This is part of the book I am working on, on creatio ex nihilo.

 

            This is a selection from my current book project, A Brief Process Reappraisal of Creatio Ex Nihilo.  I am citing and responding to my friend Tom Oord.  My respect for Tom is profound.  We agree on a lot!  This is about the only substantive disagreement I have with him. I thought this blog was a good place to share this.

My friend and colleague Thomas Jay Oord mentions on his website, Nine Problems with Creatio Ex Nihilo. (Tom's essay can be found here.) I honestly don’t see any of these as problems myself, but some of them are better ideas than others.  Overall, though, I do not find these objections very convincing.  I will list the nine points, and respond to each in italicized type.

1. Theoretical problem: absolute nothingness cannot be conceived. I do not see this as a problem.  Just because someone cannot conceive of something does not mean that no one could ever conceive of it.  At best that seems to me to be an unknown.
2. Historical problem: Creatio ex nihilo was first proposed by Gnostics – Basilides and Valentinus – who assumed that creation was inherently evil and that God does not act in history.  It was adopted by early Christian theologians to affirm the kind of absolute divine power that many Christians – especially Wesleyans – now reject.  Two things here.  I believe we need to be open to truth no matter what the source, so who proposed creatio ex nihilo has no bearing on whether it is true.  I also think that just because an idea was conceived to support another idea does not mean the idea is false.  Elton Trueblood used to say if Y is a consequent of X, and X is proven false, Y is also false.  But that is not what this is.  This is saying an idea was formed to support an idea, and that is not the same as being a consequent.  I believe again that has no bearing on the truth of a concept.

3. Empirical problem: We have no evidence that our universe originally came into being from absolutely nothing.  We also have no evidence that it did not.  And even if we have evidence that our current universe came from some precedent material, we have no conclusive evidence that matter has always existed.  At best, this seems to me to push the argument back a step, but does not settle the ultimate issue of creatio ex nihilo.
4. Creation at an instant problem:  We have no evidence in the history of the universe after the big bang that entities can emerge instantaneously from absolute nothingness.  Out of nothing comes nothing (ex nihil, nihil fit).  I have the same problem here as I did on point 3.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.   This goes to the heart of my earlier statement that physical science cannot verify metaphysical realities.  Assuming there are no metaphysical realities does nothing to address that deficiency.
5. Solitary power problem: Creatio ex nihilo assumes that a powerful God once acted alone.  But power is a social concept only meaningful in relation to others. The assumption here is one which could point either way.  If absolute nothingness cannot be conceived, then a single power acting alone cannot be conceived, perhaps.  But then again, neither of those assumptions clarifies or proves anything.  This is speculative, on Tom’s part and on my part also.  But I do not think this assumption is necessary          .
6. Errant revelation problem: The God with the capacity to create something from absolutely nothing would apparently have the power to guarantee an unambiguous and inerrant message of salvation (e.g, inerrant Bible).  An unambiguously clear and inerrant divine revelation does not exist.  I find this interesting but unpersuasive.  Keep in mind that the Bible was written by humans, who gave witness to their encounter with God.  There were no humans at creation, regardless of what creation model we operate from.  This is like saying that because I need help to build a house, I need help to make an omelet.  I don’t think that is necessarily the case.
7. Evil problem: If God once had the power to create from absolutely nothing, God essentially retains that power.  But a God of love with this capacity is culpable for failing to use it periodically to prevent genuine evil. This is more challenging.  I will address it in a later chapter, but I will say here I do not think this assumption is necessarily true.  It is entirely plausible that the power to create a universe from nothing has nothing to do with the power to prevent evil.  It is possible that God is not omnipotent, because omnipotence is simply impossible, whether or not God created from nothing.
8. Empire Problem: The kind of divine power implied in creatio ex nihilo supports a theology of empire, which is based upon unilateral force and control of others. I do not find this convincing. Tom and I share a concern and an opposition to unilateral force, although I do believe some things should be mandated for people to do for the common good.  I do not think vaccines should be voluntary, for example.  But I do still think it is possible for God to create from nothing without being coercive. It does not seem to me that creating from nothing is any more coercive than creating from something.  In fact, I think I could argue it is actually less coercive because creating from nothing does not force anything to become something other than what it is.  If creating from nothing is coercive, then any time a painter paints or a sculptor sculpts, that is also coercive because it is forcing something to become something other than what it is.
9. Biblical problem: Scripture – in Genesis, 2 Peter, and elsewhere – suggests creation from something (water, deep, chaos, invisible things, etc.), not creation from absolutely nothing. Tom is correct here.  But because we do not believe in biblical inerrancy, I do not think this point is conclusive.  This is where philosophical thinking also has to weigh in.

Again, I want to reiterate that my respect for Dr. Oord is profound.  His books have helped me make sense out of some of the most difficult issues in my own life—which range from being a man with a disability to being the victim of religious and spiritual abuse.  So none of these critiques are personal.   I know him well enough to know his disagreement with my critique will not be personal either.

      It is also necessary to reiterate here that by no means am I certain that I am correct.  I do think, however, in the best of the philosophical spirit, these challenges will help people on both sides clarify, sharpen, and refine their own positions, which is the ultimate goal of exchanges like this one.

I Changed My Mind About...

 This is the final chapter of my forthcoming book, I Changed My Mind About...

The book will be available on Amazon on June 1.  The kindle version is there now.  It can be found here.

Most people in this country who attend a church never struggle with the question of what the relation of a Christian to their country should be.  This is a rich area to think about, and has its own constellation of tributary issues.

            For most of my young life I did not question this either, until I went to seminary.  As I learned to think theologically, my understanding of what is involved in this issue began to profoundly change.  That change has made me an outlier among even my friends.  Even people who respect me personally and theologically have trouble with my thinking in this area.

            The shift in my thinking is connected to the change in my thinking about war, as I outlined in chapter 5 of this book.  When I had the life-changing experience of having my eves opened about Christian non-violence as I sat in a Mexican restaurant with Professor Wil Cooper, it was probably a natural development from that experience that my thinking about how a Christian should relate to his or her nation would also evolve.

            To me, the issue is the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  When Wil Cooper told me our job is not to calculate contingencies of what may happen if we do or do not use force, but rather our task is to simply do what Jesus said to do in the Sermon on the Mount, I knew immediately in a profound way that Wil was right.  As I have written, that shook me like nothing ever had in my life up to that point, and the vision of that has never waned in the subsequent 42 years.  I was tremendously shaken, and 42 years later I have been completely unable to shake myself  loose from the impact of this imperative.

            The issue, for me, with one’s relationship to one’s country is also one of the Lordship  of Jesus Christ.  Jesus said we cannot serve two masters.  (Matthew 6:24)  Jesus made that comment with regard to those who try to serve God and money, but I think the principle applies to so much more than out attitude toward finances.

            Something similar is found in the Ten Commandments.  People take the idea of you shall have no other gods before me to mean other idols or loyalties are okay, as long as God is on the top of the totem pole.  However, that is not what this means.

            I said on page 22 of my 2024 book, A Brief Process Response to Christian Nationalism, with regard to the idea that it is okay to have other loyalties if you do not put them before God,

 

But that is not what “you shall have no other gods before me” means.  The Hebrew for before here is al-panai, על הפני which literally means “before my face.” This was millennia before the current iteration of the phrase “in my face” or “in your face”, but the idea is very similar.

            I think when God says, “you shall have no other gods in my face,” the idea is that there be no competition for devotion at all. God is saying we are to have a totality of commitment. The picture of when the Hebrews wandered off into idolatry is not one of divorce, although God did say at one point, that most husbands would have divorced a spouse who had been as faithless toward a husband as Israel had been toward God. (Jeremiah 3)

God describes Israel’s idolatry as adultery in many of the writings of the prophets. Jeremiah, Amos, and Hosea are notable among them. Not having any other gods in God’s face means not even having the equivalent of an extramarital affair. The command to not have other gods in God’s face is a call to complete and total devotion.

            Herein lies the problem with Christian nationalism. It is the equivalent of being married in name, while having an affair all the while.  It is a profession of Christian faith (hence the term Christian Nationalism) even as it calls one to place concern for the nation as more important than devotion to God. 

            I find it impossible to deny that is what is implicit in Christian nationalism. If Paul Tillich is correct, that the essence of idolatry is to take something relative and finite, something which is contingent, and treat it as if it is ultimate and not contingent, then Christian nationalism is nothing less than idolatry. Draping it with Christian language and symbols does not make it any less idolatrous than when the Hebrew people would do their Temple duties and also make offerings to other deities at the High Places. 

            In the New Testament, Jesus affirms this first commandment, although he appeals to it in a different form, the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4. This is the command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might.”  The force of this is the same basic commandment of having no other gods al-panai. It is a call to single-hearted devotion to God.

 

            One of the things which bothers me—very much—is when I drive by a church and see a flagpole with an American flag (which alone bothers me because we are to be, as the hymn says, elect from every nation) and there is a Christian flag underneath it!  To me this says America comes first and Jesus comes second.

            You may say, “Oh, but you never put anything above an American flag.”  I would suggest that proves my point, not yours.  If you have something which you can never put anything higher than, it is an admission that such an item, country, or whatever, is what Paul Tillich calls your ultimate concern.

            I remember when I lived in North Carolina, the little town where we lived did have a McDonald’s.  It had a flagpole with the US flag on top and a McDonald’s flag beneath it.  Now, I guess the country is more important than McDonald’s, but the country is not more important than the cause of Jesus Christ.  To me, putting a Christian flag beneath an American flag trivializes the Christian faith, as though it is about as important as McDonalds.  Unfortunately, I believe that is how many American church members think.

            But the answer is not to put them side-by-side either, because that equates them.  At that point you have an al-panai problem. 

            I remember when Pope Francis, who I absolutely loved, said patriotism is good but nationalism is sinful.  I do not agree with the Holy Father here.  In the early church, the Romans tried to get the Christians to offer just a pinch of incense to Caesar.  The Christians realized they could not do that, because it created an al-panai problem for them.  It tacitly deified the emperor.  My view is nationalism is full-blown nation worship, but patriotism is offering a pinch of incense, so to speak.  I consider them both to be idolatrous.

            I was combatting Christian Nationalism in pastoral ministry in North Carolina around the year 2000.  I ended up getting fired there because I tried to say that in the worship life of the church there should not be a single hint of national loyalty expressed.   I still believed that. One of the men in that church who was very opposed to my ministry paid me the single highest compliment anyone has ever paid me in my life.  He said, “This world has absolutely no hold on that guy.”  I hope and pray that is true.  That is,  in my mind, the Christian ideal.

            When Jesus said we cannot have two masters, he explained why,  He said we will, when they make competing claims on us, cling to one and let go of the other.  I am afraid far too many people in the church, when that moment comes, cling to nation and let go of the kingdom of God.

            I never met the Christian missionary E. Stanley Jones, but I did know his secretary, Mary Webster, who told me on more than one occasion I reminded her of Stanley.  It was said of him one time, “Stanley Jones is obsessed with the kingdom of God.”  I hope and pray I am able to carry that same mantle.

            Like I said, this makes me an outlier even among my friends and colleagues.  What I am trying to do here is explain my own thinking and how it has changed over time.  People hear me talk like this and come to the erroneous conclusion that I hate the country.  That is not true.  I neither hate nor love the country.

            Over the centuries, some of the saintliest persons in the Christian tradition talk about the interplay of attachment and detachment.  They speak of being detached from the things of the world so we can be attached to Jesus Christ.  I believe American Christians are largely so attached to the country that it hinders their attachment to Jesus.  I am not asking people to hate anyone or any country.  I am asking them to love Jesus so much that they do not have an al-panai problem.  Jesus wants so much of my heart that there is no room for earthly attachments.

            This does not give anyone license to break the law.  The New Testament is very condemning of lawlessness.  The only time we should break the law is if keeping that law, obeying that law, would cause us to disobey Christ.  (Acts 5:29)

            I have never tried to get rid of the military, but I have tried to encourage Christians to refuse to be part of the military because being in a military organization creates an immediate al-panai  problem.  Again, what do you do if you receive orders to do something Jesus tells us in the Gospels not to do?

            We are to obey the laws, and respect authority.  We are to pay our taxes.  I think we should use our influence wisely in voting for people who will care for the most vulnerable among us.  I am not advocating for withdrawal from society.  I am, however, advocating for an emotional withdrawal from the attachment which hinders how much Jesus has of my heart.  I think Jesus wants so much of my heart that there is no room for national loyalties, under the guise of either nationalism or patriotism.  Emotionally, the Christian life is one of being an exile, an ex-patriate, in this world.  This is not my home.

            I do not say the Pledge of Allegiance for this reason.  The word allegiance bothers me.  I read a definition one time which said allegiance means unconditional loyalty.  I believe if that is so, because, as Jesus said, we will either cling to one and let go of the other, or vice versa, that  it is really only possible to have one allegiance at a time.  Most of my friends do not share this view.  Judging whether they are right or not is way above my pay grade.  I just know for me, it sets up an al-panai situation.  I do not want anything even to come close to competing with my Lord for my affections.

            I want the observation that this world has no hold on me to be true.   It may not be, only God knows my heart. My desire, however, is to be singlehearted in this regard.  I pray God’s blessing for all who have taken the time to read this book, whether or not you agree with me.

 

 

That is not the way it works.

I have been kind of out on a limb with some comments I have made recently about the framers of the US Constitution.  I do not see them as moral exemplars.  I do not see them as good guys at all.

I have been trying to tell people who are, like me, quite concerned over the possibility of a return of Donald Trump to the White House, that it is not actually the case that his candidacy represents a departure from what this country is all about.  On the contrary, the policies of Mr. Trump and the Republican party represent a return to the principles this country was founded on, and those are not good principles!

Here is what I mean.  Take the general trends of the current Republican party:

• Not wanting to have democracy.
• Limiting women's rights.
• Allowing child labor.
• Making it more difficult for people of color to vote.  And allowing legislatures to racially gerrymander legislative districts so that the influence of voters of color are diluted.

All of that (and more if I thought long enough) are an actual return to the principles this country was founded on.

• Slavery was permitted,
• For congressional apportionment slaves were 3/5 human, and indigenous persons were not counted at all.
• It took 131 years from the ratification of the Constitution for women to get the right to vote, 76 years to end slavery, and 176 years to guarantee the vote for people of color.
• Only white, property owning males could vote.  (My wife pointed out that with that one you get a trifecta of racial, gender, and economic injustice.)
• The protections of the bill of rights did not apply to everyone.  I mean, people of color were not given the right to bear arms originally.
• They created a system where the president could lose the popular vote and still win.  That was not about fear that the illiterate and crude would prevail.  It was about one thing--RACE.  The 3/5 compromise gave us a possibility of a president who did not win the popular vote because of fear that white men would not get their way.

Funny thing but if you buy into the idea that the electoral college was designed to protect us from the "unfit, unstable, and unhinged," (to quote Nikki Haley,) the reality is every time we have had a president who has lost the popular vote they turned out to be unfit and ended up doing a very poor job.  So no matter what you think about why the electoral college was created, it has done the country nothing but harm.

All of this (and again, more if I think about it) tracks right along with what conservatives are doing now.  The Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade, is the first time I am aware of that a constitutional right got taken away.  The sweep of American history has been the expansion  of rights, not only in terms of what they were, but who they applied to.  Right now, the agenda seems to be the contraction of rights.

My view of the history of this country is that people have worked hard to correct its moral defects.  Not enough has been done.  But there have been good faith efforts to expand liberty.  Now we are in the throes of a concerted effort to take liberty away from people, and I think if it went the way conservatives want, we will end up with the 2020s looking like the 1790s.

People do not like it when I write about this.  People tell me, "You have to judge them by the standards, the morality of their time."  My position is we cannot do that, we cannot afford to do that, for the following reasons.

1.  Morality never changes.  Understandings or perceptions of morality may change.  But morality itself does not.  I spent a couple of decades teaching ethics students that there is a difference between perceived morality and actual morality.  I will return to this below.

When we properly look at morality, the best principles which we have to delineate it do not change.  It was New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow who helped me understand this. He suggested we cannot judge the framers of the Constitution by the morality of the time because every person they oppressed was created in the image of God as much as they were. 

2. You cannot judge them by the moral standards of their time because once you do that, everyone gets a pass.  Rachel Maddow suggested in her book Prequel, that Adolph Hitler said when asked where he got his ideas about white supremacy that he was largely influenced by the framers of the US Constitution.  He said that his actions and attitudes toward the Jews were the same as the American fathers' actions and attitudes toward slaves and indigenous peoples.  American historian David Stannard says 100 million indigenous people died as the westward expansion of the United States occurred.  That is like 16 holocausts!

I do not think you can judge Thomas Jefferson by the morality of his time and not offer the same grace to Adolph Hitler.  I think if it is OK for the American founders you have to, in order to be consistent, give a pass to Josef Stalin as well, who killed 6-9 million people.

3.  You cannot judge them by the morality of their time, because, if you do that, you are arguing that things which were at one time morally right, later, somehow, become morally wrong.  What changed that slavery was morally acceptable in 1789 but then it was unacceptable in 1865?  The problem of when a behavior crosses the line, the exact same behavior, from morally acceptable to morally unacceptable, seems to me to be an almost impossible question to answer.

4.  If you judge them by the morality of the time, it seems to me that a logical consequence of that is endorsing what they did, even if the endorsement is only tacit.  People have suggested that it took time for all of this to develop, as I said above, 76 years, 131 years, 176 years.  I do not see how one can accept that without saying there is some legitimate, yet inexplicable reason why white men deserved to go to the front of the line and get their rights first.  Saying this took time reinforces the notion that what they did to women, slaves, and indigenous peoples was appropriate.  If that is the case, why change anything?  If it took 76 years, 131 years, and 176 years to change things that they had the option of changing from day one, that is not a good commentary.  And suggesting we needed slavery for a time, as Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton did recently, because that built up the country's economic power, amounts to saying it is OK to deny people's rights to help rich people make even more money.

I am not saying let's tear the whole thing up and start over.  That might be necessary, I do not know.  I am saying there is this national mythology that the framers of the constitution were good guys and some sober honesty about that might be helpful.  Even progressives want to buy into the national mythology and venerate the framers of the Constitution.  I am just saying I do not want to venerate them at all.

I Hope My Process Friends Will Critique This!

On January 4 of this year I wrote a brief piece on the idea of CREATIO EX NIHILO, and how I believe it is possible to still believe in that and yet, as most process thinkers do, reject the idea of DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE.  You can read that piece here.

This past week I was a panelist for an international conference, a gathering of the process/open-and-relational community which featured some of the best authors and books of the past year written by members of this community.  I was not one of the authors.  I hope, if my OPEN AND RELATIONAL ETHICS is in print this year, that maybe I can be next time.  Maybe not.  OK, it is still a great conference.  I enjoyed being a respondent to my good buddy Dr. Bruce G. Epperly.

One of the things which came up in the discussion at some point during the weekend was Alfred North Whitehead's distinction between God's primordial nature and God's consequent nature. 

In PROCESS AND REALITY, Whitehead offers these two, not as completely separate natures, which are totally distinct and unconnected from one another, but, as I understand him, two different aspects of God which we need to keep in mind because otherwise we will not get the entire picture.  (I think Whitehead would say we do not get the entire picture, ever, but we sure will not if we do not keep these conceptions in mind.)  They are, I think (and my process friends can correct me if I am wrong) distinct without being unconnected.

Of the primordial nature, Whitehead says "the unconditioned conceptual valuation of the entire multiplicity of eternal objects."  

The consequent nature is "that aspect of the divine which prehends the world."  For Whitehead, a prehension is when one entity comes to awareness of another.  In other words, God is not totally separate from creation.  God experiences and relates to and is impacted by creation even as God creates.

Now, I used to stress to my students the importance of the law of non-contradiction.  The simple version of this law is that contradictory ideas can both be false but they cannot both be true. I think that is correct but it is incomplete.  The more complete idea would be that contradictory ideas can both be false but they cannot both be true at the same time and in the same respect.

Now, I still believe that what I wrote on January 4 is valid.  I especially believe that what I said is true, "Because God's nature is love, and love is generative, God had to create."  And I also believe that because love is not controlling, being love, God cannot control everything God creates.  Love of necessity involves risk.

And this is why I suggest one can believe in CREATIO EX NIHILO and still reject the idea that God is omnipotent.  My thinking there has not changed, but it has broadened out.  I think a few weeks after writing that piece I want to say that the metaphysical problem I saw with rejecting CREATIO EX NIHILO may be solvable.

If it is true that contradictory ideas cannot both be true at the same time and in the same respect, then I would posit that it is possible that people who affirm CREATIO EX NIHILO and those who do not may not be contradictory to one another, IF we posit that it depends on whether one is thinking of God's primordial nature as different from God's consequent nature. It is possible that we are not violating the law of non-contradiction because we are not talking about the same thing, in the same respect.

In other words, the problem I raised of how to account for the idea that matter has always existed and yet is still a creation of God, may be a matter of looking at what Whitehead would say is a partial picture of God's nature, not a complete one.

I can see that if God has aseity, self-sufficiency, as traditional theism wants to tell us, then God would be stupid to create a world like this.  All that did was disappoint God and frustrate God's creation.  I have lived with a boat-load of  frustration.  A God who is complete in Godself does not need to create and would probably be happier not having done so.  That is a plausible rebuttal to my piece on January 4 questioning why people would reject CREATIO EX NIHILO.

But if we are talking about BOTH God's primordial nature AND God's consequent nature, maybe the apparent contradiction disappears. Because we are talking about things in light of this distinction (remember, as I said above, distinct but not wholly separated), God can be prior to creation in God's primordial nature and yet alongside nature in God's consequent nature. And maybe those two things have been always true.

PROCESS FRIENDS: I am not sure if I am onto something here or not.  I may be barking up the wrong tree. Please tell me if this makes sense or if it is nonsense.

t = 0

I was pleased to learn this morning that my dear friend, Dr. Thomas Jay Oord, put a link to an essay on this blog in his newsletter.  (c4ort.com) The essay highlighted some areas where Tom and I agree, and where we disagree, about the idea of creatio ex nihilo, the idea that God created the universe out of nothing, instead of out of some preexistent matter.  One of the things I admire so much about Tom Oord is how he "leans in" to things, and how he shows respect to people even when he does not share their views.  The piece he linked can be found here.

In that article, I said:

The reasoning behind rejecting creatio ex nihilo, as I understand it, is that a God who created out of nothing could have created any kind of world God wanted, and we could have had a world free of suffering, pain, and evil.  I do not think any of us can claim that we know what God made the world out of, whether it was from already existent matter or out of nothing.  None of us were there.  I want to approach this issue with the acknowledgment that I am by no means certain I am right here.  But I do want to offer a couple of reasons why I think it is at least plausible that creatio ex nihilo is true, and God is still not omnipotent.

I want to emphasize the point about how none of us knows for sure.  I think Tom would agree, simply because none of us were there.

I am reading an interesting book right now, God and the Brain, by Kelly James Clark.  Dr. Clark is a philosopher at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He is involved in interfaith issues.  As far as I know, Dr. Clark is not a process philosopher.

Something Dr. Clark says on page 172 of the book caught my attention.  In a discussion of the evolution of the brain and how it processes information.

Physicists have projected back in time to more than 13.7 billion years ago and have a reasonably good sense of the beginnings of our cosmos from 10 to the -43 power seconds. However, we have no idea what happened between t = 0 and 10 to the -43 power seconds. Moreover, we don’t know what happened before t = 0 or what that even means.

This is an important point, which he articulates clearly, and which my friend Tom Oord models splendidly, in a display of philosophical humility, when people all along the spectrum of the issue of how the universe came to be can fall prey to hubris.

My mentor, D. Elton Trueblood, taught me to do philosophy by the method of comparative difficulties.  Trueblood said we will never have options which have no difficulties or unanswered questions associated with them.  The goal is to land upon the option which, for the time being, has the fewest difficulties and leaves the least amount of unanswered questions.  That is why nothing is ever final for a good philosopher (or scientist for that matter.)  There is always the possibility of the emergence of some new information which will cast what we know in an entirely different light.  People during the COVID pandemic ridiculed the scientific community because it kept modifying what it was saying about the disease.  That is the very nature of science.

t = 0

I have tried to imagine what it was like at that moment, t = 0.  The reality is none of us can.  That is what makes speculating about it so much fun, and so fraught with difficulty.

The Thing I Have Simply Never Understood About American Christianity

I first made my profession of Christian faith as a nine-year-old boy, at the First Baptist Church in Whitesville, WV.  It was an independent, fundamentalist church, whose theology as an adult theologian I no longer share, but I love that church and the people there.  I was privileged, even as a Quaker minister, to preach for a week of revival services there in 2002.  By then I was 42 years old and had two seminary degrees, but the same pastor, Rev. Howard Gwinn, was there, who was my pastor as a boy.  I loved Howard and Ginny.  They served that little church for nearly 40 years.  I miss them and cherish their memory.

Along the way I was American Baptist (and today I have what is called "privilege of call" with the American Baptist Churches, which means they recognize my ordination and I am eligible to pastor an ABC church.)  I was Church of God, and then in a non-denominational group (where I was ordained in 1986), Nazarene, Quaker, and now I am Catholic.  It has been a rich experience of being part of the various threads  in the tapestry of the body of Christ.  I also worked for the Anglicans for a year.  I served as a Quaker minister for almost 30 years, and in 1990 they "recorded" me as a minister--which is what Quakers do instead of ordination.  I might write a piece on this blog about that sometime.

And in most of those churches, the majority of people were politically conservative, mainly Republicans.  In the non-denominational church, the pastor said in 1980 that the Holy Spirit had revealed to the leader of this loosely-knit group of churches, that God had called Ronald Reagan to be president of the United States.  So, in 1980, the first election in which I voted, I voted for Ronald Reagan.

Then I went to seminary! I began my seminary studies at the Earlham School of Religion (ESR) in Richmond, Indiana.  I did not graduate from there.  I ended up transferring to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.  SBTS was not like it is now.  These days it is a fundamentalist indoctrination mill.  In my time it rivaled places like Harvard and Yale Divinity Schools.  When I transferred, my mentor, the Quaker philosopher D. Elton Trueblood told me he thought I was transferring to the best seminary in the world.  I loved it there.  I have fond memories of all three seminaries I attended, ESR, SBTS, and Bethel Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I did my doctoral work.

Here is what happened to me:  I learned to study scripture.  I learned the Bible could not possibly be inerrant and all literally true. For example, the two creation stories in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 actually contradict one another, so both cannot be literally true.  I was astounded that in my doctoral program at Bethel, the other guys in my cohort had never noticed that.

I also learned that the Scriptures have far more to say about social justice than they do about individual salvation. The prophets, culminating with Jesus, spoke tirelessly about how God is against those who oppress the poor and the vulnerable.

One of the most often quoted of these verses is Micah 6:8.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Amos proclaimed God's judgment on those who oppress the poor.  (Amos 5:11)

Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.

Proverbs 21:13--Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.

Isaiah 61:1, quoted by Jesus as describing his own ministry in Luke 4.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.

James Cone says of this verse, and the way Jesus used it, anything which is not good news to the poor is not from the Gospel of Jesus.

I could go on.  There are literally hundreds of biblical citations about this.  The Bible has far more to say about justice for the poor than about individual salvation and being born again.

Don't get me wrong--I believe in the new birth.  I believe in personal salvation.  But it is not the most important thing Scripture has to say to us.  Being a people of justice is.

So, here's the thing I do not understand.  Why have American Christians distorted the Christian message so much that we end up with a Christianized form of EGOISM?  Why is it, that my seminary friend, himself an ordained minister, had not noticed the first two chapters of Genesis contradict one another?  Similarly, why do Christians who are in public worship every Sunday vote for policies and candidates which are a complete repudiation of what Jesus taught?

I believe every American Christian faces a literal binary choice.  I think you have to either repudiate Donald Trump (and I think also the Republican party) or you have to repudiate Jesus Christ and what he taught.  Eric Trump is known to have said "turn the other cheek" does not work.  When Russell Moore preached on turning the other cheek in a Southern Baptist Church, he was asked where he got that idea.  When he said it was literally the teaching of Jesus--he was told this church was not interested in seeing that.

My daughter lived for five years in Kansas City.  When we would go see her, we would take I-70 from Indianapolis to Kansas City.  St. Louis was the halfway point.  If I am in St. Louis, I cannot be getting closer to Kansas City and Indianapolis at the same time.  The closer I am to one, the farther I am from the other.  Jesus Christ and Donald Trump are like that--the closer you are to one, the farther you are from the other.

I have encountered people who say they used to be Republican but because of Donald Trump they have figured out they cannot be Republican and follow Jesus any more. I am glad they come to that realization.  But I do not understand why it took so long.  I want to say, "Where have you been?  I figured that out in 1984!" 

Evangelicals drunk the Ronald Reagan kool-aide then just like they are for Trump now.   I just do not understand how people can do that and claim to follow Jesus.  My grandfather was a staunch Republican until the Reagan presidency.  He ended up becoming a Democrat because, living in West Virginia and seeing so much poverty, he was so offended when Reagan wanted to cut school lunches and said school kids could count ketchup as a vegetable.  I have a very close friend who became a Democrat when Trump mocked the disabled reporter.  But my question is, why did people not do this 40 years ago? Why did the gospel of Jesus not give them such cognitive dissonance in comparison to the GOP platform that they could not be part of that?

I believe a party which gives massive tax cuts to the wealthy and then cuts services to the poor cannot possibly be a viable option for a follower of Jesus.  Reagan did these massive tax cuts--taking the top rate down from 70% to 28% and tried to make up for it by taxing people's Social Security.  No one can tell me with a straight face that is morally justifiable.

The way I see it, the Republican party was not changed by Donald Trump.  Not one bit.  He did not change it, he exposed it.  Former Republican operative Stuart Stevens has written a book which I have not read, but I have seen him speak about.  He says the idea that what Republicans were doing would help everybody was not true.  The title of the book is It Was All a Lie.  Someone said the idea that a rising tide raises all ships does not work.  It devastates small ships with holes in them.  Personally I think the idea should be to get us in roughly similar ships.  The other day Nikki Haley said we want equality in this country, not actual equity. I believe it is morally incumbent on all of us to work for actual equity.   I think the goal should not be to have everyone line up at the starting line together.  The goal should be to actually see all of us cross the finish line together!

I have said I do not think Donald Trump changed the Republican party. He merely exposed it, it has been this since the Civil Rights Legislation of the  1960s. I think it is like the KKK.  Nowadays they march under different names without covering themselves with white sheets.  I think Ronald Reagan had a likeable way about him that, figuratively, served as his white sheet.  Donald Trump is Reagan without the sheet.

What I do not understand is why people support this and profess to be Christian.  Why isn't cognitive dissonance eating them alive over this?

 

My thoughts on MLK day 2024

The issue of racism has bothered me for a long time.  I believe White Supremacy is ugly and demonic.  I also believe it is the driving force in political conservatism and so called "Christian Nationalism."  I hate to even put those two words together because I do not believe any form of Nationalism is Christian.  Some people like to make a distinction between Nationalism and patriotism.  I do not.  I think the difference between them is a matter of degree, not kind.  I do not think any follower of Jesus Christ should have any emotional tie to any particular nation.

A guy in a church I served tried to say Christians have what he called "dual citizenship."  My response was that such an idea is not biblical.  St Paul tells us "our citizenship (singular) is in heaven."  (Philippians 3:20)  He does not say we have a citizenship in heaven and one on earth. Like the old gospel song says, "This world is not my home, I am only passing through."  Paul himself only availed himself of the privileges of his Roman citizenship when it served to further his mission of spreading the gospel.

When Jesus said, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things which are God's," This was after he had defined what was Caesar's as that which bears Caesar's image.  He is trying to tell us that what bears God's image--our very selves--is what belongs to God.  One of the reasons I do not think followers of Jesus belong in the military is that involves taking what is God's and giving it to Caesar!

I think that not only should Christians not take part in nationalism, but they should not take part in patriotism either.  The Romans tried to get the early Christians to just offer a little pinch of incense to Caesar.  The Christians would not do it.  As I see it, not only is the United States an empire with similar moral compromises as Rome, but just as big a human rights abuser.  If the body of Christ is entangled with the nation, it cannot prophetically call out the nation for its evils.  To me, nationalism is a full-blown worship of the emperor, but even patriotism is offering a pinch of incense.  I do not think you can do that and give Jesus your whole heart at the same time.

In 2023, I lost a couple of friendships over something I said about Martin Luther King, Jr.  I would say it again, though.  I will say it again.

Every Christian minister in every pulpit of every church in America is called by God to denounce white supremacy as a major theme of their ministry.  Any preacher who does not do this with the prophetic urgency of  Dr.  King is walking in disobedience to the Holy Spirit.  An Anglican priest got so angry at me he blocked me online over this.  I do not care, I believe it is true.  I think if a pastor fears losing his or her job over preaching social justice, I am skeptical of whether God called them or whether they called themselves.  I was fired from a pastorate over preaching against the war in Afghanistan.  It turned out to be the key that opened the door to the best ministry and academic work of my life.  I plead with my preacher friends to boldly stand up and denounce white supremacy.  I mean the WHITE preachers especially.  Like someone said, it does no good to tell our brothers and sisters of color we are with them, and we see white supremacy as evil and demonic.  We need to go back to our predominantly white congregations and tell them unless they also actively denounce it, they are not right with God.

In the church that fired me as their pastor, 22 years ago, there was a lady who asked me one time what I thought about interracial marriage.  I told her I was totally against it.  She smiled.  I went on, "Members of the human race ought to only marry other members of the human race."  She never came back and I did not care.

Someone asked me one time, what if my daughter brings home a black guy, and I said I would only have two questions.  "How does he treat her?" and "Does he really love her?"  If he loves her and treats her right--why should the color of his skin matter to me any more than the color of his eyes or hair?

As a Catholic I am not supposed to say what I am going to say next--but again, I just do not care.  As far as I am concerned the only requirements for two people to be married should be that it is two adults, and neither is currently married to someone else.  What color their skin is, and what gender they each are--is not something I care about--at all.

I have a dear friend in ministry, Rev. Dr. Starlette Thomas, whose ministry I admire.  The theme of her ministry is THE RACELESS GOSPEL.  Her point, and she puts it better than I can, is that the gospel is for humanity.  Race is a construct which humans have made.  It is something God does not see.

I wrote a piece on this blog last August which I think is also pertinent to this weekend of remembering Dr. King, and expressing my outrage at how people on the right have co-opted him in a disingenuous manner.  You can find that here.

I have a photo of Dr. King, with my mentor Dr. Elton Trueblood, in Stout Meetinghouse, the place of worship on the campus of Earlham College.  I was only 8 years old when Dr. King was assassinated. I did not know Dr. Trueblood until I was 22 years old, now 42 years ago.  But I am proud that my mentor befriended Dr. King and believed in his ministry.  As  I said above, every preacher, in every pulpit of every church in America should be calling out white supremacy just as Dr. King did.

Why I Still Believe in Creatio Ex Nihilo, Even Though I Have Rejected Divine Omnipotence

Two highly significant things happened to me as things were shut down for the COVID pandemic, and I think they are significantly connected to one another.  The first of these was that, while I eventually did get COVID, during this same time frame I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.  That was quite a difficult reality for me to assimilate, because at that point, at age 60, I had already lived six decades with cerebral palsy.  The best data I have found says maybe 2500 people in the United States have BOTH CP and PD.

The second was, while I was working from home, I took an online course with the famous process theologian, John B. Cobb, on Alfred North Whitehead's  Process and Reality.

I knew a little about Dr. Cobb from my seminary studies at both Earlham School of Religion and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  I also know that my mentor, D. Elton Trueblood, had been a student of Whitehead's at Harvard.  I had heard that Whitehead was difficult to understand, but Dr. Cobb guided us through the book and I think I absorbed most of the material well.  I have since read five more Whitehead books,

From this course I developed some online friendships in the process or open and relational theology community.  These are scholars whose literary output has far exceeded mine, but they have welcomed me into the community with open arms even though I feel like a duffer in the midst of top flight golfers. It has been one of the biggest blessings of my life to find an intellectual home like this.   The fact for the most part this community rejects the idea that God is omnipotent has been a  real positive for me as I have struggled for my entire life with where God is as I battled one, and now two, disabilities.  I have received more affirmation from this group than from any group I have ever been associated with.  For this I give thanks to God.

But there is one area where I am kind of an outlier in the community, although this community is broad and informal and really has no rules one must adhere to.  There is no real demand or pressure for people to agree with one another in this group and that is something I like.

I am kind of an outlier though, because some of my colleagues in the group, as a foundation for their rejection of divine omnipotence, also reject the idea of creatio ex nihilo, the idea that God created out of nothing.  For some in the community, as I understand them, God created out of matter which already existed, which I take to mean physical matter has always existed.

Now, let me say, I understand why my friends and colleagues believe this, and this essay is by no means intended as a condemnation of them or their ideas.   They have very good reasons to believe what they believe. I just think there are other ways to get to the same destination.  

What we share is a rejection of the idea that God is all-powerful.  This is really important to me,  because a God who willed for me to struggle with the disabilities I deal with is a God I do not want to know.   That God is a God I would gladly damn to hell!  Thank God that God is not God.

The reasoning behind rejecting creatio ex nihilo, as I understand it, is that a God who created out of nothing could have created any kind of world God wanted, and we could have had a world free of suffering, pain, and evil.  I do not think any of us can claim that we know what God made the world out of, whether it was from already existent matter or out of nothing.  None of us were there.  I want to approach this issue with the acknowledgment that I am by no means certain I am right here.  But I do want to offer a couple of reasons why I think it is at least plausible that creatio ex nihilo is true, and God is still not omnipotent.

I taught philosophy at a community college for nearly 20 years before my recent retirement.   I think that God cannot be omnipotent because some things just are not logically possible, even for God.  I have given my students the following two examples almost every semester.

God cannot make a square circle because the nature of reality is such that a square cannot be a circle and a circle cannot be a square.  (I imagine many of you will remember that if you took introductory philosophy.)  In a similar way, I insist, God cannot give people free will and then force them to do things, because free will and forced behavior are incompatible.

I think it is possible to affirm creatio ex nihilo and still reject divine omnipotence for the following two reasons.

1.  Because God's nature is love, and love is generative, God had to create. Some who reject creatio ex nihilo do so with wonderful motives, as I said above. One of those is the idea that if God had the choice to create or not create, then creating this world is not necessarily the best or most loving way to do it.  I will get to that in my second point, but I do not think it makes sense to say God could have chosen not to create, for the simple fact that love is generative.  If God had not created at all, God would not be love.

In all fairness, I realize too, that I am open to a criticism at this point because one could ask whether God BECAME love at the point of creation and was not love before. These are not easy issues and this discussion is not for the faint of heart.  I just think metaphysically rejecting creatio ex nihilo is weaker than affirming it, as I will explain below.

2.  Because God's nature is love, God cannot control even what God creates.  

I am Roman Catholic, I use the daily devotional for Catholics Living with Christ.  This morning it had a quote from St. Angela Merici.  "God has given each person freedom, and forces no one, but only indicates, calls and persuades."  I believe God is never going to attempt to accomplish by force that which God cannot do by love.

My good friend in this community, Dr. Thomas Jay Oord, has written a good deal about how God's nature is love and therefore God cannot prevent evil and suffering, because doing things by force is contrary to love.  Dr. Oord and I agree on this point even though we disagree on creatio ex nihilo.  I believe that because God is love, there are certain things God cannot do, (as does Dr. Oord.  Check out his wonderful book God Can't.)

One thing I believe God cannot do, for example, is create a world where hate is good and love is bad, because that would be impossible, since God is love.

Now, like I said, my friends and colleagues who reject creatio ex nihilo have good reasons for doing so, reasons I respect even though I disagree with them.  For me the problem is metaphysical.  I do not see how you can have matter without their being some beginning to the existence of matter.  I think the problem of an endless regression here is a bigger problem than the problems posed by creatio ex nihilo.  For me, this is sufficient reason not to reject creatio ex nihilo.  My friends do not agree.  That is OK.

What I hope I have done is at least given voice to a framework whereby one can reject divine omnipotence and still affirm creatio ex nihilo.  Others will have to decide how successful I have been.

Two Recent Conversations About Abortion

Two conversations in the past week have clarified and reinforced my thinking on the issue of abortion.

The first of these conversations was with a physician who has actually delivered babies but has never performed an abortion. This individual told me something which I had kind of thought of but was still startled to hear it put into words.

"There is no such thing as a late term abortion," this doctor told me. At that point in the pregnancy because of the Hippocratic Oath, doctors do everything they can to protect life and health of both mother and child. It is really an early delivery.

This made sense to me, because I recall Pope St. John Paul II saying there are situations where a pregnancy should be terminated, but when that is necessary to save the life of the mother, everything possible should be done to save the life of the child. But he said we should not just let the mother die. There are times when terminating a pregnancy is moral. The issue at hand is the circumstances and motivations for doing so. It makes me think of what Jesus said when he healed the guy in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Luke 6:9, Jesus asks “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?”

I think the issue here is one of what the objective is. If the motive is to save a life, then terminating a pregnancy is moral.

Many people agree with me--so far. But what I am going to say next has gotten me damned and denounced by some people.

The second conversation was with one of my closest friends in the world, even though we have never met face to face. This person is like a sister to me. We agree on so many things. I told her about what this doctor told me, and I went on to say I think NO THIRD PARTY, no church, no legislature, no court, can make this determination. Only the woman can, with those whom she chooses to seek out their counsel, because only the woman knows what is in her heart and nobody else can make that determination.

That is why, even though I think abortion is generally morally wrong, I think it should be legal in all cases, 100% of the time, with no exceptions. Only slightly less than 2% of all abortions happen after 15 weeks. If a woman does not want a baby, she does not wait until the third trimester to have an abortion. Therefore, I think we need to give all women the benefit of the doubt on this, as I said, 100% of the time, with no exceptions. If she makes the wrong decision, she will answer to God, not me. But I am absolutely convinced no third party can ever make the right decision. Therefore any abortion ban is as immoral as abortion itself.

And I get demonized for this, and vilified. But I do not think I should be. The problem is indifference to life. My impetus here is to honor the life of women, not be indifferent to the lives of the unborn. This is a much more complex issue than people think, and it is hubris to think we can legislate it.