Here's what I mean: lots of churchgoers are indoctrinated in a theology of God's "unconditional love". By theologians and apologists. In sermons and praise songs. A lopsided emphasis on God's "unconditional love". That's treated as God's central, overriding attribute, eclipsing all other attributes. And that's often set in explicit contrast to Calvinism.
I imagine, for many churchgoers, who never read the Bible cover to cover, that when they actually read about Noah's flood, God firebombing Sodom and Gomorrah, the holy war commands and narratives, capital crimes, God sending plagues, and hellfire passages in the NT, it generates cognitive dissonance. Having been conditioned by a one-sided theology of God's "unconditional love", they shake their heads in disbelief and ask how a "loving" God can say and do the things Scripture attributes to him.
If they were exposed to a more muscular, dare I say masculine theology, if their theological diet was balanced by God's justice and holiness as well as his love and mercy, reading these passages wouldn't create the same cognitive dissonance. To what extent is freewill theism making churchgoers apostates waiting to happen? Even passages condemning homosexuality are hard to square with God's "unconditional love". Such passages seem to be so judgmental and exclusionary.
God seems to embody what to our finite minds consists of contrary qualities. God is both gracious and full of wrath, for example. God is both simple and incomprehensible. Of course, what seems like conflicts to us in the divine nature are finer categorical distinctions that we normally have trouble putting together. Nevertheless, we can understand that these conflicts actually work together. The problem with freewill theology is that it is worse at making these kinds of distinctions than reformed theology. While we can point to other factors like a failure to trust the Scriptures first, it's the failure of discerning these finer categories that leads to denying and redefining what the Scriptures actually say. It's better to live with the tension first and work out the categories later than to stick to simpler categories and end up interpreting the Scriptures in such a way as to fit those simpler categories.
ReplyDelete'If they were exposed to a more muscular, dare I say masculine theology...'
ReplyDeleteExactly. Freewill theism is a largely feminine, emotional theology. Much of its approach to the Bible and the attributes of God is ad hoc and incongruous based on self-absorption and modern day sensibilities.
Tell me about it. A former professor at my university, Thomas Oord, is known for conceiving of God's love as uncontrolling in a radical way (e.g., God never works miracles against creaturely consent).
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, the holy war commandments are considered as suspect, at least, simply because of the reason you give: God is sentimentalist love.
ReplyDeleteA quick question: what do you have in mind by "free will Theism"? I'm not a Calvinist or theological determinist, but I am broadly Thomist, I suppose. Since I affirm predestination, I'm somewhat at odds with many of my professors, who seem to embrace some variety of open theirs.
In the current philosophical literature, libertarian freedom is usually defined in one or both of two ways: the ability to choose between alternate possibilities and/or to be the ultimate source of your own choices. In addition, the principle that our choices are uncaused (although that's sometimes qualified by will-setting).
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