First open Zoom date

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Updates

I have set October 5th., 7.30pm UK time for the first zoom date where all are invited. I will take this first one, so it will have my bias, the bias that is reflected in the four books ‘Explorations in Theology’. It will not be necessary to have read (nor purchased!) the books. These zooms are open to anyone – it is not a requirement that you have been on the previous / current zooms that are going through the four books.

Not all the evenings will be of a theological bias, I plan for ones also to be practical and ethical. And this one, and any others that are more theological / biblical based will also push in to the ‘so what’ practical areas.

The first one will be on reading Luke’s two volumes politically – which is one of the strong underlying thrusts in his writings (my opinion!). It is not to do with political party politics.

On the home page https://3generations.eu is a form – simply fill this in to ‘enroll’. It means I will have an idea of numbers, also I have to send you a zoom link and also a document I have written up trying to plot the path of the political theme. I will not re-hash the paper on the evening. A short synopsis and then questions, elements that we can pick up for discussion – some of which could well be based on any suggestions that you have proposed having read / skimmed / scribbled all over the document.

Looking forward to seeing you!

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A carrot for the donkey, please

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

We all known the proverbial carrot and donkey analogy. The promise is always there but never actually reachable. Beginning of month and beginning of year prophecies can act like that. ‘May is the month of breakthrough’ – yippee I have been needing a breakthrough. ‘July is the double blessing month, money will be found on the money tree, and it will grow in your garden’ – great though I live in an apartment and don’t know if the money tree can grow in a flower pot. OK, although the examples were not real ones (or were they?) you get the gist.

Those kind of prophecies do give me a few problems. Though before I go into that I also believe at a personal level there can be incredible fruit. June 1997 I received one such prophecy. It went roughly along the lines of ‘great favour coming to you and to your household and this will include financial blessing, and it begins in August’. June to August, only two months, only two months to hold on. Not too big a test that one. So along comes August… nothing. Ah, I think, I have been there before, expectation had it nailed (2 months) but which year? So another 12 months to wait… along comes the next August and expectation up… nothing. I think I might have looked again the following year but soon put the word on one side. In February 2005 Sue passed away. In August 2005, I can remember exactly where I was when out of the blue as I was minding my own business I suddenly heard a voice as clear as any audible voice could be, I heard, ‘this was the August I was speaking of’. I had a choice to make – agreement or not. I agreed… ‘if that is what you are saying I receive it’. So there certainly are ‘this is the month when…’ type words.

So how do we respond to the ‘July is the month of unprecedented breakthrough…’ kind of words?

With many of them a healthy dose of cynicism. Words have to be confirmed within, and unless there is a rise of faith (not simply a consolation of hope) we should simply not get too excited. And adding ‘believe the prophets and you will prosper’ is adding the stick to the carrot.

But let’s try to find something a little more positive in the response, and to do that we need to take a step back.

Revelation connects with expectation and then we are off on a journey that will not lead anywhere too productive. ‘You are the Messiah’ led to ‘but no way will you be the crucified Messiah’ which prompted a response from Jesus of ‘I might have called you Peter, you rock-man, but for now I will rename you as Satan… the enemy’. Expectation so messes us up and enables us to miss what could have been, indeed expectation can take genuine revelation and as a result resist the very revelation being fulfilled. Maybe there is the same word for every month and every year cos we miss it each month and each year? And at the start of the month God says – OK how about this month, this year – ready to give it a go (again)?

Now let’s try and work out what kind of things go wrong.

Not understanding what it means to be alive. That might just be an issue. Defining life for Adam was pretty straightforward. What was happening in him. He eats, drinks, walks, talks… a living being. Life for Jesus, and for those who are in the resurrected Jesus though life is not defined that way. Life is what happens to others.

You will be a millionaire… more likely means you will see a million (and more) go out from you to others – and if you get good at it it does not need to go anywhere near your pocket nor wallet. Gayle and I try to learn a bit about this. But that is not practical we can retort with, thus revealing that we think the prophetic can only work in the ‘practical’ realm! In that period of time when things began to unfold (August 2005), I visited a bank I had been with since 1977, so had a good track record there. I had a mortgage with another company at the time and I was planning on changing it to the bank I had been with all those years. They went through all my figures and said – sorry we cannot offer you a mortgage of any amount, you had better stay with the company where you are. Interesting I thought. I went away rejoicing for in that period we (I include Sue) had just enabled two people to purchase property through our help. I am not sure how it happened and the bank certainly did not understand how.

Now let me interject with a word… This month is the month when the Lord wants to teach about new levels of handling finances, indeed he wants to clue us in on alternative economies that are based on faith, not resulting in more money available to you but to others. And the word for October will be pretty much the same as this is a journey that might start at the beginning of a month but certainly will not end at the end of that month.

We have to understand life. Life is not what happens to us, it is the effect of how we respond to heaven so that others get the benefit of it. (I kind of thought that was the gospel?)

Another pitfall is when We have a view of God that is transactional and is about to reward us for our good behaviour.

God is always toward us, working all things together. Does not mean s/he orchestrates all things, but is involved in the nitty-gritty pulling out of it something that would not have been there if there was no God. It does not mean that nothing bad happens to those who love God and are called according to God’s purposes. As the wisdom sayer says ‘sh** happens’. Oh yes it does. I have two friends currently undergoing treatment for cancer. Did God initiate the cancer? No way (and sovereignty answers don’t cut it the way that Scripture cuts it)… my prayer for them is that something will be the other side of the journey that is remarkable, that God will indeed work something out of this. That does not mean that the cancer is ‘sanctified’ but the journey becomes holy.

‘This is the month…’ but it is the journey that is holy. The events might be pretty rough. Maybe the month of breakthrough will be full of the not so good stuff, but maybe our eyes will be open in a new way to see God with us. That would be a true breakthrough. Maybe the thief giving back might not be the restoration of what we assessed was stolen, but some far larger issues, such as an ability to forgive, to empathise, to live simpler.

I am sure that we need to see a new level of the prophetic. I have been impacted, and been privileged to see others impacted, through prophetic words. Words that release faith. I am far from cynical about the prophetic, but we need to get beyond the donkey and the carrot (and stick), the tantalising bless you words, to digging deeper. God has much to say, but far beyond the making a nation great (again!!), or a person the most blessed person. There are transforming words to be given, and those transformations are far more focused on my neighbour than me, on Afghanistan than…

Time to grow up. Time to embrace the journey that is involved in responding to God. Time for the multiplication of millionaires for example, of ones who have moved finances / healing / new opportunities where it was needed. And this does not mean that there won’t be visible, tangible blessing for those who do so, but the effects of the ‘month of breakthrough’ will be so much more visible elsewhere.

Prophecy… we could go on. I was with Gayle in Brazil on the eve of the last election and I gave a word as to who was going to win. The people were on the edge of their seats… and then I released it. ‘The one who gets the majority of the votes’. Apparently did not satisfy the hunger… and now with the way that democracy is decaying I am not sure that we will be able to continue to say the one with the greater number of votes will win. Read the signs. Democracy has been decaying for decades in the west so it should have been no surprise that in a recent election that a huge question was raised over the numbers, indeed the one who had the most votes was proclaimed by some as having not won! Even some prominent prophecy sites have the previous incumbent as the leader to pray for… I might not agree with how the text ‘all leaders are appointed by God’ is taken, but certainly find it interesting that that Scripture is quoted and used until God has not appointed the leader!! A semblance of democracy might remain for a while, leaving behind the democratic process shell, but there comes a day when that too will disappear unless a journey of self-centredness is brought to an end.

The answer my friend is not blowing at the centre of government, but there are answers blowing in the wind, and the trouble is we have used the wind as a metaphor of the Holy Spirit. Jesus used it somewhat differently. The month of breakthrough on offer to the body of Christ is always at hand, but the kind of breakthrough on offer is apparently not that attractive to some!

Anyway September starts real soon. It is the month of breakthrough, breakthrough like I have never had, breaking me out of ‘me-ness’. If I don’t rise in faith I guess God will offer October as the month of breakthrough.

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A plan for an open evening

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Updates

Summer has not yet gone, but time to plan for the fall / autumn and winter is already here–end of August, how come so early this year? I have valued the interactive Zoom calls that have used the books (‘Explorations in Theology’) as their base. I plan to continue with them, and also alongside them to start a once a month ‘open evening’ – probably first Tuesday of the month, starting in October. So this is just a heads up on those.

They will consist of a theme which will include ethical / practical themes as well as simple biblical / theological ones. They will take the same format as the Zooms on the books. Something to read beforehand, a 10 minute summary / expansion / setting the scene then open discussion. They are not intended to bring something to a conclusion and hopefully will be open to a diversity of views being expressed. I will take some of those evenings but I also plan that others will be the main contributors.

The first one will be a simple one–reading Luke/Acts politically; how the politics and context of Luke is the backdrop to the message, from the offer to Jesus of being the Caesar of God’s choice–a kind get the right person in the white House / Number 10 / Moncloa etc… through to Paul in Rome. (Firm date and details I will post here.)

I hope in subsequent months we could look at sexuality, transgender.

Perhaps one that could be incredibly challenging on ‘humanity in the image of God’ is the future of humanity and AI. What about all those who will receive a ‘chip’ to enhance their abilities; the part human / part machine future… Just when I thought I had everything buttoned down!

I have not decided on the themes and they will evolve month by month, and the need for others to contribute will be necessary, the issues we face are complex.

Not all the subjects need be too complex, but I do want them to have a practical application. It will not be necessary to join each month, come to one, come to them all, come to none (booooohooooo!), pick and choose.

Same ‘rules’! Martin / whoever presents the material is not assumed to be ‘right’. Participants joining do not assume they are ‘right’. Listen and not pontificate…

Hope to see some of you in October.

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Kabul… Silk Road

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

Every so often in history there are major turning moments. In living memory the coming down of the Berlin Wall certainly has to be up there. Now the tragic scenarios in Afghanistan are there for us to view, though what do I know about such troubles? Yes we pray, but even still it is hard not to feel a sham in the light of what many are going through on the ground; they living in the very real fear of what might yet unfold.

There are geographies that are key to unlock much greater areas and I am sure Afghanistan is one of those. On the silk road, a theme that has been highlighted for a number of people, both in terms of the shift West to East and a restoration of trade that is not based on exploitation and greed (the sin of Sodom?). Kabul as a major crossroads, now in the centre of news.

Afghanistan has been described as the ‘graveyard of Empires’ having lived through successive attempts to be controlled. In recent centuries Britain has had a dubious history there; there are strong pointers that the initial arming and financing of the Taliban came from USA sources. I have no idea what should be done / should have been done politically, and it is certainly much easier to find what is wrong rather than propose something truly redemptive (co-words are compromising and ‘fallen’).

I am deeply troubled by the pain in that area of our globe, and do not write lightly. Yet it is a global sign that an era is ending. The end of an era does not normally come in a moment but there are often major ‘earth tremors’ marking the time. And so much of what was just continues (Jesus refusal to become the emperor of Rome, signalled the end of Rome but the history books tell us the empire continued for centuries).

I consider that the next years will increasingly signal the shift that is taking place, a shift from West to East, and a shift in where the control of financial exchange takes place. I am sure much will continue but 2022 will see a series of shock waves, even a number into what we might consider is very secure.

In history so much shift of power is from one power to the next, with the new power ‘eating’ the previous one. We have to see something different, something deeper that opens our world to dimensions of the kingdom of God. A simple shift of centres is not enough. Shifts in the global scene are a signal that there are shifts in the ‘spiritual’ scene that can be engaged with. I think we have to lose glib talk of the ‘sovereignty of God’ as if s/he is in control in some sort of ‘ruling over’ kind of way. Seems that the control was always to be in the hands of humanity, and that control was never to be over other people, but to lovingly shape the future, dig the channels where healing water can flow.

The future is going to be messy… but God will be found in strange places.

And for Afghanistan. It is one of a number of places where the memory is held strongly. The bloodshed embeds the memory deeper than before. Just as with the human person and the memory embedded within the body, so the land acts as the corporate memory, people no longer knowing why they act the way they do, simply responding to an unconscious but very real memory. A healing of the memory is so needed in that area. If there are those who have connections within the land, come into agreement with them about the healing of history.

And we have to pray in this messy era that there are those who become channels for the ‘love stream’ of heaven, and praying without simply pulling on history to suggest they will have to be immediate followers of Jesus. The messy days are here; but where we go Jesus will go before us.

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Preparing

Get ready for what? Now and there

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

Once a year I have had an event on the same date in August. (Kind of repetitive?) I’ve had quite a few so maybe I will move to an every-other year marker. Why not? Anyway… I kind of enjoy it as it is always a time for a few reflections, and also realisations. I have enjoyed getting older, and also realising that it is fairly irrelevant that I am a slow learner, some people might just enter the second half of life at an appropriate time, but I am certainly not ready for that yet. Too much to kick, and simply glad that God works with our attitude of ‘give that a good old kick’; seemingly well able to sort it out. The future of the world does not depend on my maturity!

Anyway been some good days. The presence of God – always present – but ‘felt’ presence is always wonderful, and in that presence there often comes sight.

Nothing new in what I am writing but the sense of ‘preparing to inhabit the future landscape‘ is what is on my mind and heart. To inhabit is to live in it comfortably, not challenge-free, but also not reluctantly. (By landscape I am more indicating the ‘spiritual’ reality than the climate issue of landscape… with wild-fires and record temperatures we certainly face a challenge and a verdict of neglectful stewardship.)

Change… the image on this post is of a river. The philosophers raised the question – can one step into the same river twice, or has it changed since the last time? This was responded to with a further question, ‘can one step into the same river once?’ Constant change!

In writing about change there is always a proviso. Much continues as before when change is announced. Saul’s kingdom ended ‘this day’ but he was still king the next day, and the next, and the next year… and the next decade. Nothing changed, but everything changed that day. I am not about to announce that all has changed ‘this’ day, but in this season (marked by COVID) all is / has changed.

I had some very profitable Zoom calls yesterday. One into a city in the UK where there is a battle on for a redefining of identity and direction (those two are related). I have prophesied there concerning innovation in the University, and that the clock that had been stopped is no longer stopped, yet in spite of that there are delays – that was the nature of the call yesterday. As we talked it became evident that the issue was for a healing of the corporate memory. The ‘stones’ are crying out we can’t go with change! (Land being the reservoir of the corporate memory.) Memory is a wonderful gift, and an amazing terrorising captor – in equal proportions. We see this with God instructing people ‘not to forget’ and to ‘remember’, while also telling them (in the context of radical hope for change) ‘do not remember the former things’.

Memory can inspire us to rise again. Or can become the ruts that prevent a new direction. This is certainly one of the great danger with a rehearsal of ‘revival’ history; the memory can dictate what the future expectation is. The only common factor between past and future is ‘God’, ‘who is, and who was and who is to come’. The order of the three time related phrases seem important, and the change of phraseology, thus indicating direction in the last of the three phrases seem important. The connection between past and future is God, not that of a repeated event. God might (reluctantly) allow a repeated event; we might jump up and down… God might sigh.

Memory is tied to the past, we do not arrive at the future from the past alone. If we try to do that we simply continue to live in a ‘rutted’ present. There has to be a journey first into the future so that it can then enter the present. Thankfully there are catalysts that come our way to facilitate that.

Change is constant, but not all change takes place at a constant rate. There are accelerated times of change, such as we are experiencing now. Those changes are going to affect politics and economics. They have to be affected as those are the ‘sign realms’ whenever there is a major shift spiritually.

How do we prepare?

I saw this year as (falsely) bringing things back to normal, and expected that to be the case in the latter half of this year. I still anticipate that with economic pick up, measure of travel restored and some ‘best trading year yet’ reports. I wrote ‘falsely’ not because the reports or the figures are not accurate, but because the report is based on what can be seen, not what is unseen.

I don’t know how hard 2022 will hit, but it will certainly signal that we are not out of this crisis.

How do we prepare?

I have always found that any shift external has to be initiated at a shift internally; and gladly that what we do, for example, with what is in our pocket affects the big purse out there – after all the context of the widow who put the two coins in the treasury Jesus seemed to tie to the demise of the grandioseness of the Temple edifice, certainly Luke, the observant writer on economics, seems to make that connection.

Here then are a few areas where maybe we will need to give attention:

  • Memory and the aspects that have rutted us into an expectation.
  • Money. ‘Losing’ money strategically will be… strategic! In other words it will be a strategy to unlock our personal economics (unlocking does not necessarily mean ‘increase’ but certainly means liberating of us) and if so to release something wider that will unlock a flow related to justice. I strongly suggest, particularly in new areas to keep one’s eyes open for where we deliberately do not profit from what might have been possible, that which was our ‘right’. Entry to the land was marked by this (Jericho, Achan etc.)
  • Politics. Yes I vote, but the party leanings that I have are not an endorsement of their kingdom alignment. God is not ‘party political’ aligned! But politics is simply to do with shape of society (polis: Greek city / city state). Eyes outward. How far? To the neighbour. ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is a question we have to answer. Amidst political extremes we are to be political, a love for our neighbour.
  • Health. Yet there is something bigger than health that gets threatened. It is that of whether we choose life. I have just completed one more calendar year on planet earth, and have worked out that I am probably(!!) more than half way through my life. The higher call is not to live in health but to live, to choose life. To choose life we do not orientate ourselves in trying to avoid death. Avoiding death is never the instruction. The kingdom of God does not orientate itself around the negatives (there are some) but the orientation is around the positives – eat of all the trees was the first instruction. Life is never defined (unless Adam is the model) by what happens inside, but by what happens externally, as ‘felt’ by the neighbour.

I picked out those four elements (memory, money, politics and health) as there are very real corporate threats around those. The external (big world) is related to the choices made in the small world (my life).

We are in a phase where things can be confusing. Where is God?, not in the sense that s/he can’t be seen, but sometimes s/he is being seen where we did not expect to see God, and sometimes not seen where we expected to see God. Maybe the question is not ‘where is God?’, but ‘why is God present there?’ and ‘why in reality is God absent here?’.

We are truly in the (to you, your children)… and to ‘those who are afar off‘. This will result in mixed responses. God is there (great)… oh no it does not fit my box.

The future is messy… and not just for a short period of time.

The small world is the key.

If we are worried about where is Jesus in all this mess out there, there is an internal question to be asked, that question being far more important than the external question.

In this mess, there is a new bumper (Gayle’s current sense) environment. All it is asking for is for those to walk in the mess there with Jesus. Encounters with Jesus are to take place there.

Many years ago I had a word that God was going to give some people two homes. I am not talking of a nice holiday home, or two luxury pads. A home in Scripture is not first (nor last) implying a building, though a building can be home. A home is a place where there has been a reconciliation, it is the return of the prodigal; it is a place where heaven and earth meet. Money might say to some, ‘OK’ it is easy to have two or more houses… but it is not easy to have two ‘homes’. That requires faith and grace. I now see a further element. Two homes. Home in the ‘clean’ place, where no-one swears (as if!) and a home in the ‘dirty’ place. HOME. In both places where there is a reconciliation of heaven and earth.

The bumper time is here. Explosions. But there not here. I probably should not bother with another August event for the next 8 years. That is the season that is here now / the season that is there now. The timing is consistent (now) the place is not (there).

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Not always clear

Beyond the text

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Ever since I was a kid I was taught to read the Bible, the simple Bible stories that still stick with me. At night my mother taught me and then told me to pray ‘me bonnie words’, which was a simple prayer from the verse of a hymn. Level of understanding – minimal to start with. Then through the more adult phase of my life had only one approach to Scripture and it all (had to) fit together, perhaps with a few tensions but certainly no internal disagreements. (Confession always found a lot of the ‘Old Testament’ difficult; there was an early church leader, Marcion (85-160AD), who posited that there were two revelations of ‘god’. The God of the Gospel who sent Jesus was the true God, the one of the Old Testament not the true ‘God’ but a ‘demiurge’. I certainly don’t think he got it right, but he has my sympathies!)

Marcion was wrong, but we all have to find some kind of solution, unless the solution is that the revelation of God in Jesus was temporary, and we all await the day of (violent) vengeance when the God that Jesus hid from view is revealed! The post I wrote on Jesus (because) he was God emptying himself sought to show that Jesus was the express image of God; all Christophonies are Theophanies. There is not a non-Jesus like God.

Scripture makes us work. We cannot always just take every word as if they are the ‘words’ of God. The book, and above the book, the story that unfolds I have no trouble giving to it the title ‘word of God’, provided we understand that the ‘word of God’ (Scripture) is bearing witness to the ‘Word of God’ (Jesus).

(After I had written this post an excellent, and creatively written, post was put up by Brad Jersak ‘Reading from the End (with children)’):

https://peteenns.com/reading-from-the-end-with-children/

Disagreement, discussion, enter the dialogue

I think Scripture does not shrink back from disagreement, and invites us into the disagreement. It does not give the answer, but presents the issues, then as we submit to the wider story, and the revelation in Jesus, we will come out of it with our conclusion. And if it is a theoretical conclusion, particularly if we hold to a perspective but do not truly submit to it, we should rightly expect to remain confused. Scripture is useful. It is so far beyond theory.

Disagreements? Well try to put the three books of wisdom together – Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. One is so principled and is the one we love to quote, for there are no exceptions. With the second one, at least we get a look behind the scenes and can decide Job’s troubles (exceptions) were a manifestation of heavenly conflict. The third one… all is vanity? Better to be dead? Not words pulled out of the first book, Proverbs! But the three open up a window on our complex world and context. (Personal confession: I much prefer Proverbs… much easier to pray from that one!)

Disagreements? Well what about the anointing of a king? So much of the Old Testament, certainly what is written / edited after the rebellious northern kingdoms got their comeuppance through the Assyrians is solidly pro-kingship. Judges – ‘there was no king in the land’ – presents the problem to us, with the solution simply being that all we need is a decent king. Indeed someone even cheekily put a few words into Moses’ mouth, and really into God’s mouth, about the king, long before there was a king:

When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “I will select a king like all the nations surrounding me,” you must select without fail a king whom the Lord your God chooses. From among your fellow citizens you must appoint a king—you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites. Moreover, he must not accumulate horses for himself or allow the people to return to Egypt to do so, for the Lord has said you must never again return that way (Deut. 17:14-16).

But, but, but the choice of a king was a rejection of God (1 Sam. 8).

God, the law and the death penalty

Then there is God, who really messes things up for us. The death penalty was prescribed for 38 crimes in the Old Testament, murder of course being one of them. So when we read of the first recorded murder (Cain) and that the murderer is confronted by God himself, we should expect a clear result! But… the result was that God covered the murderer with a protective sign. In reality God disobeyed his own law… or we presume that the law is not the law of God, not in an absolute sense, and it seems clear that Jesus came at it that way.

The prodigal son prodigal father

The parable has been understood to be the prodigal son parable and that supposedly speaks deeply to us. If we make it the parable of the older brother it would probably speak to us even deeper, with our sin not being the issue but ‘our’ righteousness. That would be just a little painful to read it that way… though look at the context and see how it is set in the space between the ‘sinners’ and the ‘Pharisees and scribes’. However, there is a third character in the story…

Think about the father, and I don’t think there is much disagreement when we consider this to be a picture of the ‘heavenly Father’. First let’s establish the biblical requirement of a good law-abiding, righteous parent:

If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid. (Deut. 21:18-21)

The son in asking for the inheritance is (culturally) saying he wishes the father dead. The rebelliousness of the younger son is evident throughout the parable, and so the son qualifies to be given a good old beating by the elders while the father looks on with approval, indeed to be put to death. With this biblical backdrop we meet the father that Jesus presents as the real ‘prodigal’ character in the story. He runs? Never, would that happen. That would be a disgrace, what a loss of dignity, how undermining to the family, how ultimately destructive to the fabric of society. The shocking nature of the parable is hard for us to grasp, but would not have been missed by the hearers in their contextual culture.

And this is God!!!!

A simple textual approach gets us so far, and many times the revelation of God in Jesus will cause us to struggle with certain texts. We have to. I cannot reconcile many of them, but I am thankful that I was not encouraged to understand them but there is something overarching them all with the exhortation that I am to ‘try and find out what pleases the Lord’. That word ‘try’. Those are the kind of words that helps me to love what I read.

I said when I was a kid my level of understanding was minimal. In some ways that has not changed. I probably should pray ‘me bonnie words’ again:

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild
Look upon this little child.
Pity my simplicity,
help me Lord to come to thee. 

Not a bad prayer! Don’t know too much, but in it all and through it all help me find you.

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Elect

Yes please - count me in

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Chosen by God… but this in its strong form has always troubled me, even the Arminian version of God knows who will respond has troubled me. At least Spurgeon had a good prayer to get round it (not very theological though): Save the elect and then save some more!

So what do I think? I never thought you would ask.

First election is to a purpose. Israel’s election is not to put a stamp on them to mark them as ‘the saved ones’ and by default on the others as ‘the damned ones’. Any election is for the whole.

Second there is ultimately on One elected person: Jesus. He is the Chosen one – not you, nor me, nor even a particular race – not when we view it from the position where it is placed. Eternity. Jesus has always been the Chosen one… and we are elect IN HIM.

If I make a comparison with Israel, an individual Jew could say ‘I was chosen in Abraham in 1750BC’ (bit arbitrary with the date but close enough).

  • The chosen one – Abraham.
  • When – some time ago.
  • Me – I am chosen because I am in him.

Now to Ephesians with a few words emboldened:

Just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 

  • The chosen one – Christ.
  • When – before the foundation of the world.
  • Me – I am chosen because I am in him.

OK there you get my simple approach. Everyone who is in Jesus is chosen, part of the elect. There is no election of some to salvation / others not. Jesus was elect, if and when I am in him I am chosen, and destined (predestination is destined set to be like him…).

So now that you have read these few posts from these past days should be the end of all arguments with regard to some of those speculative themes.

If not, God is still personal and adapts Godself to the likes of you and me, regardless of how much water our theology leaks (no theology being totally water-tight).

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Knowing everything

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

This is always a big old nut to crack. Does God know the future? If so how and if not how can that be?

Calvinism answers it simply – all knowledge comes from what has been pre-determined. So there is no issue when we talk the ‘sovereignty of God’. Foreknowledge is absolute.

Arminianism kind of reverses the above approach. God predestines what he foreknows. The foreknowledge is many times likened to what we might term ‘future memory’. My memory gives me knowledge of what took place, but the memory does not determine the past event. So God has knowledge that acts like our memory does – he sees it all but that does not determine what will happen. Such texts as ‘elect according to the foreknowledge of God’ then kick in strongly. He knows what I will do / if I respond to Jesus and so if I do I am elected / predestined according to that foreknowledge.

The above two views of course are helped along if we add the ‘God is outside of time’ element.

With almost all views (except mine) there are Scriptures that seem to fit in the box we have created, and a few that we can ignore that do not fit in.

The last sentence is my rider to what do I know about this… However…

I lean very strongly toward the future is not determined (with predestination / election having nothing to do with who is chosen and who is not); I also think there are so many Scriptures where God changes his mind, or says he will get back to us when he has worked it out (a very loose paraphrase of a conversation he has with Moses), that it pushes us away from God having absolute foreknowledge of what will take place, that there is a very real element where people are free to make choices.

Wow… you’ve just limited God (see I can hear what you think even at a distance!).

I don’t think so. For me the God as described by the Calvinists and the Arminians is actually limited. The future will take place because of God’s omnipotence is the fallback with that. But I think the future will take place because of God’s love; a glorious future for people and planet (and whole kosmos) because of love that knows no limits (Openness Theology).

I am no great chess player. I remember playing for my school and within (I think) four moves lost the match. My excuse was I did not play chess, but fancied representing the school. A great chess player is anticipating the move(s) of the opponent, thinking 3,5,6 and a whole lot more ahead. Imagine being able to consider every possible choice by every possible human, every permutation and knock on effect, multiple billions of billions of possibilities… That’s not possible (see I can hear you again!).

Maybe rather than a limitation on God, it shows the infinite knowledge of God, not simply knowing what will happen, but every possible trillions of permutations. A BIG GOD.

I think it fits the biblical material better that other views. It again underlines a relational God who is never taken by surprise but will come to every situation afresh with eyes of love to be involved without overriding human choices to bring out of it something beautiful and ask for our co-operation in the process.

The invitations in Scripture are genuine – they are genuine invites. The warnings to get off the broad way that leads to destruction (as spoken by Jews in his context) was a genuine warning. Some got off that path, and came out the other side of the huge calamities that came a generation later. God changing his mind does not have to be read as some kind of ‘anthropomorphism’.

Of course I might be forcing some Scriptures but it is summertime. Whatever way you come to it. Our God is a relational God; not ‘one of us’ but totally ‘with’ us.

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Outside of Time!!??

Really?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Its summertime, so just thought I would run off a few off-the-cuff posts about whatever takes my fancy. Today in response to the phrase that one hears so often:

Of course God is outside of time.

Now what on earth would that mean? And where does that come from?

Disclaimer: the opposite statement is not without its problems too, with a more ‘how old is God then?’, kind of problem!

Second disclaimer: there are people we are on the same page with regard to our thoughts, others are in the same book, if you consider I am in another library all-together, it is summertime so just put up with it!

This idea of God outside / above time seems to come from the Hellenisation (big word for the non-word Greekifying) that took place as the Jewishly-rooted Christian faith moved into the world where Greek philosophy ruled. Change was considered to be a measure of imperfection, hence immutability (not subject to change) was necessitated as being applied to God in every area. Time being involved in the nature of change, God was outside of time. The Jewish view has a God whose character does not change. The same today as always, a God who can be trusted. But there is no difficulty in attributing change of mind, experience of emotion, a before and an after with regard to God. Those descriptions demand a God who lives in time.

(There is also an element of the further east one travels that the thinking of time is less linear and more circular. This probably also affects the view of time.)

A God who lives in time: the incarnation is a good case in point. There was when (a time word) the Logos was not incarnate as the human Jesus. The cross and resurrection likewise. They are past events for us… and for God (with respect to God’s experience). The body is no longer in the tomb, there was a before and an after. The parousia has not occurred yet, not for us, nor for the hosts of heaven.

Time does not affect God as it does us. Death is not God’s future, nor even an endless celebrations of birthdays – there is no growing old for God! A day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day: does not mean time is not part of God’s experience, but that his relationship to time is not our relationship to it. It is the same with kids… ‘is it Christmas soon’ is the kids perspective (and it can start on Boxing Day and every day thereafter!); the parent ‘glad to get that behind us, at least we have a year to prepare for the next one.’ (I am sure not true for many families, but the illustration of time and our relationship to it still stands; ‘next week’ is a lifetime away for a kid; for a parent it comes all too soon.)

The interaction with creation demands God and time. The future is still longed for by God, the day when there can be a culmination of the ‘project’ and his dwelling place will be among us in fullness. That future is our future and also God’s future.

Not wishing to get into too deep water, I don’t think that clever-man Einstein’s theory of relativity comes into play either. It seems to state that an event is relative to one’s ‘position’, so can be past for one person, present for another, and future for yet another (and by position of course we mean within the galaxy!). It is relative to each ‘person’ because of their finite position. God has no finite position, being omnipresent, so it seems to me that Mr. E’s clever theory does not speak to God and time. (BTW ‘theory’ in mathematics / science is not the same as the popular use of the word theory, it has been subjected to many tests and come out the other side, unlike my theories! Evolution, for example, cannot be dismissed simply as ‘it is only a theory’.)

How old is creation? What was God doing before creation? If God is in time when did that take place? OK, got me now… yes God inside time is also not without its difficulties either, but before making a response, time seems to me to be primarily defined not by a clock or a calendar but by how a sequence of events are experienced. And that is necessary for a relationship, a real relationship. Listening, talking, thinking, considering, responding, feeling… all time words, all words related to personhood, words applied to God.

So how old is creation? No idea. I kind of think it might be eternal – past and future. Why not? God worked with some pre-matter (chaos) in the ‘beginning’. Maybe the big bang was one of many… If that is the case then it gets round what was a God who is a Creator doing before there was a Creation? The eternal God has been eternally the Creator God, and if what I suggest is OK it does not mean that creation is God!

Or maybe we somehow have to posit a ‘before creation’ a God-not-subject-to-time’ but in the creation act God creates time and space and enters into time. (I wasn’t present… and all of it is a little beyond me, so I press that concept no further).

God inside of time does not solve every issue, but it seems to make a lot more sense to me. I relate to someone who begins the day with me. What are we going to do together; what real conversations will we have; what plans will be hatched? How can we work toward the same future?

Did I mention future in that last sentence? What do we know about the future? What does God know?

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The location of righteousness

Reconciliation... the manifestation of righteousness

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Following on from yesterday’s post where God and Jesus are one, they are kenotic, self-emptying; Jesus never acts in a way that is ‘although’ he was God but because he was God, I am coming today with a quick look at the cross and one of the central passages that suggests that righteousness is ‘imputed’ to us (so central to Reformed theology).

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

Lest one think I understand all this, let me return that I had feedback that the chapter on the cross in Humanising the Divine was the ‘most disappointing chapter’. Ah well!! So with that as background you now will have to take what I write seriously, pressing on…

  • Two locations: Jesus at the Cross, and ‘we’ in Jesus.
  • Two contrasts: ‘sin’ and ‘righteousness’.

I will try and hold those two in the forefront.

The wider passage is about the ministry of reconciliation given to Paul / the apostles / and I think by implication to the body of Christ. The message of reconciliation is based on God’s act in Christ – he was ‘in Christ’ reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor. 5:19). There is no sense that at the cross God turned away from Jesus, forsook him, could not look on ‘sin’. He was present there, the cross is not about the separation of the Trinity but about an incredible expression of the unity of the Trinity. (And to push it home Jesus was not reconciling God to the world!)

I think to gain some understanding of what takes place at the cross it is helpful to quote the same writer (Paul) in one of his other letters, Romans 8:3,

by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.

Sin is condemned, has its final judgement at the cross. It is not that Jesus became ‘a sinner’, or that something was imputed to him (Reformation theology) and then on the other side something is imputed to us. Jesus is not condemned, sin is condemned.

Sin (singular – as a power, a dominating ruling force) is condemned at the cross, it is dealt with. As a result we can be released from that power (release being the root of forgiveness, and I do not think we should project from us to God our understanding of forgiveness… that he holds something against us until… another discussion). It is for this reason I think the ‘made to be sin’ is using the word ‘sin’ in the (not uncommon way) to mean ‘sin-offering’, a way the word is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. I appreciate there is a lot of discussion around this, so this is not convincing to all. However…

Add in the second part of the verse, the part where we have the result of the cross, the contrast of ‘righteousness’ and ‘sin’. It does not say that we will understand righteousness, we will receive righteousness or that we will be declared righteous, with it being imputed to us, or something of that order. It says so that we might become (in him) the righteousness of God.

  • The location: ‘in him’.
  • The people: ‘we’.
  • The manifestation (not the status): righteousness.

The cross brought an end to the rule of sin, so that a new people could be formed. And here is the challenge. A new people where the righteousness of God could be made visible. God is righteous? How do we know that? Look here at these people! That is somewhat beyond imputation. And a most provocative challenge indeed. Talk of a high calling!

In contrast to this we declare that sin has been judged. How do we know? Look at the cross. The one who knew no sin, who was not ever under its power, became the location where it was judged.

  • He became the place where it was judged / the sin-offering.
  • So that there might be a place where righteousness is manifest.

What does that righteousness look like? Well at the heart of this passage is reconciliation, bringing together what has been divided. If righteousness is revealed then reconciliation will be there fruit. How can there be a people who carry out this work, that proclaim this message, that embody this message? There has to be a people who know that an old system (the domination of sin) has gone and that they know / see that there is a new creation, that something has appeared before their eyes that has totally changed the labels, indeed the labels have gone:

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

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