught. In other words, before you can have meaning in your life, say from your father or mother, they first must be present. Their presence is required for meaning. Similarly, we are faced with the void if the universe is some god-less array of foundationally empty beginnings — whatever that would look like, and it is not logical so don’t break your mind trying to comprehend it.

If this was the meaning in the beginning, whatever else we learn about the purpose of the cosmos from later verses in Genesis, then this is the meaning for you today. That God is there; that God is the Presence immutably available to you. Are you a father, a mother, a brother, or a sister, what about a dear friend, a close colleague, a guide to the young, a teacher of the curious? First among all things is to make yourself present, to be there, to demonstrate your presence even as we see God having done the same: In the beginning God. There He was.

Dr. Scalise

Interpreting my wife’s pregnancy theologically: part II

15 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in Genesis, Pregnancy and Theology, Trinity and Pregnancy

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I wish to return to a bit more down-to-earth reflection on Gloria’s pregnancy next time, but you’ll no doubt forgive me for allowing the theologian in me to think a bit this time. Christians believe that God is the Holy Trinity; we especially have our Greek and Russian Orthodox brothers and sisters to thank for their wonderful tradition of thinking hard on how God is Three in One, with an eye to the Three-ness. What does all this have to do with my daughter who is currently in my wife’s womb, you may wonder? The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that each Person (Father, Son, and Spirit) dwell in One Another perfectly–which is why we Christians can still rationally claim that They are One. Similarly, a baby dwells in her mother, my daughter in Gloria, during pregnancy. Now, we must be careful not to push the comparison too far as though a pregnant woman is a perfect or exact analogy for God the Trinity; she is not. Nevertheless, a pregnant woman, I argue, is perhaps the best analogy in all of creation for God the Trinity. Where else is there a consciousness dwelling within another consciousness? This is what the doctrine of the Trinity commends although never without its own proper mystery. Someone might object: but God the Trinity is three, not two. This is true, but we would be amiss is we didn’t recognize that the child, my daughter, carries me (the father) within her as well. There is no doubt that she does biologically, and given the regular fact that children share their parents personalities, we are not speculating to hold that she likewise carries my personality in her as well. Thus, there are three people represented in my daughter, herself, my wife, and me. I got this thought during my research for my dissertation, and there I discuss it in far greater detail than I want to here. The idea does not owe to me, to be sure, because I looked hard at Gen. 1:26-28 and 2:24. When God says He makes “man” in His image in 1:27, He clearly refers to both man and woman in this image.

It reads, from the English Standard Version: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Thus, it would be better to translate the Hebrew word “adam,” at the beginning of verse 27 as humanity rather than man: “So God created humanity in His own image, in the image of God he created humanity; male and female he created them” (trans. mine from the Hebrew, italics and bold mine). Some might think this is reading into the text, but a common literary feature of Hebrew prose, and especially poetry, is that it uses parallelism, which is why, if you’ve ever read the OT at length, you always get the feeling that the authors are repeating themselves. They are! Thus, the final phrase, “male and female He recreated them,” is a parallel restatement of “in the image of God He created humanity.” This final line gives the most specific and detailed information about what the image of God is. For our word smiths and lovers of definitions, take heart because all Hebrew lexicons (dictionaries) relay that the Hebrew word, adam, has at least three meanings: one refers to the human being named Adam, the second to just man in the typical individual male sense, and finally, the one I am arguing for here, it can refer to all humans generally.

What do we find in Gen. 2:24? Verses 22-23 arguably give us a more specific account of how woman was created, by being taken from the rib of Adam. Then, God says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (ESV). What we find is that God creates woman by taking a part of Adam that dwelt in him (part of him), his rib, and creating woman. Then, God says man and woman are to procreate (sex) by the phrase “shall become one flesh.” God chose humanity, both man and woman, to be His analogy (image; cf. Gen. 1:27). The sexual component to human generation is part and parcel to this image since in 2:24 it is the very first thing we find out about the male and female relationship (they shall become one flesh). It was therefore not happenstance that I saw a image of the Trinity in my wife’s pregnancy; the pointers were already there in the first Book of Scripture.

My wife’s pregnancy is fulfilling the purpose contained in Gen. 2:24, and, through it, modeling, in an imperfect way, God the Trinity. Woman was taken from within man; and a child is comes by man from woman. One person, my daughter, Lydia, dwells within my wife, Gloria, and that one person, Lydia, contains both me and my wife as well as beautiful uniqueness all her own. A child is, in a fascinating sense, three persons in one; God, on the Christian view is three Persons in One, the Holy Trinity.

Dr. Scalise