Rediscovering the Self-Disclosure of the Triune I AM: Table of Contents of Series in Narrative Trinitarian Theology

Table of Contents

Volume I: Homeward Bound (Part 1): Preparing to Sail upon the Sea of Revelation under the Banner of Trinitarian Orthodoxy

Preface (Gambling On the Life-Shaping Narratives of Human Destiny)

Introduction (Gazing out across the Sea)

Part I: Boarding the Ship of ‘Faith Seeking Understanding’  

Division I:  Heeding the Call to be a Seafarer of Revelation

   Chapter 1: Eternity Beckons Humanity to take a Homeward-Bound Voyage away From a Dying World

A: Ocean of Despair that Separates Mortal Humans from the Shores of Eternity

B: Dawning of Humanity’s Living Hope of going Home to Eternity

 Chapter 2: Heavenly Boarding Call of Eternity Resounds from Harbor of Christian Doctrines 
            A: First Call: Personal Cost to Return to Humanity’s True First Love                  
            B: Second Call: Unconverted Occupants of the Harbor setting aside a Pretense of Faith 
            C: Third Call: Warning to Persevere in Life of Entrusting Faith in Arms of Divine Romance

Chapter 3: Stepping onto the Dock of Trinitarian Dogma intent on Setting Sail

A: Docks of Dogma within the Harbor of Christian Doctrines

B: Exploring these Docks to Arrive at the Dock of Trinitarian Dogma

Chapter 4: The Boarding Call to set Sail from the Dock of Trinitarian Dogma 

A: First Reason: Pursuing Our Eternal Destiny to Intimately Know the Triune I AM

B: Second Reason: Exploring Depths to Distinguish Triune Relations of the God-relationship

C: Third Reason: Mandatory Call to Proclaim Good News from Across the Sea

Division II: Introducing the Vessel of Philosophical Theology

Chapter 5: Finding a Suitable Ship of ‘Faith Seeking Understanding’ to Board 

A: Introducing the Ship of Philosophical Theology

B: Introducing the Ship of Theological Philosophy

C: Distinguishing this Ship from others as the One best Suited for our Voyage

Chapter 6: Biblical Case on Reason as Auxiliary to Faith Seeking Understanding

A: Reason not Necessarily Antithetical to Faith in Revelation

B: Demarcating Reason’s ‘Autonomous’ Limits without Revelatory Meekness

Chapter 7: The Proper Role of Passionate Reason on this Ship

A: Call of Eternity Beckons us to Re-evaluate our View of Reason

B: Trusting in Grace-Infused Logic to gain Knowledge of Revelation

Chapter 8: Surveying the Proficient Configuration  of our Sailing Vessel 

A: Touring the Ship’s Mechanics and the Navigational Equipment Onboard

B: Making Headway by the Revelatory Wind of the Spirit

Part 2: Preparing the Ship and Crew for Departure

Division I: Raising Anchor from the Dock of Trinitarian Dogma

Chapter 9: The Anchor that Keeps our Ship from Departing  

A: Held up by Unitarian Protests against Sailing under the Banner of Trinitarian Orthodoxy

B: Exploring the Docks of Trinitarian Dogma that stray too Close to Tri-Theism

Chapter 10: Examining the Monotheistic Paradigm Presented in our Nautical Charts 

A: Probing the Strict Affirmations of Monotheism in the Old Testament

B: Probing the Strict Affirmations of Monotheism in the New Testament

Chapter 11: Hoisting Anchor by Harmonizing Biblical Monotheism & Trinitarian Dogma

A: Biblically Exhibiting the Tri-Personally Singular (Mono-to-Mono) God-relationship

B: The Substantial Oneness of the Triune I AM: The Divine Tabernacle of Infinity

Division II: What lies ahead in our Voyages together out at Sea

Chapter 12: Maiden Voyage of Chronicling the Triune I AM’s Self-Disclosure

A: Chronicling our Creator’s Self-Disclosure in the Story of Finitude

B: Heading Home by a Chronological Route with a Panoramic View of Revelation

Chapter 13: Briefing the Crew on the Pending Preliminary Voyages out at Sea 

A: Explaining the Prerequisite for the Crew to First Embark on Preparatory Expeditions

B: Training in the Subjective Methods of our Voyages centered on the God-Relationship

Concluding Remarks on the Summons of Eternity

A: Personal Petition to Join the Crew in our Pending Departure

The Enigmatic Concept of Infinity for Finite Human Beings (Thought Experiment of the Trace of Infinite Being Imprinted on the Human Mind)

Try attempting to think of the implications that before you came into existence you did not exist. There existed a world in which you were non-existent, whether there or anywhere else. Now try to conceive that beyond the individual origin of your existence lies an ultimate point of origin for all finite existence. Now attempt to conceive what lies beyond each of these points: your beginning on the one hand and ‘the beginning of finitude’ on the other hand. As you attempt to bring to mind the point of origins of finite being from super-finite being you will realize that an infinite abyss of darkness now lies before your mental perception, as what your mind can possibly bring to mind suffers increasing degrees of conceptual shortages and inadequacies. Your memory, your conceptual perspicacity, and your imagination will all fail to come to your aid in such a mental endeavor of striving to catch a glimpse of the realities revolving around the origin of all finite being. Now attempt to try to go beyond this line of demarcation between finite being and the infinite abyss of originless, which represents what existed before the ultimate beginning of finitude, being that lies beyond it. No finite creature, no matter how intelligent, could accomplish such a mental feat that involves attempting to go beyond this line of Infinite-finite demarcation. You would realize that the fog of enigma lying before your mind’s eye becomes thicker, due your inner vision being thrown into paradoxical confusion brought upon by the thought of an originless being.

Let us now try a more personal approach to this thought experiment. Try to conceive the concept of the origin of your existence by going as far back as you can through the file drawers of your life. As you trace your way back, you will realize that the more you go back the more empty the drawers become. You will ultimately come to drawers that merely contain a sparse number of baby pictures in them, but for the most part they are empty. These drawers particular lack genuine images from a first person perspective but merely memories of pictures taken of you when you were a child between the time of your birth and up to a few years of age. Now beyond these drawers of the first years of your life as a finite being lie one last drawer. As you mentally try to open this drawer, you find that it is completely empty, as your memory lies barren of any concrete depictions of the duration of your existence up to your birth. Even the attempt to open this drawer causes discombobulation within your mind, as you come to terms with the apparent ontological emptiness of your existence that now lies before your mind’s eye. Now there actually might be a picture of a computer image of you as a baby in the womb, but such an abstraction does not suffice as an actual ontological impression of your finite existence. So ultimately the first drawer of your existence as the finite being that you are lies completely empty. You have reached the point of origin of your existence, yet as you proceed to filter through the files from front to back contained in this last chapter, the void that lies before you begins to overwhelm and consume your thoughts.

Now meditate on this conundrum of conceiving the mysterious origins of your existence as a finite being, by continually reinforcing in your mind the implications of your existence actually having a beginning. For instance, meditate on the fact that before this beginning, you did not exist at all. Now think to yourself, what happened before I came into existence and where was I when this happened? Ask yourself further, “did I actually not exist at one point?” By necessity such enigmatic questions will lead to confusion, for we perceive of our existence as falsely originless. This false perception results because we have become so habitually used to conceiving our existence as part of a continual continuum made up of day after day, as our self-consciousness seems to have no beginning nor end, seeing as we seem to live in the moment as part of an infinite past and an infinite future. Yet we know within our innermost being that indeed we do have a beginning, and that we have merely deceived ourselves into thinking of ourselves as a quantitatively finite being. This becomes very clear what we come to terms with our lack of self-sufficiency and our mortality, as well as realizing that we utterly lack qualitative degrees of infiniteness due to our inescapable contextuality and our existential finitude. Now try to abstract from this finite continuum of your self-consciousness in attempting to bring to mind those points along the continuum that lie closest to the point of origins of your existence as a finite being. Strive to go further to what lies before your point of origins and ultimately what lies before the point of origins of all of finitude. Doing so will cause the thoughts of your mind to twist in upon themselves. Even though finitude is all that you know, you come to realize how little you actually understand the enigma of finite existence.

The Ocean of Despair that Separates Mortal Humans from the Shores of Eternity

I increased my possessions …  I did not restrain myself from getting whatever I wanted … Yet when I reflected on everything I had accomplished and on all the effort that I had expended to accomplish it, I concluded: “All these achievements and possessions are ultimately profitless – like chasing the wind! … So I lamented to myself, “The benefits of wisdom are ultimately meaningless!” … Alas, the wise man dies – just like the fool … So I began to despair about all the fruit of my labor for which I worked so hard on earth …  What does a man acquire from all his labor and from the anxiety that accompanies his toil on earth? For all day long his work produces pain and frustration, and even at night his mind cannot relax!

(Eccl 2:4-23)

Even if a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, but cannot enjoy his prosperity –  even if he were to live forever …  if he should live a thousand years twice, yet does not enjoy his prosperity. [He will eventually] die! All of man’s labor is for nothing more than to fill his stomach – yet his appetite is never satisfied! … It is better to be content with what the eyes can see than for one’s heart always to crave more. This continual longing is futile … For no one knows what is best for a person during his life – during the few days of his fleeting life – for they pass away like a shadow

(Eccl 6:1-12).

Imagine a metaphoric scenario of a person who does not believe there exists a way of escape from our human mortality in this dying universe. While we imagine this scene, we should keep in mind the view point depicted in the verses of Ecclesiastes at the beginning of this section. Passages from this text depict what the limits of human understanding expresses concerning the apparent hopeless and transient fatalism of all mortal humanity[1]. The person we imagine, consequently, does not believe in the possibility of humanity passing into eternal life within an undying universe. Imagine that this person as a woman who sees herself as a castaway, who before she embraced this disposition of unbelief once spent sleepless nights in her youth gazing out from the shoreline of the Land of Darkness. She lingered here longing for another world and a savior to sweep here away to this paradise. Let us back track in time to see her painstakingly trying to make out what lies beyond the chaotic waves of transience and futility. These waves crash to and fro across the tumultuous scene that lies before her. She dares not go further, seeing as just a few yards in front of her tumultuous waves crash about in the ocean’s shallows that lie filled with sharp jagged rocks jutting out from the water.

Amidst the turmoil that unsteadies her hopeful gaze, she tries to make out what lies beyond this chaotic scene. Her searching gaze, however, never discerns anything except a pitch-black void of emptiness. In her desperation, she becomes so exhausted to the point that the hope within her seems to be dashed to pieces among the roaring collision of these waves against the rocks of despair. The content of her once dream-filled vision of an eternally blessed future now becomes filled with an ominous black-hole that bids her to step into despair. This hopelessness pierces her soul with the empty void of meaninglessness that appears to inescapably await every mortal bound to the shores of a dying world. Worse yet, would it be for her when she realizes that this grim darkness of ultimate desolation edges closer inland. Such a realization produces in her mind a vision of an hour glass. She imagines the hour glass of temporality counting down to the expiration of not just her life, but of all life in this dying world. She witnesses firsthand the cold chill permeating a soul realizing its inevitable fate of extinction. She comes face to face with the fate foreshadowed by the stories she has heard before about the periods of catastrophe and wide-spread extinction on planet Earth. She realizes how the stories that she has been taught in the real world present her with a factual accounting for the existence of humanity and the world she inhabits that leaves out the possibility of escaping mortal transience and the gone-wrongness in this world.

She now sees that these intelligent stories explaining to her the factual human situation are a flat out denial of fulfilling her inner aspirations of inhabiting the ideal world of her dreams. These stories explain as normal what she inherently knows as the gone-wrongness of this world and the people around here. They even justify what she sees as the gone-wrongness of humanity, selfishness, as normal animalistic instincts that have gone far to shape our materialistic and consumeristic society, as well as motives our superficial judgments of ourselves. Consider even the tendency to treat people and relationships as commodities. Not only that, but she notices that these stories account for reality apart from the existence of a higher Being, e.g. a Divine Creator. With the acceptance of these educated narratives, all sorts of doors shut in her mind of possibilities that once filled her thoughts, imagination, and dreams regarding the possibility of the existence of the Divine.

Such thoughts gave rise to the possibility of making a way of escape from the gone-wrongness and transience around her, so that her childhood dreams could come true. But now these narratives come to negate the possibility of receiving a truly meaningful destiny, an eternal purpose that she was made for; the possibility of receiving truly unconditional love, acceptance, and belonging that cannot be found among mutable people prone to selfishness and fickle emotions. In view of such possibilities, she had once hoped she could receive revelation of how exactly she was created as distinctively beautiful, in spite of what others, the norms of societal expectations, or even the norms of science may say. She had even imagined that someday she could walk through a door that led to a ‘library’ where she could find answers to all of her deeply personal questions that revolve around her individual existence, such as why she exists and who she was meant to be. Here she imagined meeting a Heavenly Father in a type of workshop where she could receive from Him a guide to rightly living out her life, seeing as He was the One who made her, as the apple of His eye, His “princess”.

Gambling on the Possible Life-Shaping Narratives of Human Destiny

Somewhere deep inside each of us we know that we exist as someone originally created for a specific eternal destiny in a never-ending story. Consider with me a moment where this yearning becomes manifest like one gazing across the ocean longing for something that lies just beyondthe horizon. This moment of gazing out across this sea of divine mystery into a possible eternal destiny, everything lying behind us becomes a distant memory. Within our innermost being we feel a sense of urgency that fills our soul with a hopeful yearning for something beyond what this fallen world can offer us. This hopeful yearning stretches out into the unknown, trying to grasp and retain the belief in what cannot be seen. As this yearning intensifies, a faint possibility of eternal happiness rises on the horizon. It beckons us with a promise that if we explore this ocean of mystery and entrust our future to our conviction in the actuality of this possibility, then we will find that which we have been seeking all our life without knowing what it was we sought.

Over time, this search for a greater good or higher end to live for available to us in this world has become suppressed under the weight of “reality,” because the realities of adulthood tend to stifle this childish hope of a “castle in the clouds”. Such a hope, subsequently, becomes set aside, only to be entertained as a hobby or through a work of fiction or all-together demeaned in the world of grownups. In consequence, at the close of each day of unrest has forced us to come to terms with the reality that this was a naïve hope for that which cannot be found on the shores of this world. Even still, at this present moment as we gaze out into the transcendent unknown, our gaze re-ignites the spark of the once-burning candle of eternal hope within our soul. We have experienced similar re-awakenings of this candle’s flame when we have read, listened to, or watched a story play out that reminds us of this inner longing for the possibility of some higher destiny beyond what has become the mundane everydayness of human life here in this world. But in contrast to these illusory possibilities inspired by the human imagination, at this moment a storyline appears on the horizon that presents these dreams as indeed a possible actuality. This moment gives way to a crossroads of faith that accompanies this resurrection of hope in finding lasting fulfillment for the inner yearning of our soul somewhere beyond the immediate horizons of the life of transience we now live.

While our gaze pierces the immediate horizon of our present life, hope in a blessed eternal destiny is kindled by the fires of the imagination. Although, our imagination comes along side our gaze to infuse it with the desire to act. This impulse comes to us in such a way that it feels as though some true substantiality lies at the root of what inspires us to believe that an actual possibility of eternal good actually lies available to us. This desire to act is greater than the inner promptings after fictional narratives became portrayed before our physical eye or our mind’s eye, since they clearly come to us as a momentary escape from carrying out our roles in real life. The bent towards taking action comes to us now, when it did not in relation to these works of fiction, because a part of us truly believes that what now calls out to us to real not imaginative action has always been calling out to us. Somehow we know that this same call that brings us now to an existential halt before a crossroads of destiny has rung out from a mysterious deep place ever since the awakening of our self-consciousness within our innermost being. Therefore, we believe it has not come from or has been placed in us from the outside, but rather lies innately imprinted upon our soul with a void of eternity that nothing in this world of transience can fill.

Scripture explains this human situation of inherently desiring the possibility of an eternal good, as eternity lying pre-written on the human heart (Eccl 3:11). For this reason nothing within the immediate horizons of this world of transient goods[1] permanently satisfies us human beings just as the book of Ecclesiastes makes quite clear. In contrast, the animals inhabiting this world alongside us seem to find what we humans can never find: true existential rest in spite of transience. Somewhere deep within us, we know that we were created to inhabit eternity. Accompanying the desire to act before this crossroads of faith, we inwardly feel a prompting that beckons us to begin our journey of exploring the spiritual ocean of our Creator’s self-disclosure. It beckons us to embrace the rekindled hope experienced most clearly in our childhood that trusts and believes in what cannot be seen: that out there lies all the answers to the enigma concerning our true place in the universe. This hopeful belief inspires within us a vision that appears before our mind’s eye that we can come into an eternal, not a mere transient, good as our potential destiny. Such a destiny, as we inherently know, extends beyond this present mortal life and dying world. This hope enriches our gaze with a longing expectancy, inviting us to leave everything behind to sail these waters of mystery until we find what we have been seeking since we became conscious of being discontent, restless, of not fitting in, of transient meaninglessness, of being out of place, of being homeless. 

On The Altar of the Human Heart (Created to be a House of Fire)

Intro Scriptures

“Be on guard so that you do not forget the covenant of the Lord your God that He has made with you, and that you do not make an image of any kind, just as He has forbidden you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire; He is a jealous God” (Deut 4:23).

“As I watched, I noticed a windstorm coming from the north – an enormous cloud, with lightning flashing, such that bright light rimmed it and came from it like glowing amber from the middle of a fire… In the middle of the living beings was something like burning coals of fire or like torches. It moved back and forth among the living beings. It was bright, and lightning was flashing out of the fire. The living beings moved backward and forward as quickly as flashes of lightning… I saw an amber glow like a fire enclosed all around from His waist up. From his waist down I saw something that looked like fire. There was a brilliant light around it, like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds after the rain. This was the appearance of the surrounding brilliant light; it looked like the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I threw myself face down, and I heard a voice speaking” (Ezek 1:4, 12-14, 27).

Re-Contextualizing Scripture for Today

What we need today is to be caught on fire by One who is a Consuming Fire. Our inner person needs to be ablaze with the fiery heart of the Living God, whose name is Jealous, Jealous.

We have had the fires of illicit passion burn within us for the spoiled fruit of lawlessness. We burned for satisfying sexual cravings. We burned for satisfying carnal lusts for immediate self-medicated pleasure of the senses. Our heart burned for Hollywood that the lusts of our eyes may partake in sensuality and violence, that our ears may partake of profanity and sexual innuendoes, that our mind’s eye may partake of self-escaping fantasies.

Our heart desires to be the character on the screen. Our heart desires to possess the romance depicted on the screen. Our heart burns for the heights of romantic highs of hormone driven ecstasy. We seek to satiate the fires kindled in our heart by the stories in romance novels, in romantic cinema presentations, by the sizzling articles in magazines.

We search craving for satiation of these desires that burn seek a way of escape into our entire livelihood that we can become caught up in the realm where our fictional fantasies become concrete reality. The fire within us cries out to be released. We search to find release. We seek the reality of our fiction. We move from person to person, occasion to occasion, seeking our true first love. Our heart craves to have its yearning kindled by fiction to become fully and never-endingly satiated with the self that freely partake in the height of romantic enrapturement, where loneliness ceases, where emptiness ceases, where striving for acceptance ceases, where the thirsts for more ceases.

The script has been written, yet we seek the actor (actress) who can join us in our masquerade of romantic fiction. Our heart yearns for the story that kindled this fire to become ours, that our candle can be lit. Reality sucks and our heart becomes kindled for escape. To pass into another world through a screen, a mouse, and a keyboard. To play a role on social networking to numb the isolationism that has become one lonely candle burning.

 Our heart burns for pleasure. We eat. We drink. We overload the senses. Then comes the pain. Then comes the regret. The fire has turned into a self-consuming fire of insatiable lusts. We eat and eat. We drink and drink. We watch and watch. Yet the more we do the more the emptiness of our existence turns into an abyss with a floating candle gradually fading in the whirlwind of unbridled desire. In moments the candle bursts and unleashes forth pain in the lives of those around us, who no longer play the role we had set for them. They no longer serve our dreams. They remind us of how lost we are to our dreams. We hate these reminders.

We escape into fires of career, the fires of video games, the fires of social networking, the fires of hobbies, the fires of partying, fires of friendship, the fires of identity crises. We burn to find our self elsewhere.

The American "I" Syndrome

Old Testament Passage
“A son naturally honors his father and a slave respects his master. If I am your father, where is my honor If I am your master, where is my respect? The Lord who rules over all asks you this, you priests who make light of my name!” (Malachi 1:6)

“My, how good you have become at chasing after your lovers! Why, you could even teach prostitutes a thing or two!... But, watch out! I will bring down judgment on you because you say, “‘I have not committed any sin’” (Jeremiah 2:33-35).

“Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites! For the Lord has a covenant lawsuit against the people of Israel. For there is neither faithfulness nor loyalty in the land, nor do they acknowledge God” (Hos 4:1).

New Testament Passages
“Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom the master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom the master finds at work when he comes. I tell you the truth, the master will put him in charge of all his possessions. But if that evil slave should say to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ and he begins to beat his fellow slaves and to eat and drink with drunkards, then the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not foresee, and will cut him in two, and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 24:45-51).

“If you love me, you will obey my commandments” ( John 14:15).

“My commandment is this – to love one another just as I have loved you”( John 15:12)

"Then he said to them all,' If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me" (Luke 9:23)

Re-Contextualizing Scripture for Today

How easy we find it to say that God is our Heavenly Father. When times get rough we say, “Our Heavenly Father will provide”. When we have requests to bring we pray “Our Heavenly Father”. How easy we find it to say on Sunday, “Jesus is Lord”. To say, "We love you Jesus".

Now in the passage in Malachi, God accuses His priests who found it easy to carry out their position in society without showing Him respect or honor. He essentially accused them of religious hypocrisy. He condemned them for treating His name lightly, for saying YAHWEH is ADONAI (Lord/ Master) but then not living as if He was truly the Master of their lives throughout the week, as God pointed out how they have ignored His commandments (Mal 1:10-15). They obeyed God half-heartedly and were devoted more to their own prosperity than their loyalty to follow His standards.

To the New Testament Jewish believers, calling Jesus Lord meant calling Him Adonai. To them this meant He was the master of their existence and that they no longer lived for themselves. Jesus, knowing this, accepted being called Master and said, “If you love me[, which includes honor and respect, then] you will obey my commandments”. If one loves Jesus than one recognizes who He is and loves Him for who He is. Seeing as He is the Lord, to love Him means to love Him as Lord and recognizing this position of lordship. In other words, we must live as if He is the Lord over our relationships, choices, career, schooling, etc.. It means to seek His will and not my will or your will over our lives.

How can one say, “I love my wife”, if he does not recognize her as his wife and instead sleeps around with other women? This would be flat out hypocrisy, especially if the man continued to say that he loved her while living an adulterous lifestyle. In a similar way, how can we say we love Jesus, but not obey His commandments? In this way we show no respect for His position over our lives, as those who identify Him as our Lord. Only by identifying Him as Lord are we saved, but mere identification does not represent the actual fulfillment of this claim. If I identify “Anne” as my wife, does not mean that I actually love her like my wife. This claim necessarily entails responsibilities or else the claim rings hollow.

Is He my Lord? Is He your Lord? Only how we live will reveal the answer to such questions?

Biblical Foundation for The Glory of a Grieving God

“I will commit myself to you in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and tender compassion. I will commit myself to you in faithfulness; then you will acknowledge the Lord.”

“The Lord said to me, ‘Go, show love to your wife again, even though she loves another man and continually commits adultery. Likewise, the Lord loves the Israelites although they turn to other gods and love to offer raisin cakes to idols.’”

“Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites! For the Lord has a covenant lawsuit against the people of Israel. For there is neither faithfulness nor loyalty in the land, nor do they acknowledge God.”

“Come on! Let’s return to the Lord! He himself has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us! He has injured us, but he will bandage our wounds! He will restore us in a very short time; he will heal us in a little while, so that we may live in his presence. So let us acknowledge him! Let us seek to acknowledge the Lord! He will come to our rescue as certainly as the appearance of the dawn, as certainly as the winter rain comes, as certainly as the spring rain that waters the land.”

“For I delight in faithfulness, not simply in sacrifice; I delight in acknowledging God, not simply in whole burnt offerings. At Adam they broke the covenant; Oh how they were unfaithful to me!”

“Woe to them! For they have fled from me! Destruction to them! For they have rebelled against me! I want to deliver them, but they have lied to me. They do not pray to me, but howl in distress on their beds; They slash themselves for grain and new wine, but turn away from me. Although I trained and strengthened them.”

“O Israel, do not rejoice jubilantly like the nations, for you are unfaithful to your God. You love to receive a prostitute's wages on all the floors where you thresh your grain.”

“When Israel was a young man, I loved him like a son, and I summoned my son out of Egypt. But the more I summoned them, the farther they departed from me. They sacrificed to the Baal idols and burned incense to images. Yet it was I who led Ephraim, I took them by the arm; but they did not acknowledge that I had healed them.”

“How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? I have had a change of heart! All my tender compassions are aroused! I cannot carry out my fierce anger! I cannot totally destroy Ephraim! Because I am God, and not man – the Holy One among you – I will not come in wrath!”

“Ephraim has surrounded me with lies; the house of Israel has surrounded me with deceit. But Judah still roams about with God; he remains faithful to the Holy One.”

“But you must return to your God, by maintaining love and justice, and by waiting for your God to return to you.”

“Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for your sin has been your downfall! Return to the Lord and repent! Say to him: “Completely forgive our iniquity; accept our penitential prayer, that we may offer the praise of our lips as sacrificial bulls. Assyria cannot save us; we will not ride warhorses. We will never again say, ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made. For only you will show compassion to Orphan Israel!’ “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger will turn away from them.”

“Who is wise? Let him discern these things! Who is discerning? Let him understand them! For the ways of the Lord are right; the godly walk in them, but in them the rebellious stumble.”

(Hosea 2:19-20, 3:1, 4:1, 6:1-3, 6:6-7, 7:13-15, 9:1, 11:1-3, 11:8-9, 11:12, 12:6, 14:1-4, 14:9)

 
[For a more complete context of these passages taken from Hosea read Ezekiel 16, which is fittingly entitled "God's Unfaithful Bride" in the NET.]

The Glory of a Grieving God: Part I

Without adequately taking into consideration how God is agape (love) and phos (light), conceptions of who God is and what is the Glory of God will inevitably be misunderstood. Such misconceptions leads to a hazardous conception of what it means to glorify God according to a conception of God where His to-be is not defined as self-emptying Agape. This further leads to a misleading way of understanding what it means when our guide tells us that the “Lord [our] God is a consuming fire; He is a jealous God” (Deut. 4:24). Our observations along this journey have clearly shown that all such conceptual idols that although may have emphasized phos and noumenos, they have wholly neglected agape, which itself is a caricature of God that ceases to be God. This is not to say that love is God, but that a conception of God that fails to recognize that God is love in the sense that His very infinite to-be is essentially self-giving. A God who is not an essentially self-giving Loving One is not the God revealed throughout the pages of our Guide, who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Our God is the one who tells us the following immutable disposition of God’s part of the covenant between Himself and mankind even in spite of the unfaithfulness of man: “Do I actually delight in the death of the wicked, declares the sovereign Lord? Do I not prefer that he turn from his wicked conduct and live? For I take no delight in the death of anyone, declares the sovereign Lord. Repent and live!” (Ez. 18:23, 32).

 

Our God is unconditionally the Loving One, for even in spite of the persistent unfaithfulness of the beloved, Israel, God remained ever faithful, such that when reflecting on this covenant while condemning the beloved for finding no place for repentance to her unfaithfulness, He grieves with the following lament: “I spread my cloak over you and covered your nakedness. I swore a solemn oath to you and entered into a marriage covenant with you, declares the sovereign Lord, and you became mine… I will deal with you according to what you have done when you despised your oath by breaking your covenant. Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish a lasting covenant with you” (Ez. 16:8, 59-60). Thus, even when giving the beloved over to consequences of stubborn unfaithfulness in spite of His persistent patience and longsuffering, He cries out one last time: “Repent and turn from all your wickedness; then it will not be an obstacle leading to iniquity. Throw away all your sins you have committed and fashion yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why should you die, O house of Israel?” (Ez. 18:30-31). This is the manifestation of the heart of the Loving One who is unconditionally self-giving, for to be anything less would be to-be untrue to who He is. Though what is also necessarily entailed in being self-giving is that the Loving One does not force the beloved to repent, instead endeavors to discipline her and woo her back, but ultimately is willing to let the beloved go, if the beloved so desires (Hosea 1:2, 2:6-7, 2:14-17, 2:19-20; 3:1-5, 6:1-3, 7:13, 11:8-9, 14:1-2, 14:4).

The Glory of a Grieving God: Part II

It is the absurdities revolving around this paradox that make it what it is: a divine unconditional gift freely given without regard for whether or not it is returned by a reciprocation of an authentically free self-giving disposition. This gift is essentially a self-sacrifice of divine love, characterized as absurd by the human understanding in view of a love willing to risk being grieved by unfaithfulness in spite of God’s absolutely unwavering faithfulness all for the sake of the realization of authentic infinite-finite communion rooted in mutual self-giving. This mutual self-giving is often identified throughout our journey as a dialectical circle of love that brings to completion the love of God and thereby truly manifests the glory of the God who is Agape (I Jn. 4:16-19). The end of this passage states the following which is an affirmation of the absolute paradox of God’s unconditionally loving disposition towards all of us: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love. We love because he loved us first” (I Jn. 4:18-19). This reciprocation of love is a freely poured out self-giving that itself is fueled by the love of God that invokes this response in the heart of the sinner who comes to wholeheartedly believe in the veracity of this absolute paradox. It invokes weeping to hear Christ say from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing,” in view of one’s conviction that he or she is rightfully deserving of eternal punishment, seeing as he or she has not just been unfaithful to their neighbor and themselves, but ultimately has been unfaithful to the one “who loved them first” and never stopped loving them with ‘His’ loyal love that is unconditionally faithful in spite of how our stubborn prodigalness has grieved ‘Him’ so (Luke 15:11-32, 23:34; I Jn. 4:10, 19).

One who wholeheartedly risks believing in this absolute paradox, can only weep at the Loving One’s inhuman response of not just forgiveness but lavishly pouring out His love upon the unfaithful beloved who has returned with the desire to be true to the covenant: “Bring the best robe, and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! Bring the fattened calf and kill it! Let us eat and celebrate, because this son of mine was dead, and is alive again – he was lost and is found!’” (Luke 15:22-23). With such a sinner who comes to believe in this absolute paradox, comes to believe in the absurd notion that God not only does not give us what we deserve for our repeated offences, licentious faithlessness, and decadent prostitution, but wholeheartedly pours Himself out to the truly repentant faithless love with the aim at establishing a lasting intimate infinite-finite koinonia of the God-Relationship, with this “person the love of God is made complete, for the fear of punishment has been cast out” in view of what the absolute paradox has shown God to truly be (I Jn. 4:18). Now that God has bought back the adulterous beloved, the beloved when she believes in this absolute paradox and holds firm to this conviction comes to the subsequent response of declaring, “You bought me to set me free, now all I want to do is be your slave and to pour my life out You as an offering. Though such an offering of my life, is a gift I can only give if You teach me how to give freely of myself to You, just as You have given freely Yourself to me.” 

The Glory of a Grieving God: Part III

Contrary to the opinion of many who postulate a doctrine of God, the fact that God grieves is not something that exposes weakness on the part of God and neither is it something that detracts at all from His glory, omnipotence, or absolute self-sufficiency. A grieving God may not be the God of the philosophers or many theologians, but it certainly is the God revealed by the voice of our guide. Some would even postulate that it is more comforting to believe in a God who always exerts absolute sovereignty to the degree that the free will of the beloved is compromised. As for me, I contest that it is far more comforting to believing in a God who grieves in spite of my abuse of the free will ‘He’ has bestowed on me as part of ‘His’ vow of unconditionally love for me, whether I remain faithful or forfeit my covenant with ‘Him’ for another lover. I find it far more moving to my soul and a sweeter melody to my ears to hear the voice of our guide revealing to us that our God has created us to be beloved who can only enter and remain in a covenantal relationship with ‘Him’ by an authentically free self-giving reciprocation of ‘His’ unconditional self-giving, which is a self-giving on the part of the Loving One that is potentially received by all, even though such a story involves the contingency that the beloved stubbornly continues in being hardhearted towards this unconditional gift of God. This is the absolute paradox I saw when I looked upon the cross with the eyes. It was the absurdity of a God who risks being grieved all for the sake of having an intimate relationship grounded in mutual self-giving that stirs within the soul the composition of loving adoration as I pour out my thanksgiving at the foot of the cross.

I find it sweeter and more moving than if I were to believe that I can never fall away from my covenant with God because of the absolute compulsivity irresistible grace that necessitates absolute perseverance on my part in ‘committing’ myself to the infinite-finite dialogue that is in actuality God ruling out the contingency that the gift is rejected in spite of ‘His’ desire and will for it to be received. If this were true reciprocal self-giving would in actuality be impossible which would render the dialectical circle of love not truly authentic to the love made manifest in scripture. The dialectical circle of love between God and the single individual only exists where the absolute paradox is presupposed, only then is the drawing of the beloved to the place of repentance is not merely a decree of the mind of God but a wooing of the heart of God. A marriage covenant build upon anything less ceases to be a covenant grounded upon mutual commitment that is authentically exchanged by a self-giving commitment to unconditional faithfulness that becomes a covenant based on love because it is built on the risk of unfaithfulness that comes with the possibility for departure from the koinonia of the marriage covenant. Therefore, the Koinonia of Agape presupposes the existence of such a risk when it involves a finite entity, who is himself or herself not essentially self-giving. Only with such an enigmatic equation of mutual self-giving inter-course does the infinite-finite dialogue take on its distinctive theme as essentially a love story, though such a theme of this is not build around a melody of sanctified ‘hedonism’ but rather a melody of self-emptying agape. 

The Glory of a Grieving God: Part IV

Let us refer once again to the parable of the prodigal son that is the exemplary illustration of the absolute paradox of a God who is essentially and unconditionally self-emptying (Luke 15:11-32). In doing so, we will interpret this parable via the theological context of our journey into discovering God’s self-disclosure throughout the oikonomia of finitude. According to this Biblically rooted theological paradigm of the infinite-finite dialogue as it revolves around the realization of the God-relationship, it can be said that the prodigal son’s father is glorified as being one who unconditionally and faithfully remained one who is Love no matter what the conclusion turned out to be regarding how the prodigal’s son carried out his part in this covenantal illustration ultimately. The Father would have been glorified both if the son returned, which would have evoked the delight of the father conveyed by Him rejoicing, and if the son did not return, which would have evoked sorrow in father conveyed by Him grieving. The reasoning of man would deny this conjecture, yet this is a tainted reasoning of a finite entity who is not love, as such he or she calculates the degree of being being glorified in a relationship based on the outcome not on the disposition of the loving one in this relationship. In relation to the story of Hosea and his relationship with his wife, the exceptionally reasonable people would have certainly scoffed at Hosea for repeatedly taking back his unfaithful wife who turned to prostitution time and time again, even when He bought her back and had more than proven his faithfulness, commitment, loyalty, and devotion to her. They would have condemned him as one whose glory was being ruined by his lovesick blindness that from their perspective should be pitied rather than held up as an exemplary form of agape. 

The Glory of a Grieving God: Part V

Both outcomes of rejoicing and grieving over the final outcome of the relationship between God and each of His most beloved creation manifest who God is throughout the Narrative of Finitude affirming that God is who He is. Such outcomes declare in a reverberating fashion the name of God given to His beloved, “I AM who I AM,” and consequently both equally bring glory to God’s namesake. The difference, however, lies in whether or not the beloved, which in this case is the prodigal son, has the occasion for sharing in this glory by becoming one who reflects who God is. This reflection occurs as the dialectical circle of love is made complete. This happens when the beloved becomes one who is unconditionally and sacrificially loving, and this reciprocal love is only aroused by the love of God (I Jn. 4:10, 12, 16-17, 19). Though such seeds of reciprocal love can only grow in the soil of a humble and repentant disposition. Only by letting go of one’s stubborn pride can one consciously and willingly be open to the unconditional and sacrificial love of God with the intent of believing in Him. This love of God is made contextually manifested to the beloved in works of loving that unconditionally remain intent on making right what has been made crooked by the unfaithfulness of the beloved. 

In regards to the prodigal son, this would have meant him repenting and positively responding to the father’s disposition of love that the father had perpetually manifested by his unconditional desire to make right their covenant via the possibility of reconciliation offered his faithful extension of merciful forgiveness. If he had returned his father’s self-sacrificial love with heartfelt sorrow and passionate commitment to become one with his father in the re-establishment of the covenantal relationship, then the son would have become open to the occasion of receiving the robe and the ring that signified that restoration of the covenant by the father’s act of sanctifying the son, setting him apart to fulfill the position correspond to being his faithful child. Yet to believe in such a self-emptying is a risk on the part of the son, for it appears to be an absurd proposition that seems too good to be true. Consequently, the son must believe in the actual self-emptying disposition of agape that his father unexpectedly displayed toward him, seeing as he reasonably and intuitively was previously convinced that since he had “sinned against heaven and against his father that he was no longer worthy to be called his son, and consequently expected to be treated like one of his father’s hired workers” (Lk. 15:18-19). 

Prelude to the Fall of the Children of God Part I: On the Origins of God-Relationship between the Heavenly Father and His most Beloved Creation

[NASA]

In the beginning, God created everything with the potentiality for absolute usefulness according to the eternal ends of His Vision. This, our Creator’s Vision, is that which illuminates what will be hereafter referred to as the divinely authored Story of Creation, a story that according to our Creator’s original intention is an eternal story with a commencement but no conclusion. Since God is the Author of all existence, it is fitting to call this world His creation, and the unfolding of the happenings of this world as they unfold in accordance with His providential will His Story. This is to say that the proper unfolding of this world, is like a story, His story, the one that He wrote even before He made the world. Thus, all that He created to be part of this Eternal Story was originally ordained for perpetual usefulness, so that everything He brought into existence would carry out its preordained part that belongs to His eternal story for creation. When these parts unfold in accordance with His Vision or His plan, it brings Him joy. Like a father pleased with his children when they obey him and accomplish what he sets out for them to do, so is God proud of His creation when it brings to fruition the ends of His Vision for Creation. His original intention was that every created piece would have a specific place within His blueprint for creation and that each one would fit in such perfect and complementary relations with all other pieces within this harmonious manifold. Such obedience of all parts bears witness to His great mastery and sends up to Him an aroma of glory most sweet to Him.

All that our Heavenly Father created was originally intended to magnify Him through abiding in His will, because when the plans He has for creation come to fruition, they bear witness to His absolute perfection and absolute goodness. When we, His creation, abide in His will, we bring glory to our Heavenly Father and in a sense make Him rejoice over us like a proud father. Creation also glorifies God like how a piece of art glorifies the artist that made it. Consider every curve that Michelangelo chiseled in the marble slab and how the product of these masterful strokes would serve to bring glory to him who was the artist. The stone slab that would transform into a grand piece of art work echoes its creator’s magnificence. As each chiseled indentation collectively became the ends of Michelangelo’s Vision, they formed a harmonious manifold that is the form of one of his masterpieces, “David.” The craftsman had masterfully revealed out from the stone slab the beauty hidden within it for through his inner vision he saw the hidden form of David and sought through each stroke to bring this invisible form to increasing levels of visible manifestation. Thus, each of these strokes brought glory to the artist as they bore witness to his ingenious vision, and taken together they serve as a complete exposition of the ingeniousness of this visionary. In a similar way, what is created brings glory to its Creator by bearing witness to the Creator’s vision that authored it with all of His designs, intentions, and aspirations. Just as each chiseled curve was intended to reflect the beautifully good realities of the artist’s vision, a created reality reflects the beautiful realities of how good our Creator is by participating in the ends of His Vision. Each aspect, characteristic, and uniqueness comes together to harmoniously lift up a living testimony to the character and excellence of our Creator.

Now a defectively chiseled curve would have left a blemish on Michelangelo’s goodness as a craftsman and take away from the finished product’s intended beauty and majesty. Therefore, in a similar way, a created reality that fails to have eternal worth would have lacked goodness and beauty due to its transience. It would thereby suggest a possible shortcoming of the Creator and the goodness of His will. Such a temporal created reality would, along with its effects, ultimately fade into nothingness, because it would not endure into eternity for the Creator will not allow it. It is later however, when we will see that regardless of our failings as a rebellious race to fulfill His originally intended purpose for us, our Creator continually remains just, merciful, and perfect. We will see how even in spite of our waywardness, His loyal love endures for those who were created to be His children. He proves to be evermore truer and evermore faithful.



It was our Creator’s original intention that we would exist to be His children, for He longed to have a relationship with entities capable of engaging in a cooperative, interactive, and conscious relational association. However, this longing is not a necessary one, because His existence is not at all dependent on such associations as these. Now in order to satiate His unnecessary yearning, He formed and shaped our human existence to possess an intimate correspondence with the very image of His Godness. Such a resemblance pertains to the immaterial essence of human existence that gives rise to our unique capacity to be free moral and civil agents, capable of possessing a self-consciousness ego by being made aware of our own existence as well as our existence’s relation to external objects, and having the ability to form subjective associations and inclinations stimulated by an autonomous will unbounded by instinct or compulsion. He endowed us with such existential freedom so we can effectively serve in a centrally proactive role in the Eternal Story of Creation. This role is one that revolves around our pre-destined position as the stewards of creation, which is a position that entails the responsibility to see to it that what is made subject to us continually remains as it ought to be according to the Creator’s Vision and thereby ensuring that it perpetually glorifies the Creator. This agency of stewardship required that we would possess the capacity to rationally manage, to think creatively, form bonds of commitment and devotion, and to have subjective compassionate feelings...

Prelude to the Fall of the Children of God Part II: Concerning the Necessity of Human Freedom in order for a Theocentric Selfhood to be Actualized

In order for such a truly intimate relationship to blossom within created existence between a infinite creator and a finite creation, such a relation by necessity must be based on trust and faith on the part of the created. For instance, it is only by faith in our Creator that we commit ourselves to submit our lives to His providence, trusting that His Vision is of the upmost benefit to our existence. This is to say that due to our limited awareness of reality and our inability to discern all future possibilities, contingencies, and outcomes, it is only by faith that we trust that God has our best interest at heart and that His absolute competency and trustworthiness deserves our allegiance. Since, we cannot fully know how it is that His will for our lives is the most advantageous; it comes down to a matter of personal conviction and devotion. Moreover, apart from personal commitment and devotion, a relationship cannot exist. Such bonds of a relationship can only be shaped by a commitment stemming from a free choice. An act of freely surrendering to the will and plan of Providence is only possible by a creature that possesses the ability to depart from the will and plan of Providence, which is to say that it must be possible for such a creature to stubbornly defy Providence instead of humbly submitting to Providence.

To illustrate why freedom of the will is necessary for an intimate relationship to unfold, imagine that you find yourself encircled by a crowd harassing and jeering at you because of a riot that ensued due to racial discrimination. Now imagine that your best friend, of the same race as those persecuting you, jointly shares with you the onslaught of the crowd’s hate because of his apparent commitment to you that supersedes his loyalty to his race. This is to say that he was not initially a target of the crowd’s hate due to the crowd’s prejudices, but he indirectly became the object of hatred because of his apparent act of standing up for you. The pain of everything is not as bad when shared with a friend. Imagine that your friend remains alongside you and his loving presence provided buffer for you against the hate of the crowd. Or so you thought…

Imagine now that that this apparent devotion of the one who you presumed was your best friend was false. Imagine that you learn that it was not due to devotion, commitment, or love but that the friendship relations between you both had only been fabrications of your mind that you imposed on the relationship. There were no relations between the both of you, no real friendship. The self-imposed illusion made you convinced that he freely chose and willed to remain alongside you, in spite of the consequences. You believed that he willingly shared in your suffering out of an unconditional and loving heart. You thought his decision to remain with you was based on a voluntary commitment, but while you are in this situation, someone so cruelly reveals to you the ugly truth: that your supposed friendship is a farce and the relations between you and his actions toward you were a product of involuntary or automatic impulses. The coldness of it all would grip your heart and suddenly all the realities revolving around the relations between you dramatically shifts away from the category of friendship and the emotional support provided by this fidelity shatters. Subsequently, your inner vision of this other person dramatically changes along with your feelings and thoughts towards him.

The refuge, warmth, confidence, and strength that had flowed from this relationship during a moment of crisis dissipate, and they are replaced by thoughts and feelings of desertion, coldness, insecurity, and brokenness. You suddenly become overwhelmed with a distressing sense of loneliness and instability, and it seems as though your world has been turned upside down and you succumb to the despair to the now exponentially heightened existential crisis at hand. The shock of the present revelation eclipses that of the persecution because it is an internal crisis of the heart that causes a deeper suffering of a different kind than even the internal suffering brought upon the self and inflected upon the self due to the persecution. The emotional distress caused by this disclosure overshadows the physical pain inflicted by the persecutors.

One can see from this illustration and by reflection upon the human situation that the negation of the factor of voluntary choice, devotion, and affection cancels the illusive bonds of commitment central to a true friendship. As one’s inner vision of the other person goes through a drastic change that lasts as long as his affiliation with you relies on automatic actions and reactions, the future possibility of any sort of personal relationship is thwarted. Now it is easier for you to see how essential voluntary commitment and freely offered devotion is to the bonds of a relationship between one life form and another.

Our Heavenly Father’s aspiration to participate in a loving relationship with each of us led Him to endow within each of us the faculty of freedom and innate aspirations to strive towards eternal realities. This necessity is based on how essential freedom is in human existence’s category of willingness in order to actualize such a loving relationship envisioned by the synthetic operation of our Creator’s heart and mind when He brought to mind each of us. Freedom of the will is indispensable for the realization of the God-relationship, because freedom is requisite for relations of trust, commitment, and devotion that form a truly loving relationship between the Creator and us His beloved children. A loving relationship between an infinite being and a finite being must be rooted in faith and trust. And the activity of faith and trust in the will’s ascent to action depends on the presence of freedom, for faith and trust only take shape within our soul if and only if it was ordained for us to be faced with the decision to either volitionally commit our existence to the Creator’s Vision or to depart from His Vision altogether.


Thus, the absolute possibility of departure from the Creator’s Vision would have to be in place, which will be discussed later, in order for us to have the true possibility of a free choice to commit or to not commit our faith in our eternal destiny and the goodness our Creator’s Vision. Apart from free will, there can be no authentic trust. Without trust there can be no authentic commitment. Without commitment there can be no authentic conviction or devotion. Without conviction and devotion there can be no authentic hope. Without hope there can be no authentic faith. And without the willfully active presence of all these, true love cannot appear. Faith, hope, and love are all dependent upon a heart that is free, because only such a heart can produce the authentic hunger and thirst that provides the grounds by which these eternal virtues are procured. Freedom is the essential means by which the key of faith is formed, and this key alone gives one access to the God-relationship.