Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Excerpts from R. T. Mullins, Eternal in Love: A Little Book about a Big God

 

This classical understanding of God leaves the Christian with a curious notion of God’s goodness, love, and rationality. To start, God has no reason to create anything at all since the values of possible creatures are not appropriate objects of divine response. Thus leaving us with an arbitrary creation. Further, God has no reason to love his creatures, nor any reason to engage in self-sacrificial acts on behalf of his creatures. Any self-sacrificial acts on God’s part would seem to be utterly arbitrary. Why die for creatures that you do not deem to be worthy of responding to? On a divine whim? That hardly seems like a fitting reason for the cross. Yet the problem is deeper than this.

 

The God of classical theism can only act on behalf of his own self-interest since his own goodness is the only value that is appropriate to respond to. Self-sacrificial acts are, by definition, not in one’s own self-interest. Thus, the God of classical theism cannot perform self-sacrificial acts. That hardly looks anything like the Christlike God who dies for the sake of his beloved children. As I see it, The God of classical theism cannot be considered loving nor morally perfect. It should come as no surprise, then, that a contemporary classical theist would argue that love and moral goodness are not really divine perfections! Tor this, and many other reasons, Christianity is simply incompatible with classical theism. (R. T. Mullins, Eternal in Love: A Little Book about a Big God [Studies in the Doctrine of God; Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2024], 26)

 

 

To be sure, there are passages like Num 23:19, 1 Sam 15:29, and Mal 3:6 that say that God is not a man that he should change his mind. Yet those passages are all very clear in the respect to which God does not change. None of them say that God does not change in any way, shape, or form. In each case, the passages say that men are liars who do not keep their promises. God is not like that. When God makes a promise, he will keep it. His promises are not empty lies. What these passages teach is that the promises of God are trustworthy. They do not teach that God is completely and utterly unchanging. They simply teach that God will not change his mind about the promises that he has made.

 

Traditional accounts of God’s omnipotence and perfect moral goodness factor this in by saying that the almighty God cannot change the past nor undo the promises that he has previously made. Changing the past is logically impossible, and failing to keep a divine promise is morally unacceptable. Thus, it is unthinkable that God would fail to keep his covenantal promises. This is important to keep in view when one is reading Hosea 11. Again, this passage teaches that God does change his mind because he is not like a suborn man who lacks compassion. God will change his wrath to forgiveness toward his chosen people. Why? God made a covenantal promise toward his people, and he plans on keeping that promise. (R. T. Mullins, Eternal in Love: A Little Book about a Big God [Studies in the Doctrine of God; Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2024], 45)

 

 

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