Senior Essay
Posted on 05. Jan, 2005 by dwight in Uncategorized
I’m having a little trouble with my senior essay:
God rules the kingdom of heaven, and that is his realm. But he made everything, He rules everything, and so his realm extends to everything, even where his will is not obeyed. There is a paradox here, for we truly have free will, and yet our will cannot go against God’s will. Paradoxes are hard to think about, the mind constantly slides down and takes sides on the issue because of the non-contradiction principle. I guess the only way I can think of holding on to this thought is that God’s Will is that which cannot be contravened, and extends to his entire realm, but within his realm he created things which are able to make free choices. These choices are not subject to the Will of God, but can never cause an event to occur which God does not Will. That really just spreads the paradox out with the intent that you forget the first part by the time you read the second.
If anyone can help me out, please do :-)
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Nathan
Jan 5th, 2005
Guess for me the question is, “Does God always get what He wants?”
Kristi
Jan 5th, 2005
and consider what you deem to be the definitions of will. why is man’s will free? is it completely free? is it tainted by sin? is God’s will free? why do we not say “free” when speaking of His will? and what is will anyway? is will always active? is there such thing as a passive will? a will of allowance/permission, or a will of desire? Perhaps God has both? I don’t think Jesus wanted Judas to betray him, but he knew it would be so. He allowed it. I heard a great sermon on this, one of the last from the pastor at my church. I’ll dig up notes from it if they are pertinent.
Kristi
Jan 5th, 2005
p.s. what is the question/topic/texts that are at hand for your essay?
Dwight
Jan 5th, 2005
Right now “What is the Kingdom of God?”
I’m trying to find some more specific questions, but right now I’m trying to flesh out how various words are defined, and how much background I’m going to have to talk about.
dydimustk
Jan 5th, 2005
Dwight,
Our will can go against God’s will, Adam and Eve did it and everyone since then has done it. The difference is between God’s Kingdom and God’s Will. His Kingdom extends over everything and he has the RIGHT to control everything, but in creating us, he gave us the right to control our own kingdoms and to exert our own will within our kingdom, or area of influence. God’s desire is that we will align our wills with his. That is the Christian life and that is sanctification… our lives are made perfect when we strive to live a Godly kindgom life with our own wills.
The paradox is that God would want what’s best for us, but allows us to do what is worst for us. But that is this crazy thing called love. It must have the potential to fail for it to suceed so strongly.
When we pray, “may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” we are praying that God’s kingdom will come on earth. It was and is here in the person of Jesus Christ, and we bring it when we align our wills with God’s.
Dwight
Jan 5th, 2005
if anyone is interested, you can download my essay nearly up to the minute at:
http://homepage.mac.com/dwightk/johnnymail/kingdom-of-heaven.doc
That is a word document, if you can’t read it, tell me :-)
Idhrendur
Jan 5th, 2005
For extra fun on this topic, check out Daniel chapter 2. If the common interpretaion of the kingdoms as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, then Rome is correct, then the implication of the rock should be obvious :-)
Also, try checking out “When Heaven Invades Earth,” by Bill Johnson. In addition to being an excellent book in general, it also speaks of the Kingdom of God, though more from a standpoint of pratical application.
Julie VW
Jan 6th, 2005
Elie Wiesel says, that The Midrash says, “that injustice is inherent in man’s fate. God is omniscient, yet every man is responsible for his own freedom. Man is trapped; even when he opposes God, he is but accomplishing His will – which does not mitigate his punishment.”
He goes on to speculate, “Could that be the reason why Adam and Eve sinnerd with such lack of constraint? To rebel aginst this iniquity? As if to say ‘You could have prevented us from sinning; You did not. So be it, only now we shall do so freely, consciously, even deliberately.’ This may have been their chance to cry out against the incomprehensible laws of Him who wishes to be the Father and Judge of man.
Dwight
Jan 6th, 2005
Well, that goes against one of my tenets of faith: God is JustIt seems lazy to me to try to get out of the paradox (or antinomy ;-) ) by just trowing away one of the only reasons to read the Bible…
Dwight
Jan 6th, 2005
From Chris Bareford:
“Dear D-Rock,
I am not yet a blogger, so I will respond to you via email. The question you are struggling with is historically known by several different names. Usually it is referred to (as Kriti suggested) as the rift between god’s active and passive wills, or His perfect and permissive wills, the challenge being to describe how God can maintain perfect and total dominion over the earth while imperfect things are taking place everywhere. In other words, how can a perfect God be in total control, if sin is occuring everywhere, especially if God supposedly hates sin? This is similar to the question of why God “allows bad things to happen to good people.” There was a very popular book written on this subject in the (70?)’s by Harold Kushner, a Jewish rabbi. His ideas were trash, but he did raise some appropriate questions. For instance, he identified a certain triangle of interdependent issues on which these questions relied: He suggested that if God allowed bad things to happen to good people, which is inherently unfair, then either God is not good, not omnipotent, or God doesn’t know what is going to happen. Christians maintain that he is all three (good, pmnipotent and omniscient), but Kushner could not believe that He was all three at once, if evil existed. One may and should take issue with this threesome as the “most basic” formula in question, but it points to the fact that people struggle with the notion of a good God in an evil world. C.S. Lewis writes about this too in the Problem of Pain. You can read other books as well on the idea of God’s permissive and perfect wills. You should consider these ideas as well-what is the will? what is God’s ultimate purpose? to what extent is God perfect OR what is perfection? I also recommend that you speak with Sir Robert about the idea of pilot/copilot as it relates to power. Also, try to identify a SPECIFIC paradox or issue or question to examine-this is simply general advice; many papers suffer from vagueness in the premise which leads to vague or incomprehensible conclusions. God bless you, my man
Chris”
Anonymous
Jan 6th, 2005
Luther’s idea on the “two kinds of righteousness” (I’ll shorthand it as 2KR from now on) is helpful here. Yes, there is a paradox, and it should be maintained, but the lines can be drawn more clearly.
There is a righteousness before God (coram deo) and a righteousness in the world (coram mundo). The coram deo is a saving righteousness, being justified by grace through faith… it is unique to the Christian life. As this relates to will, no one has the free will to choose God. In a really important sense then, it is entirely appropriate to say that human beings don’t have free will.
However, there is another kind of righteousness, a civil righteousness, possible for any person. This type of righteousness does not save you or earn you any merit before God, but it is in this realm of the world that a Christian living out his or her faith will express their righteousness. Here falls things like doing nice things for your neighbor, upholding the law, etc.
Still though, this doesn’t address the gamut of what we can say about God’s will. There another paradox comes in. Questions about will are largely based on perspective. God does rule everything and is in complete control, and simultaneously his creatures make choices. Everything that happens is by necessity of God’s will, by nature of his being God and letting it happen. Still, that doesn’t free us from responsibility. Both things are going on simultaneously.
It doesn’t make any sense, but don’t give in to the temptation to try and find a solution. To try and resolve the paradox is to fall into error – either too far toward a Stoic like determinism or a free will that leaves you with a God who is not quite as Godly as He should be. The two errors can be seen in the Reformed tradition – Calvin’s double predestination on the deterministic side, and the Arminian error of “accepting Christ,” on the human will side. Don’t scratch the itch!
Jackson
Jan 6th, 2005
Here, Dwight. I’m a fan of the concrete, and maybe looking at something concrete will help here. Let’s look at a familiar parable of Jesus’, which I think pretty well illustrates the idea of a kingdom and how it works. But understanding it, there’s the difficulty…
(Luke 20:9-16)
He went on to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away emptyhanded. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away emptyhanded. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.
“Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’
“But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
“What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” When the people heard this, they said, “May this never be!”As far as will goes, I think one facet of the story can really help clear that up. The landowner, of course, represents God here, the Lord of the vineyard, the King of the Kingdom. The story works to communicate the truth about the situation, because one of the things it points out is that God is personal–He has motivations, and He decides things and does things for a reason. But here, His motivations are mysterious. He, being God, must have seen this coming…why did He let such irresponsible tenants tend his vineyard? Why did He let them try to usurp what was His due, knowing that He’d have to dispense justice on them anyway? Why would He let anyone besides Himself even mess with the vineyard in the first place?There’s no sense in giving away the answer; I certainly don’t know it, and could only restate the puzzle from a slightly different perspective. But I think once you can answer questions like these, and like Kristi’s (hooray for Kristi!), you’ll find the rudiments of a solution to the paradox. I think your brother is really on to something when he says: “The paradox is that God would want what’s best for us, but allows us to do what is worst for us. But that is this crazy thing called love. It must have the potential to fail for it to suceed so strongly.”
Dwight
Jan 6th, 2005
More from Chris:
“P.S. There is NO SUCH THING AS A PARADOX. paradox is a word we use to symbolize an as-yet-unsolved problem, but it does not in fact represent a problem which cannot be resolved (imagine the theological implications). Therefore, try to understand where the misunderstanding is and how it can be avoided, perhaps by greater precision of language (maybe where God is said to have two or more “wills” some other word is actually more appropriate). It occurs to me that Aquinas may have written something of “interest” on this subject, but I put it in quotes because his writing is not very interesting. Peace”
Dwight
Jan 6th, 2005
what if I call it an antinomy?
see, you are talking to a lutheran who believes in “consubstantiation:” The bread and wine are the body and blood… they are both actually bread and wine and actually christ’s body and blood…
paradox? antinomy?
Dwight
Jan 6th, 2005
Chris:
“D-Rock,
I did not include that bit about paradox in order to correct your usage of it-you can use it if you want. And I think paradox is the right word to use-I just wanted to express that paradox is a word often used incorrectly to mean something like “an unsolveable problem/contradiction.” When in fact, we know that God is not self-contradictory, nor has He created anything which is-therefore, a “paradox,” properly speaking, is simply not solved YET. It may be that the contradiction cannot be solved by human minds, but that is not a reason to claim, as some people do, that the problem cannot be solved at all. I only meant to make this distinction. In the case of consubstantiation, if it is in fact the case that the elements are both Christ’s blood and flesh and bread and wine all at once, then there must be some way, which is not self-contradicting, of understanding it, otherwise we must say that God himself is self-contradicting, or else that he doesn’t understand it himself-both of which are ridiculous. Do you see what I mean? Peace Out
Chris”