[Vision2020] Response to Keely on Forgiveness

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Dear Keely, 
 
I'm been so busy studying the Israeli-Palestinian problem, saying good-bye to 
Bush, and welcoming President Obama, that I've neglected to answer your response to my forgiveness column. 
 
I'm afraid that you have conflated divine omniscience and immutability. The 
practical joke point that Anne Minas made focused on omniscience not 
immutability.  The forgiveness of a presidential pardon involves not knowing 
future mitigating facts that may justifying a pardon.  Saying that God's 
response here is a joke may be unkind and misleading, so let's just say that it 
is a divine impossibility. This type of forgiveness is not possible for a being 
who already knows the future, in this case, the new facts that makes the pardon intelligible and justifiable. 
 
Orthodox Catholicism and Protestantism have always held a "hard" view of 
immutability. It is not merely something like "God's promises never change"; 
rather, it means that God never changes in his being.  If divine forgiveness 
means giving up resentment, then this requires a change of which the orthodox God is incapable. 
 
I'm sorry to hear that you abhor "process theology," because the scriptural support for a dynamic Jehovah who tempts, regrets, repents, shows his wrath and then his love, and then, presumably, undergoes the most radical change in cosmic history (namely, the Incarnation) is overwhelming.  This is a process God par excellence. 
 
You must also be aware of the fact that there is a school of evangelical 
theologians who support the idea of an open (rather than closed) future.  These theologians reject your claim that "God knew it all along," a claim that makes most devotional talk about God unintelligible. 
 
In the end we must choose between two ideas of time: the neo-Platonic, orthodox Christian idea that it is past, present, and future all fused together in an Eternal Now, or a temporal process from the past, through the present, and into a future that has not yet happened.  (This is sometimes called the Arrow of Time.) These two views contradict each other, and for the sake of 
intelligibility I choose the latter along with the process theologians with whom 
I studied at Claremont.  God didn't give us reason and then want us to throw it out the window at every theological turn. Now, that would be a nasty practical joke! 
 
I appreciate your careful, although perhaps convoluted, explanation of Jesus' 
apparent exception to forgiveness in Mark 3:26, but I guess I prefer Krishna's 
radical, unconditional forgiveness.  The demons are saved whether they want to do or not.  No one is left behind in Krishna's total, unconditional grace. 
 
Instead of your water in the desert example, Doug Wilson once explained in a theology class we team taught that Jesus' grace as equivalent to a bank that promises to give $1 million dollars to the anyone who comes to claim it. His point, I believe, is the same as yours: the sinner has to make the effort and decide to accept the gift.  As I understand it, Krishna does it all for us regardless. 
 
But doesn't that undermine freedom of the will?  For me that is a moot point 
because Krishna and Christ as God cause, without exception, everything to 
happen, so we don't have free will to begin with.  
 
All of the orthodox divine attributes cause intractable problems, and that is 
why process theology throws them all out and starts fresh.  Besides, most of them were derived from Greek ideas of God rather than the Bible itself. 
 
Your friend in constructive theological debate, 
 
Nick 
---- keely emerinemix <kjajmix1 at msn.com> wrote: 
> 
> Lasr week, my friend Nick Gier posted an essay on the divine or human origin 
of forgiveness.  The post was prompted by President Bush's list of presidential 
pardons.  While Nick and I disagree on the origin of forgiveness, I think we're 
both convinced that there is much Bush needs forgiveness for. 
> 
> That said, Nick asked my take on what he wrote, and so here it is: 
> 
> I believe that every deity in every faith calls on its followers to practice 
forgiveness; in this sense, I believe the ability to pronounce blessing from 
offense is divine.  As a Christian, I believe that the LORD God offers the 
forgiveness of the Creator to His creatures who offend the Law that He has set 
forth; His primacy as LORD both qualifies and enables God to do that, and my 
sinfulness both confirms and necessitates my seeking it.  But Nick thinks that 
the doctrine of God's immutability -- the unchanging nature of God -- strikes at 
the heart of the process theology he defends, a theology that teaches that God 
cannot know that which is unknowable, or the future.  Because God appears to 
"repent," "relent," or "change his mind" some 33 times in the Scriptures, the 
Christian doctrine of immutability is not only untenable, but makes His 
forgiveness a practical joke -- He assigns punishment to sins that he knows he's 
going to remit, Nick says, quoting philosopher Ane Minas.  I'm summarizing, of 
course, and I trust that I've done so respectfully and accurately. 
> 
> I abhor process theology, though, because it strikes at the very heart of the 
"trinity" of attributes God possesses as God.  He is omnipresent, omniscient, 
and omnipotent; He is everywhere and never "not there," He is all-knowing and 
never surprised; He is all-powerful and never stymied.  Because I believe that 
the language of Scripture that attempts to describe God is by necessity 
limiting, and perhaps unfortunately so, describing His mercy, mercy that comes 
in response to a change in human behavior, as "repenting,"  "relenting" or 
"changing His mind" is bound to be unclear, appearing to mean what it cannot 
(that, surprised, touched, or chagrined, He changed His mind) while struggling 
to convey what it wants to.  The intent of words like "relented" is to express 
His mercy in response to humankind's change of behavior -- but the change is on 
our part,not His.  He knew it all along. 
> 
> I would also take issue with His suggestion that Mark 3:29 is an exception to 
Jesus' unconditional offer of forgiveness in Him.  The verse refers to the 
impossibility of forgiveness for those who "blaspheme against the Holy Spirit," 
and Jesus' words are unequivocal -- that can't be forgiven.  But it's a 
tautology; the only way the human being can receive forgiveness is to respond to 
the promptings and conviction of the Holy Spirit in faith, and if one refuses to 
do so -- if one rejects the Spirit, or "blasphemes" Him -- she or he has refused 
the only means of forgiveness available.  If, in the driest, hottest part of the 
Sonoran desert, someone is dying of thirst, and I have sufficient water for him 
and for all like him, offered freely and endlessly, that person can have his 
thirst "forgiven" -- done away with.  But if that person, under all of the same 
circumstances, chooses anything and everything but the water that could and 
would save him, he would die.  And I could rightly say that "blaspheming" (if I 
may, simply for analogy's sake) my offer of water could not be forgiven -- not 
because I didn't feel like forgiving him, but because he didn't take the water 
that I offered and that was the only thing that could save his life.  
> 
> A note on "blasphemy of the Holy Spirit" -- if you're worried that you've ever 
committed it, don't be.  Your concern shows that you've not blasphemed the 
Spirit by hardening your heart completely. 
> 
> I appreciate Nick's request for my response and also his thoughts on 
forgiveness.  I'll end this with my belief that only the Perfect One can 
forgive, and all of us Desperately Imperfect Ones need His forgiveness. 
> 
> Keely