Why Did God Create The World?

It is one of those odd sweeping questions of idealistic youth which I've never really outgrown.

Today I cannot remember what caused the original fascination with the question. During college I think it might have gained some momentum from the ideas of the creation theologians of Europe whom Bo Reicke once told me about. I've still got those books . . . in a box somewhere. I'll have to dig them out and look at them again.

I do remember thinking at the time that an appropriate theological answer had to be "love," but every time I discussed this with serious people, the discussion, I think by mutual perception, always ended up feeling kind of, well, corny! 

The trouble was I couldn't exactly nail down any sources which propounded that answer, nor could I really point to a fully worked out history of the idea. I dabbled with it for a while, and like so many ideas and enthusiasms of youth, it ceased to preoccupy my attention eventually.

And then I happened to read this today and all that came flooding back. The selection finally gives me an historical fix on the problem, from an essay on the trinitarian theology of Jonathan Edwards, by one Daniel M. Harrell, here:

The infinite happiness of God in community generates a delight that cannot be contained (for then God would be less happy, a logical impossibility). God's love radiates outward, emanating forth like a fountain. Edwards preached:

There is in heaven this fountain of love, this eternal three in one, set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it. There this glorious God is manifested and shines forth in full glory, in beams of love; there the fountain overflows in streams and rivers of love and delight, enough for all to drink at, and to swim in, yea, so as to overflow the world as it were with a deluge of love.

It was this unhindered, radiating deluge of love that resulted in creation. Trinitarian love is manifest in the interrelatedness of creation—nothing exists in pure independence. Trinitarian love is manifest in redemption that ushers saints into participation in God's overflowing happiness, a happiness that extends infinitely into eternity.

As it turns out, Edwards was also responsible for another aspect of Christian theological thinking which prepared the way for the psychological-social interpretation of the Christian life as "relational," a concept derived directly from his conception of the trinity and necessarily following from it. It is uncanny how in Edwards' conception of the trinity the only begotten son of God is a kind of perfect projection of the infinitely perfect thoughts of the father, which conception has an interesting bearing on what people mean when they say they have a personal relationship with Jesus. Is he not also a projection of our own minds, mediated by the thoughts we have of him, absorbed through the Bible?

In retrospect it's no wonder that the interdisciplinary department in which I studied religion so long ago with experts in Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism and Islam failed me on this one. The Great Awakening wasn't exactly their forte.

Looks like I have some work cut out for me. At least I know where to start.

(originally posted June 2011)  

"N" Raises a Din

 

 

Vain show and noise intoxicate the brain

Begin with giddiness, and end in pain.

-- Edward Young

The Lifeblood of the Nation

"Money, the lifeblood of the nation,

Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,

Unless a proper circulation

Its motion and its heat maintains."

-- Jonathan Swift

"In a dull stream, which moving slow"

 

In a dull stream, which moving slow,

You hardly see the current flow;

When a small breeze obstructs the course,

It whirls about for want of force,

And in its narrow circle gathers

Nothing but chaff, and straws, and feathers:

The current of a female mind stops thus,

and turns with ev'ry wind;

Thus whirling round, together draws

Fools, fops, and rakes, for chaff and straws.

-- Jonathan Swift, 1713

Mugged By "M" I Am

 

 

I'm stopp'd by all the fools I meet,

And catechis'd in ev'ry street.

-- Jonathan Swift

Jesus, Greek Speaker

From Tom Wright in The Times Literary Supplement, here:

Greek was as ubiquitous in Jesus’s world as English is in much of the world today, and there is every reason to suppose that Jesus was more or less fluent in it (thus able, for instance, to argue with Pontius Pilate).

Pace the partisans of Aramaic and Latin.

The Illusions of "L"

 

Strange coz'nage! none would live past years again,

Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;

And from the dregs of life think to receive

What the first sprightly running could not give.

-- John Dryden

Did They Use The Parking Brake or The Brake Pedal?

Nitwit headline writer:

When It Came To Elite Opinion on Religion, Hitch Didn't Challenge It. He Affirmed It.

So Michael Lind for Salon here:

[A] British diplomat told me that he was astonished at the reputation Hitchens had attained in the U.S.: “In Britain we think of him as a gossip columnist.” ...

Hitchens was affirming rather than challenging an elite consensus when, on behalf of atheism, he mocked religious believers as not merely mistaken but contemptible and moronic. The religious are despised and dreaded by upscale Americans, and their British court jester could say what they dare not say themselves — although candidate Barack Obama came close in 2008, when he psychoanalyzed the white working class for the benefit of billionaire donors behind closed doors: “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

The First Christmas

"God shrank himself down into a little baby."

That's more or less verbatim, from the St. Matthew Lutheran Church Christmas Eve service at 7:30 PM, on Cascade Road, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

We also had a remote-controlled flying shark, a children's message, a sermon, the Lord's Supper, and a candlelight closing, which the choir absolutely slaughtered. You had to sing along really loudly just in self defense against "Peace, Peace" because there was no peace.

Thank God there wasn't a baptism, too, and a wedding thrown in or we would have been watching Albert Finney in Scrooge (1970) and eating pizza at midnight.

It reminded me of the time in Colorado we heard a sermon in a Lutheran church which likened the incarnation to a space shuttle launch: "Jesus blasted off the throne of God and came to earth."

"Honey, God shrank himself!" 

Christmas is Vanity: Had St. Paul Known of Christmas, Would He Have Approved?

"[H]ow can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain."

-- Gal. 4:9 ff.

"One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike."

-- Rom. 14:5

"Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ."

-- Col. 2:16 f.

That said, and quite apart from the well-known atheist war on Christmas, there is now some competition, or is it help?, from a small band of Christian extremists in Arkansas who think we're all guilty of idolatry in celebrating it.

Video here. 

To Judge or Not to Judge

"Then let us no more pass judgment on one another."

-- Romans 14:13

"For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?"

-- 1 Corinthians 5:12

The Virgin Birth Claim Was Already Strong Enough To Be Attacked By The Time Of John

Jesus saith unto them,

"If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father.

Then said they to him,

"We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, [even] God."

Jesus said unto them,

"If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me."

-- John 8:39-42

Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking

A fool layeth open his folly.

-- Proverbs 13:16 

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.   

-- Proverbs 17:28

A fool uttereth all his mind: but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards. 

-- Proverbs 29:11

A Knar of "K"

 

An honest man may take a knave's advice;

But idiots only may be cozen'd twice.

-- John Dryden

A Jabot of "J"

 

 

From this last toil again what knowledge flows?

Just as much, perhaps, as shows

That all his predecessor's rules

Were empty cant, all jargon of the schools.

-- Matthew Prior

Iambs for "I"

 

On ev'ry thorn delightful wisdom grows,

In ev'ry stream a sweet instruction flows;

But some untaught o'erhear the whisp'ring rill,

Inspite of sacred leisure, blockheads still.

-- Edward Young

Do not your alms before men, to be seen of them

The headline at mlive.com/news/grand-rapids reads:

For third day, strangers anonymously spend thousands at Kmart to pay off lay-away items.

A Ha'Penny for "H"

Half-wits are fleas, so little and so light,

We scarce could know they live, but that they bite.

-- John Dryden

A Gander at "G"

 

Mighty dulness crown'd,

shall take through Grub-street her triumphant round; 

And her Parnassus glancing o'er at once,

Behold a hundred sons, and each a dunce.

-- Alexander Pope

The Foppery of "F"

 

Fools to popular praise aspire

Of publick speeches, which worse fools admire;

While, from both benches, with redoubled sounds,

Th' applause of lords and commoners abounds.

-- John Dryden

The Effrontery of "E"

I lose my patience, and I own it too,

Where works are censur'd, not as bad, but new;

While, if our elders break all reason's laws,

Those fools demand not pardon, but applause.

-- Alexander Pope