Very clear and interesting – many thanks. I find it very hard to envisage the breadth of God’s love but Fr Kimel has managed to convey something of it here which I have felt.
Rock on Fr Kimel.
How come I feel like I just step into a universalistic parallel reality? Is this creedal? Will there be a judgment of the quick and the dead? Does everyone inherit the Kingdom? Is there a point to righteousness?
Or …. and I’m sure this is a possibility ….. [b]have I missed the point?[/b]
At heart, it’s Aquinas but filtered through a deliberately provovative sermon of Herbert McCabe. Myself I would like rather more careful speech about the truthfulness of Scripture. He comes too close (in a way that, to my limited knowledge, Aquinas never does) to saying that Scripture contains untruth in matters concerning salvation. But as it’s McCabe and a sermon that is intended to state pretty orthodox Catholic teaching in surprising and provoking ways, I part of me thinks my criticism is unreasonable.
One of my theology professors at Gordon-Conwell (and also JI Packer & John Stott, so the idea has been around for a while) said that God’s justice and wrath are a part of his love. If a sinner clings to his sin, he experiences, at the last, the wrath of God — God’s hatred of all that sullies his creation and impugns his character. If a sinner repents and clings to Christ as the perfect offering for his sins, then the sinner is credited with all the righteousness of Christ — and over time is transformed into one who is righteous. One of the glories of heaven is that we shall not be able to sin.
One of the most important and least talked about elements of the argument between reasserters and reappraisers is the nature of sin itself. In popular views, even in Evangelical circles, sin is often viewed as being a breach of God’s law. God’s law is holy and just. Reappraisers often see sin in much the same way, except most reappraisers see “God’s law” as an arbitrary list, made up as much by fallible human beings as by God himself. Viewing sin simply as a violation of God’s law (some of which we may, for any number of reasons, regard as silly or stupid) is what leads to a view of God as temperamental, even cranky.
But sin, at its heart, is not simply a violation of God’s standards. Sin begins as an attitude toward God, an attitude that God does not truly love us, because things are not the way we want them to be. If God were truly intelligent and caring, we think, then he would do things the way we think are best. Acts of sin come when we put that attitude into action – we take what is not ours because it should be ours in a perfect world, we allow someone to be injured because it is too much of a drain on our time or effort to do something about the situation, we engage in sexual activity without regard to marriage because sex ought to be about our feeling good, etc., etc. When we believe that we know better than God, we do what God forbids and fail to do what God commands because, deep down, we do not believe that he is worthy to be God. My sinful heart says, “If all were properly arranged, then I would be god.â€
Such an attitude is utterly foolish when stated so baldly, but that attitude is what lies at the heart of sin, and it is what makes sin so dreadful. Left to ourselves, we want to take God’s place. It is no wonder that when billions of people have this as their primary attitude that we fight, scramble for power, dissemble, steal, gorge ourselves on food, possessions, or sensuality, enslave one another, malign each other, fear one another, and all the rest – for we are in competition with one another for the role of god.
The natural consequence of such an attitude is that we are rejected by God. We want to be in charge, and he lets us go to where we might be “in charge,†to hell. There, separated from the One for whom we were created, we would continue to bite and devour one another, and we recognize (by our loss of God) that we were made for God, and we would, if we got what our rebellion deserves, spend an eternity of mingled defiance and regret.
God rescues us from this madness when he sends us repentance and faith, so that we turn to him, acknowledge that he alone is God, and that we have offended both his person and his office in our striving to take on his role in the universe. As Father, God is delighted to have us recognize that we are his children, not his replacements, and as Ruler, God’s divine justice is satisfied, not by our misery, but by Christ enduring the rejection that our rebellion deserves. We come home, and we are accepted as a child of God, because we now delight that God is God and we know his wisdom as he gives us his commands.
If sins are but acts of commission or omission, then God can seem arbitrary or capricious in the commands he gives and the judgment he renders. But if sin, at its heart, is an attitude of rebellion, then God’s punishment makes sense, and the death of Jesus on the Cross makes sense as both God’s judgment and God’s love.
Fr Sutton (Hakkatan), you have expressed my understanding of the matter far better than I am able to do. Thank you.
D. Hamilton, please note that I have not asserted the necessity or inevitability of universal salvation, i.e., that all will be finally saved and hell will be unpopulated. But would it not be glorious if that turns out to be the case! You refer to the final judgment (which of course is figurative language). Is not the final judgment simply the divine ratification of our definitive choice for or against God? Perhaps the unconditionality language I have used sounds “unorthodox,” but I have learned the reality to which it points from two “orthodox” fellows–C. S. Lewis (The Great Divorce) and Peter Kreeft (Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven).
Driver8, I do not know whether St Thomas would approve or disapprove of McCabe’s presentation of God’s unconditioinal love, but I do not accept the suggestion that it is heterodox. If God’s love is indeed unconditional, as I believe with all my heart, then that will necessarily entail that we will read specific passages from Scripture (bring out the usual suspects) as metaphorical. Do you believe that God literally changes his mind about us, moving from anger to love depending on our actions? Many biblical passages certainly speak this way of God, but is it literally true?
#6 Thanks, Fr. Kimel for this stimulating and inspiring reflection. For your information, I am taking your excellent “Principles of Vestry leadership” with me on a retreat with my vestry at the end of next week. That paper is an excellent combination of spiritual maturity and sanctified common sense. Thank you for writing it.
My only response to “Finding the God who is Love” is to remind readers that hyperbole has a fine pedigree: our Lord Jesus Christ used it in teaching, as surely does St. Paul and the prophets of the OT. For instance: surely Fr. Kimel uses hyperbole when he asserts that God doesn’t give a damn about our sins. He wants the impact of that statement to shock us who might believe that SIN is ALL God cares about. Of course, God cares mightily about the existence and presence of Sin in His created order. Fr. Kimel has undoubtedly preached many a sermon stressing God’s abhorrence (sp?) of sin, and how He (God) cannot bear to even look at it!
But, consider, brothers & sisters: Does a heavenly Father get so disgusted by the presence of sin and the complicity of sinners in sin that He stops loving the one who sins? Of course not.
Very clear and interesting – many thanks. I find it very hard to envisage the breadth of God’s love but Fr Kimel has managed to convey something of it here which I have felt.
Rock on Fr Kimel.
Thanks, good elves, for the link.
How come I feel like I just step into a universalistic parallel reality? Is this creedal? Will there be a judgment of the quick and the dead? Does everyone inherit the Kingdom? Is there a point to righteousness?
Or …. and I’m sure this is a possibility ….. [b]have I missed the point?[/b]
At heart, it’s Aquinas but filtered through a deliberately provovative sermon of Herbert McCabe. Myself I would like rather more careful speech about the truthfulness of Scripture. He comes too close (in a way that, to my limited knowledge, Aquinas never does) to saying that Scripture contains untruth in matters concerning salvation. But as it’s McCabe and a sermon that is intended to state pretty orthodox Catholic teaching in surprising and provoking ways, I part of me thinks my criticism is unreasonable.
One of my theology professors at Gordon-Conwell (and also JI Packer & John Stott, so the idea has been around for a while) said that God’s justice and wrath are a part of his love. If a sinner clings to his sin, he experiences, at the last, the wrath of God — God’s hatred of all that sullies his creation and impugns his character. If a sinner repents and clings to Christ as the perfect offering for his sins, then the sinner is credited with all the righteousness of Christ — and over time is transformed into one who is righteous. One of the glories of heaven is that we shall not be able to sin.
One of the most important and least talked about elements of the argument between reasserters and reappraisers is the nature of sin itself. In popular views, even in Evangelical circles, sin is often viewed as being a breach of God’s law. God’s law is holy and just. Reappraisers often see sin in much the same way, except most reappraisers see “God’s law” as an arbitrary list, made up as much by fallible human beings as by God himself. Viewing sin simply as a violation of God’s law (some of which we may, for any number of reasons, regard as silly or stupid) is what leads to a view of God as temperamental, even cranky.
But sin, at its heart, is not simply a violation of God’s standards. Sin begins as an attitude toward God, an attitude that God does not truly love us, because things are not the way we want them to be. If God were truly intelligent and caring, we think, then he would do things the way we think are best. Acts of sin come when we put that attitude into action – we take what is not ours because it should be ours in a perfect world, we allow someone to be injured because it is too much of a drain on our time or effort to do something about the situation, we engage in sexual activity without regard to marriage because sex ought to be about our feeling good, etc., etc. When we believe that we know better than God, we do what God forbids and fail to do what God commands because, deep down, we do not believe that he is worthy to be God. My sinful heart says, “If all were properly arranged, then I would be god.â€
Such an attitude is utterly foolish when stated so baldly, but that attitude is what lies at the heart of sin, and it is what makes sin so dreadful. Left to ourselves, we want to take God’s place. It is no wonder that when billions of people have this as their primary attitude that we fight, scramble for power, dissemble, steal, gorge ourselves on food, possessions, or sensuality, enslave one another, malign each other, fear one another, and all the rest – for we are in competition with one another for the role of god.
The natural consequence of such an attitude is that we are rejected by God. We want to be in charge, and he lets us go to where we might be “in charge,†to hell. There, separated from the One for whom we were created, we would continue to bite and devour one another, and we recognize (by our loss of God) that we were made for God, and we would, if we got what our rebellion deserves, spend an eternity of mingled defiance and regret.
God rescues us from this madness when he sends us repentance and faith, so that we turn to him, acknowledge that he alone is God, and that we have offended both his person and his office in our striving to take on his role in the universe. As Father, God is delighted to have us recognize that we are his children, not his replacements, and as Ruler, God’s divine justice is satisfied, not by our misery, but by Christ enduring the rejection that our rebellion deserves. We come home, and we are accepted as a child of God, because we now delight that God is God and we know his wisdom as he gives us his commands.
If sins are but acts of commission or omission, then God can seem arbitrary or capricious in the commands he gives and the judgment he renders. But if sin, at its heart, is an attitude of rebellion, then God’s punishment makes sense, and the death of Jesus on the Cross makes sense as both God’s judgment and God’s love.
Fr Sutton (Hakkatan), you have expressed my understanding of the matter far better than I am able to do. Thank you.
D. Hamilton, please note that I have not asserted the necessity or inevitability of universal salvation, i.e., that all will be finally saved and hell will be unpopulated. But would it not be glorious if that turns out to be the case! You refer to the final judgment (which of course is figurative language). Is not the final judgment simply the divine ratification of our definitive choice for or against God? Perhaps the unconditionality language I have used sounds “unorthodox,” but I have learned the reality to which it points from two “orthodox” fellows–C. S. Lewis (The Great Divorce) and Peter Kreeft (Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven).
Driver8, I do not know whether St Thomas would approve or disapprove of McCabe’s presentation of God’s unconditioinal love, but I do not accept the suggestion that it is heterodox. If God’s love is indeed unconditional, as I believe with all my heart, then that will necessarily entail that we will read specific passages from Scripture (bring out the usual suspects) as metaphorical. Do you believe that God literally changes his mind about us, moving from anger to love depending on our actions? Many biblical passages certainly speak this way of God, but is it literally true?
#6 Thanks, Fr. Kimel for this stimulating and inspiring reflection. For your information, I am taking your excellent “Principles of Vestry leadership” with me on a retreat with my vestry at the end of next week. That paper is an excellent combination of spiritual maturity and sanctified common sense. Thank you for writing it.
My only response to “Finding the God who is Love” is to remind readers that hyperbole has a fine pedigree: our Lord Jesus Christ used it in teaching, as surely does St. Paul and the prophets of the OT. For instance: surely Fr. Kimel uses hyperbole when he asserts that God doesn’t give a damn about our sins. He wants the impact of that statement to shock us who might believe that SIN is ALL God cares about. Of course, God cares mightily about the existence and presence of Sin in His created order. Fr. Kimel has undoubtedly preached many a sermon stressing God’s abhorrence (sp?) of sin, and how He (God) cannot bear to even look at it!
But, consider, brothers & sisters: Does a heavenly Father get so disgusted by the presence of sin and the complicity of sinners in sin that He stops loving the one who sins? Of course not.