A Moltmannian Agreement to My Last

I wrote my last post on certainty quickly and without a lot of research. Blogging I find to be very much about saying whatever happens to be on my mind. It's not like writing a research paper or anything.

That being said, I found a quote in Theology of Hope which I think is relevant to my thoughts. Moltmann's section is "The Historical Question of the Resurrection of Christ and the Questionableness of the Historical Approach to History." In the initial paragraphs, he is making a point about the epistemological standpoint of the writers of the NT and how they perceived the resurrection narrative. In it he says this (the emphases are mine):

"They did not merely wish to tell of their own new self-understanding in the Easter faith, but in that faith and as a result of it they reported something also about the way of Jesus and about the event of the raising of Jesus. Their statements contain not only an existential certainty in the sense of saying 'I am certain,' but also and togeteher with this objective certainty in the sense of saying, 'It is certain.' They did not merely proclaim that they believe, and what they believe, but therewith and therein also the fact they have recognized. They are 'selfless witnesses' so to speak (Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 172-173)."

Is the Claim to Knowledge a Product of the Fall?

Earlier in 2007, I wrote four blogs on the concept of epistemological certainty (see May and June). The conclusion I came to was that it isn't really possible to have "knowledge" of the existence of God in a modern sense. That kind of knowledge requires an empirical certainty which is not really available to any metaphysical concept. Of course, many of the discussions I had with people who disagreed, or didn't understand exactly what I was saying (due chiefly to my inability to articulate it properly), indicated that the problem this would produce was an inability to believe. They said that if you cannot say "I know God exists" you might as well say "There is no reason to believe." In fact, it has produced the opposite. I no longer feel the need to PROVE God, I am free to believe. The Bible itself has been opened up to me as a self-authenticating system.

Recently, some reading I've done and thoughts I've had in other areas (specifically ethics, the fall, and anthropology) have shed a new light on the discussion which, I think, supports my conclusion on the issue. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure how much of this will stem from my reading and discussions with friends and how much is really from my own mind. And, I'm not really certain how relevant these thoughts are to those topics.


I've begun rethinking this issue by breaking down the sentence "I know God exists." In the sentence, the subject is "I" and the object is, really, "God's existence," or "God." This means that, when someone claims to have knowledge of God's existence they are not really saying anything about God or the certainty of his existence but are chiefly speaking of themselves. In other words, the sentence "I know God exists" speaks chiefly of the knower, not the thing known. It's claim is that "I have God figured out and am beyond the capacity to be wrong about him. I own that knowledge by virture of my own ability to understand, perceive, and prove this." The claim to knowledge of God's existence is a claim to have within oneself the answers.

Recently, much of my preaching has dealt with the concept of the fall and its nature. I've concluded that the real temptation of the fall of man was not about eating a piece of fruit from a tree in the garden but it was a seeking of "knowledge of good and evil" within oneself and not in God. In fact, all sin is really concerned with seeking within oneself what can only be found in God, whether that be life, joy, peace, happiness, fulfillment, whatever.

Prior to the fall, God was the subject and man was the object. The Bible begins with the sentence, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Pronouncements about God and his existence begin, scripturally, with his existence and draw conclusions from there. In fact, the central theme of scripture is that God is always the subject.

It seems to me that the central theme of Christianity has always been to orient Christians away from themselves and toward God. Epistemologically speaking, this means that the goal of Christians is to arrange the sentence so that "I" am not the subject, but "God" is. In other words, it really is a fallen idea to claim that "I know God exists." I was never really created to own the knowledge of God or to have that kind of understanding. I am to begin with God and move from there. As soon as I put myself at the beginning, I am guilty of committing the same sin that Adam did at the beginning of time.

Furthermore, the notions of apologetics or the classical arguments as starting points of theology are also fallen. The attempt to begin with the cosmological argument (the universe exists and has a beginning, therefore we know God exists) is to base belief in God on the existence of the universe and (really) my own existence. It is as if we are changing Genesis 1:1 to say, "Right now our existence necessitates God's existence." It is exactly the opposite statement because the foundation has moved. The foundation for God is the universe, whereas, in scripture, the foundation for the universe is God.

Hence, it really is appropriate to abandon that knowledge or the pursuit of that knowledge and adopt as the starting point for theology God himself. This means that the burden of "proving God" is no longer upon me. Instead, I can start talking about God by looking to revelation.

I guess that this blog isn't really about certainty at all. Of course, it isn't possible to say with certainty, "Yes, I know God exists." That question, from an enlightenment standpoint, is still resolved in my mind. What this blog does say is that the concept of knowledge from an enlightenment viewpoint is not the goal of Christianity at all. Faith in God is exactly that--belief in what we cannot prove. So, my goal is not to prove it but to believe it. That I can do.

An Anthropological Case for Annihilation

Every Christian has been faced with the question, and most have actually wrestled with it themselves. The question is, “How could a loving, benevolent God punish people in an eternal Hell?” Of course, there are several theodicies which attempt to solve this seeming contradiction. But, to my mind, the recurring weakness in all is that each makes God the defendant and assumes his actions need to be justified. That is one of the troubles of a theodicy. They are based on human reasoning and fallen ethics rather than scripture.

As a theodicy, Annihilationism (the doctrine that those who are not saved do not suffer eternally in Hell but are annihilated) is among the worst offenders. Most of the arguments I have heard for this viewpoint have centered on the notion that God’s love is inconsistent with eternal judgment. Passages which discuss judgment in terms of eternal destruction are interpreted literally, perhaps rightly. But I have never been tempted to accept the Annihilationist viewpoint for its value as a theodicy.

I have, however, become more open to it from an anthropological standpoint. Some years ago I began to reanalyze dualism as a legitimate anthropology and came to the conclusion that the biblical understanding of humanity is that a human is a UNITY of body and spirit. The model described in Genesis is that God created the body, breathed life (spirit) into the body and man BECAME a soul. So that, people don’t have souls, they are souls.

Going one step further, most Christians accept, without much reflection, the idea that the spirit is a ghost-like being that lives inside their bodies and that the real person is the spirit, the body is just a shell or cloak which the spirit “wears.” This is easily more compatible with 2nd and 3rd century Gnosticism than biblical theology. In fact, the silly Gospel of Judas states that Christ’s goal was to shed the physical body so that the real person underneath could be free. This is why Judas is seen as the hero, because he freed Jesus from “the man that clothes me.” This view necessarily separates “mind” from “brain.”

Phenomenologically speaking, science seems to be coming to the conclusion that the brain and thought and feeling are inseparably linked. The recent Time article a few weeks ago was about how it may be possible to link a person’s moral viewpoint with problems in their brains. (Who knows whether there is a causal link one way or the other?) But it seems to me that this view is much closer to biblical anthropology than any other. We were created physical and meant to live physically. We are physical people with spiritual application.

To my mind, the spirit is literally our personality. It is that part of us which thinks, feels, loves, and wills. It is inseparably linked to our body. That being said, if my view is the most scriptural (and I believe it is—I should be presenting a lot more research and scripture, but I’m in a hurry and want to get this on today…I may add more later), this has massive implications on eschatology.

It seems to me that Romans 8 describes the “redemption of our bodies,” vs. 23. Someday, those who are in Christ will be raised from the dead and have their bodies renewed, just as their spirits had been renewed, redeemed, and reconciled to God in life. The new, glorified body will be like Christ’s, vs. 29. We will have physical bodies which are incorruptible. This is the only way we can continue life—it is not possible for us to be as God designed us and live outside of our bodies. We are not spirits who happen to be in bodies but can live apart from them. We are soul-units!

The implication this has on Hell is also plain. If Hell is a place of eternal destruction—the picture is always fire—how can it be that our bodies would survive in such a place? The question is then, does God resurrect the unsaved into glorified bodies for the sole purpose of torturing them for all of eternity? It certainly doesn’t make sense to believe that a spirit can live forever without the body—because humans are souls, not ghosts trapped in machines. If my anthropology is correct, and if I’m understanding Hell as an eternally destructive place, then it does not make sense to see the punishment of Hell as being an eternal place of pain and suffering.

What, then, is Hell? Certainly it is a place of suffering. And, certainly it represents eternal separation from God—and ultimate separation from others and within ourselves. To the unsaved, death would represent the ultimate destruction of the body. Those who survive until the return of Christ would be destroyed in the final judgment, sent to the final separation of Hell. But the suffering would only last until the body was destroyed. At that point, the being is completely and eternally separate from God and unable to continue on.

I’m just sitting on this right now. I’ve had difficulty motivating myself to blog lately and am working on beginning a new project exploring the implications of the incarnation on divine immutability. But I may return to this to beef it up and add things later.